Our group course content is academically standardized and promotes long term aims with the language. The teaching, by native speaker teachers, will be communicative, fun, intimate, and engages and challenges our students. We take teacher support seriously within Cactus. Our teachers are qualified language trainers and are given further leadership by our full time Director of Studies, here at Cactus, who interviews the teachers, sends them information on what and how to teach and meets them for teacher training sessions. Although there will be an emphasis on speaking and listening, grammar is included in our programs and will be taught in context. Our programs are monitored throughout, through feedback gathered from you by online surveys and acted upon by Cactus.

Use our quick guide below to view all programs available, including Group Programs and Private lessons.

Cactus offers a variety of 10-week courses around North America and Canada. You can take a standard language course for 10 weeks or cover the a shorter syllabus in 5 weeks, Fast Track Course.

Our 10-week courses are well established and extremely popular and are ideal for those who prefer to study less intensively, have long term aims for work or personal reasons or are simply studying for fun.

Our 10-week courses are 20 hour courses. Studying from 6:30-8.30pm (6:15 - 8.15pm in New York) one evening per week can fit into everybody's schedule.

These classes are a great opportunity to get to know the language in depth and your class mates and teacher as well.

Our survival courses are 5-week courses with classes one evening a week, from 6:30-8:30pm. Perfect if you have only a few weeks before a trip abroad, and not much time to devote to language learning. The courses provide an ideal way to build confidence before using the language more frequently socially or when jetting off on holiday, a gap year or business trip.

With our native speaker teachers giving instruction in the language, you.ll learn to speak and understand expressions and information that is commonly used. Follow this up with one of our academic courses, aimed at giving a more in-depth study of your language of choice.

Cactus offers a variety 5-week Fast Track courses around America. You can take this Fast Track language course for 5 weeks or cover the same syllabus in 10 weeks, 1 night a week course.

These courses are ideal for people looking for a quick intensive language boost, as an introduction, refresher or targeted preparation to achieve fast results.

Our intensive courses comprise of 20 hours of lessons, taught over one week, Mon-Fri, for an intensive immersion in the language.

This course offers fast results and similar benefits to full immersion abroad, making it ideal for targeted preparation in a short time, ahead of a trip abroad for example.

Our 2 day intensive courses are designed for people who want to maximize their language & cultural learning experience in a short space of time.

These 10 hour courses take place over one weekend, Saturday and Sunday. They are a great opportunity to get an intensive dose of the language enabling you to have a clear understanding of key grammatical structures, common areas of vocabulary, and fundamental pronunciation patterns. There is a strong communicative emphasis to the course, allowing you to take new language outside the classroom from the very start. You will also gain real insight into the cultural context of the language as it is used across the world. Finally, the course will give you a firm foundation for further study and language acquisition. So whether you are learning the language for business or pleasure, this course is for you.

All our courses are:

• Friendly and great for meeting people!
• Fun, interactive and stimulating!
• Extremely good value for money!

Academically they all:

• Cover the grammar and structure of the language as well as focusing on speaking and listening
• Are taught by fully qualified teachers who are native speakers or bilingual
• Are directed by the Academic team here at Cactus

The Cactus Course Outlines provide a learning framework for the Cactus Foreign Language Evening Courses. They are designed to provide you with a good idea of what you might cover over a 10-week period, and include typical themes, grammar and vocabulary fields. They are flexible rather than prescriptive, in that our teachers may decide to adapt their learning plans to the specific level, aims and interests of their classes.

20 hour courses (10-week, 5-week and 1-week)

• Arabic
• Chinese (Mandarin)
• Chinese (Cantonese)
• Croatian
• Czech
• English
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hindi
• Italian
• Japanese
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese Brazilian
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish

The course you take depends on a variety of factors, such as:

• your current level in the language
• the level you wish to reach
• the amount of time you have in which to learn the language
• your budget
• your location

Use the guide above for a quick overview of the different course types, then click on your preferred course for availability, locations and full course details.

All our group courses are academically sound and promote long term aims with the language. The teaching is communicative, challenging, interactive, fun, and engages and stretches our students.

Our teachers are qualified and experienced language trainers, and are all native or bilingual speakers. They have been interviewed by our full time Academic Team, and have had their references followed up. We assign classes according to the strengths of our teachers and work with them to ensure the quality of course delivery is excellent at all times. We have also introduced a comprehensive Teacher Development Programme at Cactus, which incorporates a range of seminars, classroom observations, same-language teacher forums, regular newsletters, and information on methodology and hands-on teaching techniques. Our teaching philosophy is based on looking at ideas, asking questions, and meeting challenge.

Our courses are monitored throughout. Reviews are gathered from you by online questionnaires and acted upon by Cactus wherever appropriate. Teachers are consulted and provide direct input into course syllabuses and materials. By learning with Cactus, you enter an ongoing dialogue between you, your teacher, and us. We aim to provide a clear learning pathway and ensure you make real progress in the language of your choice.

We require a minimum number of students to be able run a group course. This number varies from centre to centre and is advertised on our website. Whilst the vast majority of courses easily meet this requirement, some variations sometimes don’t. We will always try our hardest to run all of our courses as advertised, but cannot guarantee that courses which don’t meet the minimum student number will be able to run. For more information, please refer to our FAQ's.