Come on do you think people are blind? Are you from one of those aviation English organizations which give course on ICAO english? This looks like just another attack on Brian Slade and a piece of advert.
Anyway, i don't know if the ICAO test has really changed but i will take this guy's words with a pinch of salt. Mind you!
XLAN
GregA380's post was accurate and genuinely useful. Thanks for someone telling it like it is.
So XLAN, do you seem to dislike Aviation English organisations? Do you ever think that these standards are for your benefit and that you should be incredibly grateful to people that dedicate their time, experience and unique skill set to actually help people?
Or are you scared that companies like Aviation English Asia, have a very accurate impression of the very real lack of language proficiency among airline pilots.
ICAO English standards were introduced primarily for flight safety not to make money from poor HK locals who want to be pilots but think that focusing on English just for the test will help them.
I received abuse from Slade for 4 years. Some students betrayed me after being pressured by Slade. Slade evidently hates me, because we make him look incompetent. He is. And dishonest too. But I'm not the real victim. The real victim is the public that fly on these flights under the belief that current CX/KA pilots have an operational level of English. Brian Slade's interpretation of the ICAO LPRs in Document 9835 is so absurd that any competent member of a rating organisation would cringe. Here's an example "there is no grammar in the icao test, you just need a good structure- like a beginning, middle and end".
Thanks for this great advice Brian. I'll tell that to your children when they take their HKCEE.
Slade deserves to be publicly criticised on these forums not only because he is a liar, a defamer, and a fraudster peddling irrelevant and useless english classes that are completely inadequate for the purpose sold. He is exploiting the ignorance of Hong Kong people and the Chinese culture of bribery. Brian Slade and Marcus DeSantis have created a culture of intimidation, where pilots are afraid of losing their job for fear of reporting what happens.
If you think that bribing an assessor is an appropriate behaviour for a pilot then just go and give your money to Brian Slade, James Strang and Marcus DeSantis because honestly you would never ever enjoy what we do on our courses.
Do you want to know something else? Professional Aviation English teachers don't hang out in Starbucks or baptist university. We spend 8-12 hours a day talking to real pilots, ATCs and people in the industry. We learn and study aviation constantly. We have to, because we are pilots affected by the lack of language proficiency in commercial aviation too. But despite the need it's hardly a goldmine - it's incredibly difficult work.
Some days we don't even have time for adverts. But airlines like our values, and they like our students so to be honest our students are the best advert we could ever hope for.