Testimonials

Gandy Associates have been instrumental in providing language training, specifically English Speaking, Writing and Leadership skills to our employees, and those of other Canadian organizations I have worked for, and they do so, with immense quality, compassion and great results that we have witnessed.

Talent Manager

I found the experience of working with you and your colleagues at Gandy very positive. You were patient and flexible with helping us to determine the most suitable approach for our learners and very responsive and diligent with logistics, changes and follow ups. Most importantly, the learners and their managers felt very positive about the experience and the increased confidence in English they developed as a result of the program.

Business Counsellor

As Director, Relationship Management for Talent Development, I work very closely with our vendor partners to ensure that the learning and development solution that we execute on is successful for the vendor, the sponsors and participants. My role is to establish success criteria, design a measurement strategy and establish expectations with the sponsors. I have had the fortunate opportunity to partner with the Gandy Associates teams for the past 4 years. We have had incredible success in every solution that we have executed on. I would have to attribute the success to several things:

1. Gandy’s professional approach to every situation, conference call, meeting, etc.
2. Gandy’s facilitators and approach in the classroom are of the highest quality
3. Gandy’s ability to be creative and think outside the box as we continue to push for business impact results
4. Gandy’s ability and flexibility to accommodate to our timelines, urgency and business criteria.

Director, Relationship Management

I was very lucky to meet Karen. She is incredible teacher and opened my eyes to many things I did not notice before. She impacted my life vision on many different levels and made me a better and kinder person with more concise attention to my communication skills. It did impact on my life overall.

Architectural Design

Diane was a wonderful instructor. She helped us a lot during the course to keep it interesting and provided feedback at the right time. Her facilitation skills also provided equal opportunities for all the participants. The best things about the course were the group discussions, continuous feedback and analysis by the instructor, instructor’s flexibility to work with specific scenarios and role play exercises.

Senior Manager, Quality Management and Governance

I truly enjoyed the class. Today, I had just shared some tips I learned in this class to my team , I encouraged them to use positive language when they communicate with our clients, partners and with other peers. Useful material, effective group members; excellent instructors. I had lots of fun, looked forward to join the Friday morning class each week.

Senior Manager, Enterprise Security Admin & Ops

Time spent working through the material and the interactive portions has changed the way I communicate with colleagues. I have an increased level of confidence when speaking with leadership and have obtained better results using the techniques taught in sessions.

Test Analyst

It presented opportunities to bring real work challenging situations to class to (a) get feedback from colleagues and instructor, (b) apply recommendations in the work setting, (c) report on the outcome, and (d) receive further suggestions for improvements. Raised awareness of the need to consciously and consistently apply strategies (such as active listening) and how application of those strategies contributes to professional and personal growth. Weekly sessions allowed us to practice and helped increase retention. Provided a strategy for every situation.

Senior Business Analyst

It was excellent course and it should be available to more people and more often. Very useful skills were taught and Karen was an amazing instructor. I enjoyed a few aspects of this course:

1. The discussions were great; Karen checked in with everyone equally and encouraged us to find ways we utilized the skills learned
2. The casual ease of the conversation made it easier to grasp the concepts
3. The course material was done very well, really liked the summary cards
4. The accomplishment speech was excellent practice and a very positive impact on us personally

Demand/Capacity Analyst

Great course! Really helped me identify the positive and negative things I was doing in communication. I am more aware and I believe I have improved my communication and persuasion skills. The course was well organized, and I liked the group work since I was able to interact and get feedback from the instructor and team members.

Grants Manager

The course was very valid and I can see my behavior changing. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the course. The best thing about the course is the level of confidence the content it was able to give me.

Director, Information Security

The course was very well structured – the split in seven weeks gave me enough time to review the materials each week without interrupting my day-to-day tasks. What I liked the most of this course was our Facilitator – an excellent trainer.

PMO Manager

This course is powerful. I will admit, although I was encouraged to sign up by my manager, I did not have a strong interest. However, I’m pleased to report that I quickly changed my mind! The weekly schedule allowed us to spend one afternoon learning, then the rest of the week executing on what we had learned. I’ve struggled previously with maintaining authenticity whilst delivering difficult messages (i.e., I have to say “no” a lot in my role, and my personality is geared towards helping others). Between the instructor, the course material and the feedback from my colleagues, I received several helpful approaches. In addition, I dislike “sugar coating”, and am very direct. I found the material provided options such that I can deliver my message differently, without feeling like I’m compromising honesty. In practice, this learning works, it really does! I feel more confident and relaxed when dealing with difficult situations, and I’m extremely happy with the course outcomes. The course included homework and a deliverable; the extra work was difficult with my current schedule, but well worth the extra time. The instructor was fabulous, and created an atmosphere where we could share different perspectives, open and honest dialogue and provide each other with much needed feedback.

Senior Manager, Enterprise Security Administration

I would like to take more training programs designed by Gandy Associates on similar topics as this course was a great opportunity to learn and apply the best practices required for my meeting to be successful. I liked the way the course was designed. This course covered all the topics and requirements to practise for any successful meeting.

Expense Reimbursement Receipt Analyst

A very useful communication course.

Director, Enterprise Risk Management

The material is helpful in my work.

Senior Quantitative Analyst

The instructor was very good – positive, organized, engaged.

Senior Project Control Coordinator

The course provides best practices related to our working experience and our instructor Rob is professional and gives good advice on our issues. The course is helpful and I will definitely considering take more Gandy courses later.

Senior Credit Risk Analyst

I think this course is great! Sharing daily best practices improved my skills to learn and apply at work. I would love to continue to take more courses provided by Gundy Associates.

Senior Test Coordinator

It’s a great course and Diane is a fantastic and passionate instructor! I believe those tools and ideas I have learnt throughout last 10 weeks will be a great asset for my future career.

Associate Director

I found the course to be very informative and enjoyable with real life experience sharing. The material covered was paramount and addressed areas of concern that we all experienced thus provided real life samples and a meaningful results-oriented approach on improving the language barrier with emphasis on becoming a more confident, persuasive and affable speaker.

Director, Performance Testing Services

I would definitely recommend this course to others who would like to improve their group speaking strategies. I not only learned various techniques of speaking in a group, but also learned how to become an effective listener. By practising more during class with the help of my instructor, I became more and more confident as a speaker and as an audience.

Advisory Application Developer

It was an effective learning and I can already see the difference in my approach of speaking in meetings.

IT Audit and Governance Consultant

I have learned speaking skills and earned confidence of speaking in the group from this course. Before I took this course, I was always uncomfortable to speak in team meetings even in the meetings I organized. So, I didn’t have any confidence that I can go through a short presentation or debate with other colleagues on the issues. But after I experienced a few presentations in the class, I got more confident about my speaking skills in English. Ms. Leslie is such a kind instructor. She always considered students’ individual requirements and adjusted contents to meet all I need. All those are very helpful to improve my English in future.

Senior Manager

Overall, this is a great course. Instead of just talking to all participants in general, this course focused on each individual. Each participant had a lot of opportunities to practice during the classes and also after the classes. The instructor was deeply involved and provided significant support and effective feedback to each participant all the time.

Associate Director

The instructor provided valuable insights and teachings using my real business situations. This is one of the best business communication courses that I have ever taken. It not only improved my communication skills, but also increased my self-awareness and the awareness of others.

Director, Finance

The course was excellent and helped me a lot. I can see and feel the changes in my writing.

Image Processor

I’ve learned a lot from the course! I’ve been applying what I’ve learned to my daily business writing. I’ve noticed that my writing is clearer and it’s been helpful at work.

Lead Application Software Developer

My writing has improved after this program . I appreciate the effort that Diane has made for me. This training gave me the opportunity to bring my work related writing to the instructor. Diane led me to the right path by way of discussions or hints. As a result, it became solid effective business writing, proven by prompt responses and good feedback from my manager.

Payroll & Benefits Administrator

The best thing about this course was getting corrections done on work-related sample emails and being able to discuss them in detail. Thank you for this helpful course, and thanks to Rob for being patient with me!

Bilingual Commercial Mortgage Funder

Overall it was a really good course. Karen was great and presented the material in a very professional way. She also gave us feedback in a professional way that was very beneficial and easy to understand.

Donor Relations Associate

In this training, my root cause was identified, and the instructor provided coaching to fix it. The best thing about the course is the personalized 1 on 1 feedback provided.

Project Manager

I really have to thank Rob for passing all his knowledge to us for better writing in English—using simple words, being expert, getting to the point, and keeping in mind who is reading your email, notes, or memos. He is kind and professional, and I really enjoyed his class.

Image Processor

The instructor was engaging and she kept us interested in the topics. I would sign up for another course with her without hesitation.

Donor Relations Associate

The course is really helpful to build my confidence in how I can express my purpose directly or indirectly and get a response back within an expected time period.

Senior QA Analyst

I highly recommend the course, very helpful. Susan gave me tons of pointers that I never learned from my previous writing business course.

Compliance Officer

I would like to thank Susan for her support and patience that she had with me throughout my classes. I appreciate her interactive style of teaching and friendly behavior. She motivated me every time in each class and to do more than I always do by unlocking my potential. I like the way my classes were organized. I like her enthusiasm, and the fact that she was always punctual and for staying overtime with me for each class. Just letting you know her hard work is much appreciated.

Mailroom Coordinator

I really enjoyed the course; it provided me more tools to use at work. I love the gambits, what a great tool! The best thing I liked about the course is the interaction between the students to practice what we learn in the class. Also, I liked that the instructor would correct us whenever a word or phrase was not pronounced correctly during our sessions.

SCSO/CRT

Great instructor and great course overall! Rob is great by building rapport and involving everyone in the conversation; textbook has samples language to use, which can be directly applied in work; textbook has footnotes demonstrating idioms which are highly helpful for non-native speakers.

Consultant

I liked that Jessica clearly cared about the students’ success and involvement in the class. I also liked the way she taught the course with enthusiasm every day and kept the us engaged in the class. Jessica was very quick to work with and get back to students who were in need of help.

Senior QA Analyst

I really enjoyed this training, and the techniques I learned in this training are very helpful in my day-to-day life. Also, Richard helped me to analyse the issues with my speaking and suggested lot of techniques to overcome these issues. Thank you, Richard. The best thing I like about this course is the weekly presentations and feedbacks from instructor and other participants. This helped me to identify the problems in my speaking and was able to focus on those areas. Also, I was able to learn lot of gambits that we can use in daily conversations.

Advisory Application Developer

First of all, I like the way in which each topic in the course has been organized (presentation of the topic, the introduction of the strategies, and discussion about the topic using the strategies). In the second place, I liked the fact that the course has a huge emphasis in exercising the gambits and strategies learned in each topic. I just wanted to thank Rob for all his time and patience during this course. I really appreciate not just the time he invested on me, but also the passion and enthusiasm he placed in every single session. I really enjoyed the course.

Warehouse/Parts Counter Worker

This is a very useful and helpful course for me, especially for people whose English is their second language. I learnt a lot from this course and used it at my workplace. It worked right away. I liked this course very much because it taught us what kind of strategy we should use to make people feel comfortable when we talk to them. Building the relationship can make our communication go well, and accordingly make our future teamwork much easier.

Senior Infrastructure Database Admin

Two of my team recently completed the training, and I have seen noticeable improvement – both written and verbal skills have improved, and challenging conversations are managed artfully. They reported back that the course was insightful, helped them to find ways to overcome challenges, that were simple to adopt. I’m seeing it in practice every day.

Senior Manager, Enterprise Security Administration

It is a very good training for me. Especially Heather's excellent teaching skills and courteous personality has helped me tremendously through out my journey in this training.

IT Solutions Designer

I took couple of courses regarding my pronunciation and did not believe my strong accent would be corrected until taking Sounds of English provided by Gandy. My instructor Karen utilized her extensive knowledge and strong expertise in my training program. My dream has come true! I am very close to speaking Canadian English, and this has been noticed by my colleagues and friends. I liked the way the instructor inserted her recording and comments into my recording (homework) right after each word or sentence so that I can make corrections right away.

Payroll and Benefits Administrator

Thinking over this course, I’ve realized there are so many things I’ve learned. I have actually learned more at this class than in any other English class in previous years (sorry to previous teachers who may read this, no offense!) There’s just so much I’ve learned thus far. The first is the pronunciation. Karen told us where to put our tongue. She checked everyone’s tongue to ensure we put it correctly. She told us the rules by which the letter is pronounced differently at different places. The second is the rhythm. She said speaking English is like singing a song. That’s very helpful. She told us where to speak with high volume, and where to speak quickly and low volume. She also told us how to link the words together to make it speak smoothly. The third one is the pause. She told us where to group the words, and where to pause. This is very important for us, which makes us speak comfortably. This also makes the listener feel comfortable. There are many things I have learned from this course. I feel that overall this was a very productive course and a great learning experience.

Senior Infrastructure Database Admin

It is an awesome course and I do find myself more confident in front of the client!

Market Underwriter

I really enjoyed Jessica’s classes, and her way of teaching was great. The assignment feedback was to the point and very useful. Having the written and spoken version of the lessons helped me to come back, review and guide me again on how the vowels/consonants/words are pronounced. I think the teacher and the materials from the course were excellent. My colleagues have been able to notice a difference in the clarity and pace of my conversation.

Senior Application Developer

It’s a really good class. Through the 10 sessions, I improved my pronunciation, including the vowels, consonants, diphthongs and stress patterns. I can express my ideas more clearly. And I’m more confident when I talk to clients at meetings or conference calls.

Advisory Application Developer

This course is the best training on spoken English I have ever received. I would recommend whoever has English as a Second Language to take this course.

Senior Director, Balance Sheet & Liquidity Management

This is the best English pronunciation course I have ever taken. I have learned so much from this 10-week program, and have greatly improved my speech patterns by focusing on syllable stress and sentence rhythm. Special thanks to instructor Karen who is knowledgeable, diligent and patient, and I benefited greatly from her wonderful teaching and homework feedback. I’m confident that I will continue to improve my English speaking after the course as I was given all the tools necessary for my further development. I highly recommend this course to anyone who speaks English as a second language. Tips for future students: practice, practice and practice! The course teaches us how to make the right sound and do the correct syllable stress and sentence rhythm, etc., but we need practice to change our previous habits and master the teachings permanently.

Director, Finance