Special Guests

Last week Dominion had some very special visitors.  A group of VIP agents from countries all over the world visited our school as part of their IALC tour, after the conference in Brisbane 10-13 April.  The group included agents from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Ecuador, Spain and Germany. 
Our guests were given an extra special Dominion welcome, which included an informative presentation, a mingle with our students and a tour around Auckland's best tourist sites.  The highlight of the day was our student mingle activity in the morning.  We invited students from our Cambridge classes to attend a "speed dating" session with our guests.  The session consist of 5 minute long mini-interviews with the students. The agents were allowed to ask the students anything they wanted about our school, courses and teachers.  At the end of the 5 minutes, the students moved to a new group so the agents could talk to a new group of students.  The activity was highly enjoyable for both the students and the agents.  There is nothing like real-time testimonials to show what it is really like at a school. 
We would like to say a big thank you to all the agents that visited us as part of this IALC tour and, of course, a special thank you to our students who participated in the day, making it an unforgettable experience for all.

 

Competition Time!!!

At Dominion English Schools, we hold regular competitions and award our students with great prizes.  This month we had a "selfie" competition.  We asked our students to get out and about in Auckland and take some photos of themselves in front of some iconic Kiwi backgrounds, with a Dominion logo.  The winner would receive free tuition for one week!! The competition was run via our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DominionEnglishSchool).  The winner was the photo with the most "likes". 

We had some great entries, but Carolina Henao from Colombia won in the end with over 160 "likes".  Congratulations Carolina, we hope you enjoy your prize!!! Thank you to everyone else who entered. 

The best bits from the competition (including Carolina receiving her prize) are below: 

For more photos of our students around New Zealand or to find our more about our school and our courses, please visit our website www.dominion.school.nz.

New Website!!

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our new website! www.dominion.school.nz

Updated Look

  

More photos and videos

Bright and attractive, with improved graphics
Links to all our social media sites, including Facebook, YouTube and our blog.
More user-friendly
 

More Course Information

Much more information available on all our courses (adult and teenage programmes), including entry requirements, start dates and course descriptions.

  

Testimonials

Testimonials from students from all over the world

Homestay testimonials

Video testimonials for exam courses

 

New Student Services Section!

Information on:

• Welfare
•  Activities
•  Accommodation 
•  Study and work
• Our pathway agreements with other institutes

Translation Tool

Our site can be translated to a range of languages in seconds, including Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Korean, Russian, Chinese and Thai.

Find out more at www.dominion.school.nz!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 

 

Summer in New Zealand!

Check out these fantastic summer photos! Most of these photos were taken by our current students as part of January's Summer in New Zealand photography competition.  One of our Thai students Natcha was the winner in the end.  Natcha received two free tickets to the Sky Tower in Auckland.  A special thank you to Sky Tower for the prize and congratulations to Natcha!

Christmas Card Competition

It's almost Christmas and it's time to start thinking about some Christmas cards.  Every year we design a unique Dominion Christmas card which we send out to all our partners and friends.  We thought we would do things a little differently this year and give the students the opportunity to design the card for us by having a competition.  We had lots of amazing entries, but of course, there can be only one winner!  The prize of two free movie tickets (plus the fame of having your design sent to many people all over the world) went to Benjamin Brandli from Switzerland.  Congratulations Benjamin, well done.  Your design is very different and we love how you managed to include Christmas and Auckland!! Please see Benjamin's design below:

Congratulations TESOL Class!!

Last week was the end of our 4 week TESOL course.  Please see our happy graduates above.  Well done everyone, you did so well!
Our TESOL course is designed for non-native speakers of English who would like to learn how to teach English to young adults and adult learners. It also prepares students to take the Cambridge TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test).  The course covers teaching methodology, learning styles, language analysis and, of course, lots of teaching practice!
Dominion's teacher training department is renowned for its skills and experience, and our courses are very popular.  We not only run TESOL and TECSOL/J-shine courses for student teachers, we also run teacher training sessions for our own qualified teachers and for teachers from other schools throughout Auckland.  In October, Dominion hosted an annual teacher training day open to teachers from all schools, which included sessions on the latest teaching techniques such as using mobile devices in the classroom.  The day was a great success and everyone learnt lots of great techniques that they can introduce to their classrooms.


Our next training course for student teachers is our TECSOL course (teaching English to children) starting on 3 February 2014.  Our next TESOL course (teaching English to adults) starts on 17 March 2014.  Book your space quickly to avoid disappointment!  For further information, please visit our website www.dominion.school.nz or email us now marketing@dominion.school.nz.

Why we LOVE Auckland

We are very proud to be in a such an amazing city.  Auckland has so many things to see and do, and it's a great place to learn English and meet new people.  Last month we had a writing competition at school and we asked our students; "what do you love about Auckland?".  Here are some of the best bits:



The winner of the competition was Dina Reichenbach from Switzerland.  Here is Dina's writing in full and a picture of her with her prize.  Well done Dina!!

 



 

 

Dominion Raises Money for Kiwi Charity

This Friday (23^rd August) was Red Nose Day in New Zealand.  Every year on Red Nose Day, people wear red noses and do silly things to raise money for Cure Kids.  Cure Kids is an iconic kiwi charity dedicated to finding cures and new treatments for childhood illnesses such as cancer and heart defects.  This year we supported this outstanding charity by selling red noses around school, wearing red to school for the day and having a bring/buy cake sale.  We were overwhelmed with the support of our students in this event.  It was amazing to see students from all over the world bring in such beautiful cakes to sell for charity.   A lot of them enlisted the help of their homestay families to help them bake, which must have been a special experience in itself.  During graduation there was a prize for the best red outfit.  The students voted and the best dressed prize went to Amy (top right in the picture above) – congratulations Amy!  After prize giving, the students went to the cake sale to start buying cakes and raising even more money for Cure Kids.  In total, the day’s event raised $450 NZD.  We are so pleased with this outstanding result, and we’d like to thank all our students for being so motivated and involved. Well done everyone!  To see more pictures from this great event, please see our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/DominionEnglishSchool.
 

International food festival

We celebrated our cultural diversity with our popular International food festival. Students wore their country traditional clothes and tried food from many different countries. Many said 'I’ve never tried this before!', everybody looked pleased to have such a chance. It is a good opportunity for all to get to know our cultures by tasting different foods. You can see the wide variety of foods here: feijoada (from Brazil), sushi (from Japan), stuffed celery (from our popular New Zealand icon Edmonds book), Pearl milk tea (from Taiwan), among lots more!

Dominion welcomes students from all around the world all year round. We have an international mix with students from more than 30 different countries coming every year.

Dominion Xmas party 2012

Today 22nd December is our student's Christmas Party.  The students will go out on an Xmas Treasure Hunt! and the whole party will run the whole afternoon from 12.45 – 3.00 pm. Santa is coming too to do his lolly scramble around 2.30 and he'll give a prize for the hunt at about 2.45 pm. This will take place in the student lounge.  

These are some of the photos we took... Merry Christmas!! See you after the Christmas and Boxing day break.

It's Christmas time in Dominion!

Our school looks lovely. We are really busy at this time of year and the best is yet to come. Important dates to remember:

21st December - the Dominion Christmas party!

22nd December - South Island trip number 1 departs

23nd December - South Island trip number 1 departs

25th & 26t December - the school is closed for Christmas

1st & 2nd January -  - the school is closed for the New Year's holiday

Welcome to our reception

Our lovely Xmas tree...
Merry Christmas everybody!

We celebrated Eid today

I was a big celebration in the school, not only for Arab students but for us all. We shared some of our favourite and traditional dishes. We even have the old favourite miso soup made by the school staff. Arab students sang and danced and we could even some of their typical clothes as well as their traditional henna hand tattoos. Thanks very much for sharing Eid with us!!

 

Happy New Year!!

As you probably know by now we only were closed on the NZ statutory holidays. That meant we had a short break compared to other institutions. Some of our students joined our North - South Island trip. This is a trip that Dominion offers students every year over the Christmas and New Year period. It is very popular and we already have a booking for next year's trip.Even though the school doesn't close, some of our long term students like to take a break at this holiday time and explore NZ with one of our teachers. The group left Auckland and travelled South to celebrate New Year in Queenstown. Have a look at the photos!!

 
Thanks Louise Young to let us use your pics from Facebook.

Merry Christmas!!

Here is our Christmas card, if you still haven't received it. All from Dominion hope you had an excellent Christmas. We certainly did have a good Xmas, our party was a success among our students. We are open now and waiting to receive 2012.

 

 

Dominion Xmas afternoon party - so many nationalities!

 Dominion Santa and helper

 Thank you!!! We received so many beautiful cards this year

Christmas in Auckland

You can feel the Christmas spirit everywhere in Auckland. If you happen to be here, there are so many places to enjoy. Every year the city looks so different with all the Christmas decorations, even for us. You might think that it is a little bit weird to have Christmas without the snow but we certainly make the most of it. Think about going to the beach on the 25th December! for example. These photos are taken just steps away from our Auckland school...

Auckland student by the biggest Christmas decoration you've ever seen

String puppets at Smith and Caughey - One of the shops in Queen Street

Giant Santa and reindeers at Whitcoulls

 Christmas tree - Sky Tower

All Blacks win the Rugby World Cup 2011

We are all still celebrating in NZ after our team won the RWC on Sunday against France. It has been such a good atmosphere in the city and in our school!!
Go All Blacks!! Well done!!!
Photo from NZ Herald

♥ Valentine's Day 2011 ♥

This post was from our lovely Dominion English School Christchurch.

It is with sadness that I write to confirm that Dominion English Schools Christchurch will not reopen for a foreseeable future. Our building is still inaccessible and we have decided to cut our losses. This is specially sad when you look at the photos above. When the earthquake struck, Dominion Christachurch had just celebrated its 20th birthday. We were lucky that no-one connected in any way to the school was injured, apart from shock. We miss the school and working with wonderful staff that showed such responsibility and courage right up until the very sudden end. Many thanks to them for building such a warm, friendly high quality school.

Martin Wall - Principal, Dominion English Schools

14th Feb 2011
 This morning the school celebrated Valentine's Day in merry fashion. Every student got a Valentine's day message out of the Valentine's Day box which was a new record for Christchurch. At break time we had fun drawing the raffle; Congratulations Etsuko and Nawaf for winning the prizes!! Mika brought some yummy cookies in for the whole school, adding to the festivity. Happy Valentine's Day everyone from Dominion English School in Christchurch ♥

Valentine's Day message box & female and male prizes!

Georgina and Tara drawing the raffle.

"And the prize goes to..."

"... Nawaf ..."

"... and Etsuko!"

♥ Congratulations Nawaf from Saudi Arabia!

♥ Congratulations Etsuko from Japan!

♥ Chihiro & Mika; Thank you Mika for bringing delicious, hand-made cookies for everyone!!!