Introduction - Dutch Classes in Singapore

Welcome to the Professional Dutch Language Courses

for Singaporeans (& other residents of Singapore)

The reason why you visit this website could be that:

1. You need to apply for an ‘MVV’ (Long-Term Visa application for Holland) and you are seeking professional training in order to pass the Civic Integration Exam.

2. You are engaged / married to a Dutch or Belgian partner, and your aim is to get a Dutch passport (right here in Singapore), or you just like to be able to speak Dutch with your in-laws and spouse.

3. Your child has a Dutch or Belgian father or mother, and you are looking for a professional Dutch language course, because your child doesn’t speak any Dutch.

4. You have been studying Dutch before, and you would like to maintain or further improve your Dutch language skills and proceed to the next NT2 level.

5. You are going to study or work in The Netherlands or Belgium. It’s a good idea to learn how to speak some Dutch before you travel to Europe. Indeed, you will enjoy your stay so much more, and you will be really independent once you are able to converse in Dutch!

6. You are working for a Dutch or Belgian company located in Singapore, or you are dealing with companies in Holland or Belgium. Therefore, you have a keen interest in learning how to converse and correspond in Dutch.

7. You aim to move from Singapore to Holland or Belgium, and you like to prepare yourself well for that.

For our Beginners Course

(24 Evening Classes for Adults)

please click here

For our Dutch Crash Course

(12 Private Lessons for Adults)

please click here

For our Intermediate Course

for adults

please click here

For our Private Dutch Language Course for Children (age group

9 to 15), please click here

To view our availability

for private lessons,

please click here.

For our MVV Training Course

(Long Term Visa for Holland)

please click here

All of our courses comply with the requirements of the CEFR-NT2*

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

(set by the Council of Europe)

*International Standard for

Education Quality Management

Dutch as Second Language (NT2)

Education Centre:

150 Orchard Road #08-09

150 Orchard Road #08-07

info@allwrite.com.sg

For further enquiries:

please call our coordinator

Dais Chan at ‘9684 0356’ or teacher Matthieu Quere at ‘9687 0009’

For our tailor-made

Private Course for Adults

(one-to-one) please click here

Sceneries in Holland and Belgium

can be truly beautiful.

In all these cases, you have found the right place

to learn Dutch in an effective and affordable way!

Please click here if you would like to print complete information about all of our courses, with rates, venues, date & time.

Below please find more information about our language teacher.

For our Beginners Course

(24 Evening Classes for Adults)

please click here

For our Dutch Crash Course

(12 Private Lessons for Adults)

please click here

For our Intermediate Course

for adults

please click here

For our Private Dutch Language Course for Children (age group

9 to 15), please click here

For our MVV Training Course

(Long Term Visa for Holland)

please click here

For our tailor-made

Private Course for Adults

(one-to-one) please click here

On the 5th of October, 2009,

The Subordinate Courts of Singapore

have appointed Matthieu Quere

to be their official Dutch translator.

About our

Dutch Language Courses:

We conduct our professional NT2 Beginners courses, Naturalisation Courses and private lessons in Singapore since 2003.

· From the moment we started with our MVV Training Course (2006), 100% of our MVV-students (167 so far) have passed the Civic Integration Exam at the Dutch Embassy; 94% of all students have done so with a high score (between 35 to 64 points out of 80) for the language test TGN, thanks to lots of self-confidence. The pass-mark for the TGN test is 26 out of 80 points. (All of our students score much higher than this pass-mark.)

For both NT2 level A1 and A2, we are using The Delftse Methode (Nederlands voor Buitenlanders), which is an excellent NT2 language teaching method, developed by the famous Delft University of Technology.

In combination with our smart Dutch Sentence Building Diagram called ’SCISSORS® ’, which enables you to build your own Dutch sentences in a guaranteed perfect word-order, you will not only build up a vocabulary of 2,500 most commonly used Dutch words in time, but you will quickly understand how Dutch sentences are built, which means that you will also be able to converse in proper Dutch in the shortest possible time, provided you focus well on mastering your Dutch vocabulary.

Therefore, all of our Beginners Group students already know how to form their very own correct sentences in Dutch after completing the first round of 12 lessons (24 hours).

We use this tried and tested SCISSORS® sentence building diagram, developed by us, in order to make Dutch sentence building & grammar a very simple, clear and truly satisfying experience.

This is important, because the moment you know how to build your first Dutch sentences correctly, everything will make much more sense to you. And that will ensure lots of motivation regarding the rest of your course.

Joining one of our Beginners Groups is also a great opportunity for all participants, since they have a chance to get to know many new people with the same interest and similar plans!

Most of our students are planning to settle in The Netherlands, and many of them have found a friend for life in some of their classmates in Singapore.

It is truly enjoyable to see that there is so much interest in South-East Asia in the Dutch language.

We would like to thank all of our present and former students for their great enthusiasm and support!

In December 2005, MediaCorp has invited Matthieu Quere to teach Singaporean top-actress Zoe Tay how to pronounce some of the script lines of sitcom The Perfect Wife in correct Dutch.

Invited by the National University of Singapore, Matthieu Quere has conducted a Dutch Language & Culture Workshop at the NUS premises on February 17th, 2006. This workshop was called ’Smoke Your Way Through in Holland’.

It provided Singaporean students with just enough relevant information in order to enable them to smoke their way through, showing off what they obviously know about Holland & the Dutch language.

Why learning Dutch?

Holland and Belgium are very enjoyable countries to stay in, be it just for a holiday, for studying, or as a place where you can work for some time, or even get married and settle down.

Apart from the fact that the government in The Netherlands has implemented a set of strict immigration rules (such as a mandatory Dutch language test for foreigners) it would be good anyway if you would understand some Dutch.

Many of our students, who are engaged or married to a Dutch or Belgian partner, really want to be able to converse in Dutch, especially with their in-laws. Usually not because they have to, but they simply enjoy to do so.

Although nearly all Dutch and Belgian people know how to speak English quite well, a huge advantage of learning some Dutch is that you will be able to make sense of what these people around you are actually saying to each other in Dutch.

Because no matter how fluently nearly everyone from Holland and Belgium speaks English, and no matter how hospitable they all are, they will definitely not converse in English all the time... (at least not with each other...)

It will be clear to you that you will enjoy your stay in The Netherlands or in Belgium so much more if you would understand at least some Dutch.

A typical nuisance many Singaporeans experience before they eventually sign up for one of our courses is that they usually get quite annoyed at times whenever they are visiting in-laws or friends in northern Europe: in spite of the fact that Dutch people and Belgians really enjoy to converse in English, it occurs many times that Singaporeans have no idea what their in-laws or friends are talking about. This simply happens whenever the European hosts accidentally forget about their Singaporean guest…

Well, such things just happen, and you can’t blame anyone for it, since it can be quite tiring sometimes to converse in a foreign language day in day out. There are certain moments people actually prefer to switch to their own mother tongue.

You can tackle this problem by taking our Beginners Course (24 lessons) or Crash Course (12 lessons). Just think of it: you will better understand all kinds of jokes you get to hear in Holland and Belgium, so you will finally get to know why people are having such a good laugh, instead of having to guess… You can check if people are actually gossiping about you ;-)

Plus: you can buy anything you like in local shops or restaurants without having to point your finger at things… and best of all: you can talk back to the Dutch and Belgians, which will compel lots of admiration!

Well, these are just some advantages! In other words: being able to speak and understand some Dutch simply ensures your independency!

Most importantly: your in-laws will really appreciate the efforts you make while learning Dutch, and they will definitely further encourage you.

This will be great for your family bonding too! It will be a very satisfying experience when you notice the benefits of your hard work.

It’s worth the effort! Sign up for one of our Dutch courses today!

Call Language Course Coordinator

Dais Chan (‘9684 0356’) to find out more.

——————————————————

I need to sit for my MVV exam (Civic Integration Exam).

Can I learn Dutch all by myself?

You — or your Dutch spouse — may have purchased the package ‘Naar Nederland’, which is a very useful multi-media tool in order to learn and practise the Dutch language.

However, it is good to realise that you will need to repeat 24 (fast spoken) Dutch sentences during your exam, while you don’t even know the meaning of the words you hear most of the time.

There is no visible text during your TGN test (= Oral Language Test), so you must be able to listen to Dutch sentences, and repeat them with correct intonation and pitch, just like that! This may seem impossible to do, but we will teach you how to perform well.

During your TGN test, 50% of your score depends on how well you can repeat Dutch sentences. A high-tech computer system will be analysing what you are saying.

You must also answer 14 Dutch questions, which means that you must be familiar with the meaning of all kinds of possible questions.

Furthermore, you must be familiar with many Dutch opposites, since you will need to generate 10 correct Dutch opposites. And all the time, you can’t rely on any written text, since the complete TGN test is fully oral.

Last nut not least: during your GBL test (comprehensive reading), you must score 75% correct answers while reading aloud a few series of Dutch words, plus many sentences and even short stories. You need to ‘fill in the blanks’ and answer questions about short texts during this written test. (You yourself don’t need to write anything; you need to speak into the microphone…)

So as you can imagine, for several reasons, the benefits of having your lessons together with an experienced, native Dutch language teacher sitting next to you for personal coaching (2 hours per lesson, 14 lessons in total) are obvious.

The most important point is this: the Dutch Government has decided to make the Civic Integration Exam much more difficult. You now have to achieve NT2 (Dutch as Second Language) proficiency level A1 in order to pass the exam.

In fact, the best thing you could do is to either sign up for our NT2-A1 Beginners Course for groups (S$ 50/- per lesson), or for our private MVV Training Course (S$ 100/- per lesson).

This is what will happen when you sit for your exam: you will be connected to a speech computer, so not to a person. This computer will analyse everything you say in Dutch, using the ‘Ordinate® Versant Test’

(Versant = automated spoken language assessment technology, developed by Pearson’s Knowledge Technologies, renowned world-wide for their effective language assessment software).

The Versant test is very fair (since computer programs are never subjective), but it is also very strict: every Civic Integration Exam candidate is tested the same way, which means that if you do not know how to pronounce Dutch words properly, or if you would use the wrong intonation, the computer will simply regard your answer as ’wrong’, so it is very important to know very well how to pronounce Dutch words correctly, and in the correct pitch & tone.

And we know how to teach you all of these, in an effective and efficient manner.

As a result of

(1) our vast experience with many Asian students since 2003,

(2) our insight in spoken language testing technologies, especially the Versant test,

(3) our own multi-media language measuring tools, based on Waveform Resemblance Analysis (= our computers will compare your personal waveform with the waveform of the native Dutch speaker while you are repeating Dutch sentences)

we know exactly what it takes to pass your exam.

You can only achieve NT2 level A1 plus proper pronunciation & intonation with intensive coaching of a professional, native Dutch language teacher.

If you sign up with us, you don’t need to worry a bit: you will be fully prepared for the new GBL, KNS & TGN-test after only 14 lessons.

We have all necessary multi-media tools available for you; plus tons of targeted study material and many trial exams to map out your progress within 28 hours of individual training.

Our expertise will pull you through, and our Dutch language teacher will be sitting next to you for 2 hours per session for personal coaching!

We have been conducting MVV Training Courses since 2006, (which was the year the Civic Integration Exam came into effect), which means that we are very familiar with all specific problems South-East Asians experience while learning Dutch.

From the onstart, 100% of our students (167 participants so far) have passed the exam; 94% of all students have done so with a score between 35 to 64 (!) points out of 80 for TGN, thanks to lots of self-confidence. Only 6% scored a little lower for their TGN-test, but still much higher than the pass-mark.

The official pass-mark for TGN is 26 points out of 80 (= 33% correct answers, which is equivalent to ‘Dutch as Second Language’ (NT2) level A1).

Our student’s score for the KNS test (Knowledge of Dutch Society) ranges from 95% to 100% (pass mark is 70%). Most of our students scored between 85% and 95% for comprehensive reading (GBL test, pass mark 75%). Our student Annabel Lim even scored 100% for GBL recently. Marvelous!

It’s not only about the way you speak!

You must also train your listening skills well, in order to be able to understand the fast spoken questions, opposites, and most importantly: the sentences you will need to repeat, read & complete in Dutch.

It is very important to spend much time on adequate training of your listening and pronunciation skills, and we are here to help you.

We have 18 different Civic Integration Trial Exams (full version) readily available for you, and we will go through all of them, together with you. Your real exam is very similar to those mock exams, so in the end, you will be well-prepared.

You will agree with us that it is quite hard to focus well during your exam if you would feel very nervous. And if you can’t focus well, your results will (of course) not be the best.

As experienced, professional teachers, we know exactly how to coach you adequately in order to prevent any form of nervousness. Because nervousness and tension can simply be prevented by preparing yourself very well.

We know exactly how.

Call us at ‘9684 0356’; we simply guarantee you will pass with much confidence and great results, like all of our other students!

With our brand new, computer-aided audio-visual practical, we are now fully prepared to meet the new, strict requirements. We guarantee that you will pass with great results.

See you at our Civic Integration Training Course!

TIP 1: new course

On Wednesday 13th of June, 2012, we will start with a brand new Beginners Course at Kingsfield Education Centre, Orchard Plaza (opp. Orchard Central).

Since 2003, we have been conducting 4 professional Dutch Beginners Courses per year in Singapore (group size varying from a minimum of 6 to a maximum of 16).

Within only one month, our students already know how to make their very first 100% correct Dutch sentences, thanks to our smart sentence building diagram! Students are always very enthusiastic about this handy tool.

We also use crystal clear diagrams on how to pronounce Dutch consonants, vowels, combined vowels and diphthongs, demonstrating the obvious logic of it, and specifically designed for Asian students.

In combination with lots of tips and tricks, our unique system will help you to master perfect Dutch pronunciation in the shortest possible time.

Since both sentence building and pronunciation become very logical to you within the first month of your course, you will be even more motivated to continue learning Dutch after that.

You never need to worry, since we provide additional (free) private training sessions for those who are still encountering specific difficulties while learning Dutch, or for those who miss one or more lessons. These training sessions take place 30 minutes before the new lesson starts.

From there, learning Dutch becomes a real breeze in no time, provided you will study hard and diligently master your Dutch vocabulary.

If you would like to register, please contact our Course Coordinator Dais Chan (‘9684 0356’) or click here to read more about our new Beginners Course.

TIP 2: pass your MVV exam with flying colours !

From the moment we started with our specific MVV Training Courses in 2006, all of our course participants (167 till now) have passed the Civic Integration Exam with ease!

Pass your KNS, TGN & GBL test with great results as well, with our effective MVV training course.

With us, you will build up lots of self- confidence, resulting in high marks!

We are specialised in teaching perfect pronunciation and intonation to Asian students, and we have 18 real-time trial exams readily available for you.

We are using special voice-analysing software to compare your pronunciation with that of a native speaker, and the same will happen during your exam: you will need to read aloud a series of Dutch words and sentences.

Use this web-link to read all about the requirements.