Reviews for Kickstart School

Everyone in Kickstart school is super professional and thoughtfull, they are always ready to help. Professor Kathleen is patient, nice and very clear on what she's teaching, making it fairly easy to understand!

Due to the structure of the lessons and help of our teacher, I was able to improve my Dutch significantly over the course of 12 weeks! We had a fully online course and Kickstart managed to facilitate everything perfectly! We had break-out sessions, where we could practice speaking and listening. Moreover, we had interesting interactions and exercises to practice vocabulary and grammar.

The team at Kickstart are very supportive and in my experience, will help you to succeed and understand your challenges. I have had great teaching experiences. The classes aim to focus on speaking and this is is evident in Stepping Stones III.

I like the teacher and his teaching, the difficulty is just right, the lesson is helpful

It was surprisingly very nice experience. Maarten is very knowledgeable tutor. I would definitely recommend it to my friends without a reason.

I am very happy althought I rather prefer to have the lessons at the school.

This was an effective and non-stressful course. I have not been a student in 12 years so it took some adjustment. I found the grammar difficult and the teacher's handwriting was sometimes a little messy. But overall I give it a high rating

I had a great A2 course (Dutch is the 5th language I'm learning and I'd say Odette, my A2 teacher, was the best language teacher I've ever had!) with Kickstart and continued with the Inburgering preparation course thereafter. This Inburgering course was a good introduction on how the exam is structured and to prepare for the KNM & writing sections. I do not think that I got sufficient practice with the listening, reading or speaking sections. The teacher often got sidetracked with non-exam related questions about living in the Netherlands when reviewing the KNM chapters from the books. Usually we took about 60-70% of the time on reviewing the chapters which I think could have been done a bit more efficiently. After, we'd move to practicing for the written part of the exam and follow up with speaking questions (which always felt rushed in a class of 7 with only 20-30 minutes allocated here). I think that the time would be better spent having done a short test on the KNM section based on the chapter we needed to read for homework and any relevant questions that students may have had. Then followed by practicing for the other parts of the exam. In my opinion, we did not get enough practice for the listening, reading or speaking exams. In addition, there were no resources provided to study for these outside of the class. It would have been great if the teacher could have shared a list of practice speaking questions and if Kickstart also posted some additional listening and reading exercises on the course. Overall, it was a decent class and I would do it again but I still think that I need additional practice if I am to pass the exams easily.

The course material was really helpful but unfortunately my experience as a student has been quite disappointing. Sometimes during the lesson, our teacher addressed disrespectful comments about other cultures, about students' mistakes, even about mental health issues. Moreover, sometimes it was hard to keep the lesson within the fixed time schedule so the teacher was using extra time in order to complete the lesson. Even though she has a good knowledge of the exam preparation, the attitude as well as the time management of the facilitator have affected my opinion about this course. No complaint about Kickstart's administration. Last but not least, I would suggest that the educational level/ Dutch level of the students is similar, for better time management during the classes.

I would recommend this company because they choose they're teachers carefully. They are experienced and are patient. When I was first interested in taking the Chinese classes, they gave us a lot of information beforehand and made sure that if we had any more questions we would be able to contact them.

They really put in the effort in making sure that you reach your own goals, they give you so much personal attention and the teachers have a lot of patience with you and your own learning process.

jia was always very patient with us. she explained everything very well. this class helped me a lot.

it was good, they replyed fast to emails which is nice.

Positive experience overall

The course went well and really preparing the students for the different types of exams for the inburgering. The different exercises prepares the students on how exams can go. School admin is also receptive of students' complaints and addresses it right away. I still prefer face-to-face classes still, but the online courses are okay. Would be better to share more materials for students to review even outside and after the course.

I could not be more pleased with the experience I had with Kickstart. Throughout my lessons teachers were always professional and demanding, but at the same time providing a very personal and cozy atmosphere. From the staff I share the same opinion, highlighting the flexibility with scheduling my lessons for the Refresher and NT2 preparation courses, just a few months before the exam. Met vriendelijke groet, Ricardo

I really enjoy the classes and I feel that the professor is very committed to teach me the most. The book is good, but sometimes the content is complicated because Dutch is a difficult language. I like the exercises online and how the professor explains to me the lessons, but sometimes I feel it is too much learning and content for a short period of time.

I would like to recommend this language school to people who are looking for improving Dutch or even starting from scratch. Kickstart school can handle it professionally in many aspects, like timing, learning structure and materials as well as teachers who is patient, well-understandable and caring. I have done the private courses with Sanne, highly recommended!

Goede ervaring bij Kickstart. Profesionele docent met veel kennis van Nederlandse grammatica en spelling.

KickStart is a great company that prepares you well for the TOEFL test. They know almost everything about the test and are focusing on becoming familiar with the format. A good advantage of KickStart is that they provide you with homework and that you can ask for more homework during the week if you want to focus on a particular part.

Uitstekkend! Ik ben entusiast

Kathleen our instructor was always effective and well prepared. I am really impressed how quickly she pivoted to online classes when we could no longer take in person classes. I was also pleased with the approach she took in our learning and how it quickly progressed under her guidance.

Kind and professional

Het was leerzaam.

I appreciate the pragmatism of the course (making a presentation, reading books, film fragments), I like the small group setting (5-6), I also like that we have quite a lot of homework (good practice) In this course I found it too much the explanation of the grammar (I can understand it quite quickly), I would put more emphasis on the practice, mainly oral exercises. Talking, talking, talking.