What you will meet.
This section describes the parts of the College a student deals with directly — how you are taught, how you are assessed, what is recorded about you, and what you can do about any of it.
What is waiting when you enrol.
All of it is available immediately. Nothing unlocks on a date, because there are no dates — see Dates.
Ten modules
The level you were placed into, with its modules, lessons, exercises and assessments already written and waiting. Nothing is drip-fed.
Recording and pronunciation work
Where you record yourself against pronunciation targets and where those recordings are kept, so that six months of change is audible rather than assumed.
Your marks, held by you
Every attempt, every mark and every piece of feedback, visible to you as it accumulates — not summarised at the end of the level.
Published before assessment
Criteria, thresholds and outcomes are published before you are assessed against them. A standard revealed afterwards is not a standard.
Seven pages, and what each is for.
<a href="/students/assessment/">How you are assessed</a>
The four skills, the six competencies, what a mark means, and the 70% the platform actually enforces.
<a href="/students/academic-record/">Your academic record</a>
What is stored, who can see it, and the parts of it you control rather than the College.
<a href="/students/#lab">The Listening Lab</a>
The one part of the platform students are usually surprised by, and the argument for why it exists.
<a href="/students/awards/">Awards and honours</a>
What each level is called, what the post-nominals mean, and why nothing has been conferred on anyone.
<a href="/students/integrity/">Academic integrity</a>
The College’s position on work that is not your own, and the procedure that has not yet been adopted.
<a href="/students/regulations/">Academic regulations</a>
Progression, resits, standing and appeals — all in force, grouped by when each took effect.
<a href="/students/#support">Support</a>
What to do when you are stuck, behind, or unhappy, and who actually answers.
No cohort has yet been taught at AIPC. Everything on this page describes what is built and what the College has decided, not an experience anyone has had. Where a rule arrived by executive decision awaiting Senate ratification, it says so. The College holds no accreditation, has appointed no External Examiner, has conferred no award on anyone, and has adopted no refund policy — see institutional status.
Why recording is not optional.
Three reasons, in the order they matter.
You cannot hear yourself while speaking
Every learner is a poor judge of their own pronunciation in the moment, because producing a sound and evaluating it compete for the same attention. Recorded, the same sentence is suddenly assessable — by you, before anyone else hears it.
Improvement is invisible without a baseline
Progress in pronunciation is slow and continuous, which makes it exactly the kind of change nobody notices in themselves. A recording from month one played against month six settles the question in thirty seconds.
Speaking cannot be assessed any other way
A programme that marks speaking from written work is not marking speaking. Recording is not an enhancement to the assessment; it is the assessment.
What you actually do.
- 01Listen to the set. Each listening set carries its own audio, with the specific features the lesson is targeting marked in it — a linking sound, a stressed syllable, a contraction — rather than a general instruction to listen carefully.
- 02Record yourself against a target. Pronunciation targets are specific and named. “Sound more natural” is not a target; the vowel in a particular word is.
- 03Listen back before submitting. This step is where most of the learning happens, and it is the step learners skip. It is built into the flow deliberately.
- 04Receive feedback from a person. Pronunciation feedback is written by a teacher against the target, not generated by a score. No automated pronunciation scoring is used, and none is claimed.
- 05Keep the recording. It stays in your record. In six months it is evidence; deleted, it is nothing.
What it needs and what it survives.
A phone is enough
Studio quality is not required and would not improve the assessment. The features being marked survive an ordinary microphone.
Recording continues offline
Recording does not require a live connection. A recording made while offline is held and uploaded when the connection returns, in parts, so that a drop does not lose the whole file. This was built because the College expects students in places where connections drop.
Nothing is submitted automatically
A recording is submitted when you decide it is. Nothing is captured or sent in the background.
The honest gap in the Lab.
The listening sets are written — scripts, targets, marked features and teaching notes are all authored. The recorded audio for them has not been produced. Producing it requires voices and a studio, and it is one of the small number of things standing between the programme and first delivery. It is listed as outstanding rather than implied to exist.
Built into the teaching before you have to ask.
A second explanation, already written
Every lesson carries an alternative explanation of its hardest point, written in advance for the learner who did not follow the first one. Teaching that has only one route through it fails everyone who needs a different one.
The mistakes people actually make
Each lesson names the common errors for that point and what causes them, so that a mistake is recognisable rather than mysterious. These are written from the language itself, not gathered from students — the College has taught no one yet, and says so.
A tutorial with a teacher
Where the written support does not resolve it, a tutorial does. Ask; it is not rationed.
Noticed early, and answered with help.
To reach you, never to penalise you
Engagement is tracked so that a learner who has gone quiet is contacted in month two rather than discovered in month eleven. It never produces a penalty, and there is no attendance requirement to fail — the programme is asynchronous, so attendance would be the wrong measure of anything.
A message, an offer, a conversation
Falling behind produces contact, not consequence. Someone who is behind can still finish; the entire value of noticing is reaching them while that is true.
Who answers, and how honestly.
The founding team, by name
Every message to the College is answered by a member of the founding team. There is no ticket queue and no first-line script, which is a genuine advantage of the College’s size and will not survive growth — so it is described as it is now.
A formal complaints procedure
There is no independent stage to escalate to, because there is no appointed body to escalate to. That is stated on Academic regulations as well, because it is the kind of gap that should not be findable in only one place.
Named, so that nobody relies on it.
Counselling or wellbeing services
AIPC has no counselling provision, no wellbeing service and no qualified staff for either. If you need that kind of support, it must come from services where you live. Implying otherwise on a website is how people in difficulty get let down.
Careers or immigration advice
No careers service, and no immigration advice of any kind — see Visas and study permits.
Disability assessment or formal adjustments
The College has no process for assessing a need or granting a formal adjustment. What it can do is arrange practical accommodations informally — audio-only participation, extended time, alternative formats — on request. That is a smaller offer than a policy, and it is described as the smaller thing it is.