HLS Book Club

Introducing HLS Book Club! We value reading, at all ages of life. Reading opens up new worlds of adventure, knowledge, happiness and English competency. 

In HLS Book Club, children will have the opportunity to spend quite time reading books, share their books with others, search their books for new words and to learn about characters, and bring their books to life with directed artwork. They will finish the lesson with a quick speech on what they learned.

Welcome to HLS Book Club. Let the reading begin!

HLS Re-branding & New Logo

 

HLS has undergone a re-branding mission to better reflect our values and purpose. The new logo (above) is fresh, neat and professional, but also carries a lot of important symbolism attached to Horne Learning Services.

The Golden Tower is a prominent feature of the new HLS logo. It conveys a lot of symbolism of who HLS is and our vision for our services:

⭐️ We started with nothing and built an ever-growing tower named HLS

⭐️ The tower has many different levels, representing the many different levels of English our students possess

⭐️ We grow by improving our English level by level, or step by step

⭐️ Just as the tower has different parts, they all reach to the same top point; so English is made up of different parts, speaking, writing, reading etc., all reaching to the same top point of English competency

⭐️ We are always looking upwards to the top of the tower, always looking for small improvements to achieve competency

HLS MISSION

HLS provides a creative English competency training program to help students level up to become confident English speakers, capable of having spontaneous conversations with anyone.

2025 Events at HLS

 🗓️📌 2025 EVENTS @ HLS 📌🗓️

📌 We will be holding some special events in 2025 at HLS. I know you love these kind of classes. This is a taster so that you can think about preparing in advance:

1. CNY CLASS 🧧🐍

(February 2025)

(We will have some fun activities based on CNY and snakes. Students will be invited to dress in their best traditional Chinese or New Year clothes for the occasion!)

2.  SHOW & TELL CLASSES 🧸🎀🪀

(March & November 2025)

(Students can bring any object from home to show the class and talk about it)

3. PRESENTATIONS CLASSES 🧑🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻🗣️

(January, May & July 2025)

(Students have the opportunity to practise their presentation and public speaking skills in our Presentations Classes)

4. SINGAPORE CLASS 🏙️🚇

(June 2025)

(Students will enjoy the first themed class of the year by getting to know all about Singapore with some fun activities!)

5. LAST-ONE-STANDING SPELLING TEST 👩🏻‍🎓📖🗣️

(August 2025)

(Students will be able to test their spelling skills in this fun and competitive spelling competition. Start practising your spelling now to see if you can become the champion!)

6. MERDEKA CLASS 👘🕌

(August 2025)

(Come dressed in your finest Malaysia traditional clothes for some local fun. Bring along food for a potluck and celebrate our country together - Malaysia Boleh!)

7. TALENT SHOW 🎤💃🏻🎭

(September 2025)

(The annual HLS Talent Show is held in September. You are invited to come and share your talent with the class. This could include singing, dancing, sports, playing musical instruments, art, etc. You can dress up in appropriate clothing to match your talent performance and bring along whatever you need)

8.  HALLOWEEN CLASS! 👻🎃🕸️

(October 2025)

(Every October, the HLS Halloween class is held. It’s easily our students’ favourite class of the year! All students are invited to dress up in Halloween costume, which you may need to buy / prepare well in advance. The classroom will be transformed with Halloween-style decorations for an unforgettable experience!)

9. BUSINESS CLASS 👨🏻‍💼👩🏻‍💼📈💵

(November 2025)

(How does the business world work? How do companies know if they are making profits or losses? Students will enjoy this business-themed class, and can come dressed in smart clothes like businessmen and businesswomen!)

10.  CHRISTMAS CLASS 🎄🎁🎅🏻

(December 2025)

(In December, we hold our annual Christmas class where you will enjoy fun exercises and games about all things Christmas. Think Santa Claus, snowman, candy, gifts and Christmas trees, and that’s what the class will be about! You are also invited to dress up in Christmas costume or clothes that are red, white or green for a little extra fun!)

📝 Make a note of these events and I’ll explain in more detail when we get closer to them!

Online classes end; in-person lessons resume

Half a year of online classes finally came to an end in the last quarter of 2021. From October 2021 HLS resumed in-person classes with an influx of new students joining throughout October and November.

We enjoyed the online classes despite the difficulties. There were some highlights that wouldn't have happened in normal class settings. For example, we held an online Masterchef Competition, a Merdeka modelling contest, and a Talent Show.

We were so excited to see the wealth of talent among our students! It's a pretty long video (above) but hope you'll enjoy it.

We received loads of fantastic entries for the HLS Masterchef competition too. It was really hard to choose a top ten; we ended up with over a dozen best clips!

To celebrate Malaysia's Independence Day (Hari Merdeka), we organised an online merdeka photo contest and awarded the best entries, some of which you can see below:

Mr. Duncan joined in the fun!

Geanne

Summer

Adrian

Namilan

Yaw Chean

Regine and Raeden

Rithani

Farouq, Falisya & Farra

Jing Tung

We then spent an afternoon driving around Kuantan to hand out prizes to all of the Merdeka Photo Contest winners. It was lovely to see our students face to face in the middle of a lengthy virtual class scenario.

Adrian

Caelynn & Cayori

Xin Yue

Lily

There were some good moments during the online classes, but we are now really happy to resume our in-person classes once more. Welcome back to Horne Learning Services!

Guild Exam 2016/2017

Horne Learning Services is in partnership with Guild Exam Australia. We are delighted to bring to our students an opportunity to sit an English Communication exam with a professional examiner working for Guild Exam. Certificates are recognised in most good educational institutions in both Malaysia and Australia.

Here are our students who sat for the exam in late 2016 and received their certificates in January 2017. They all did such a good job!

Matthew, Charis and Yi Jie

Eugene and Elsa

Sharmayne

Jing Rong

Abby Chong

Tiffany

Amanda

The Beauty of Nature Project - May 2017

At Horne Learning Services, we love to engage our students' creative side by holding projects each year. The first project of 2017 was titled "The Beauty of Nature" and we received 132 entries. We divided the project into three age groups:

Age 6-9

Age 10-12

Age 13-17

All projects were judged on the following five criteria, each area carrying 20% marks:

- effort

- creativity

- appearance

- explore the topic

- writing

Here are the trophy winners of The Beauty of Nature Project:

The champions of The Beauty of Nature Project at Horne Learning Services

The 2nd place awards for The Beauty of Nature Project at Horne Learning Services

The 3rd place awards of The Beauty of Nature Project at Horne Learning Services

More photographs of the top ten in each category will be available on our facebook page HLS English Classes Kuantan

HLS Student Annual Awards 2015

Each March, Horne Learning Services awards students in various categories:

1. Longest-attending students

2. Most-improved student

3. Top contributor

1. We are extremely conscious of those students who have been with us for the long-term. We appreciate the time, effort and money they have invested in us. Each year we identify the top 5 longest-attending students and give a little something back to them as a thank you for their loyalty.

2. Of course, the goal of teaching is to help students improve. We look for improvements in confidence, communication and competency. It is always very satisfying to observe how a once shy, quiet and sub-standard student has changed into a confident, vocal and capable one. So where there is big improvement, we like to recognise that.

3. Over the course of a year, we meet and teach a lot of students. Some of them come and go, but a large portion stay. Out of those, we credit one who stands out from the rest, one who participates with great effort in every aspect of our classes, one who we call the 'Top Contributor.'

Here are the recipients of these awards for the year of 2015:

1. Longest-attending students

Marcus is the No.1 longest-attending student at Horne Learning Services. He has been with us for over four and a half years

Ye Hao has been attending English classes with Horne Learning Services for just over four and a half years

Siew Man has been attending English classes with Horne Learning Services for more than three and a half years

Qi Yao has been attending English classes with Horne Learning Services for more than three and a half years

Sharmayne has been attending English classes with Horne Learning Services for more than three and a half years

2. Most-improved student

Hock Guan was awarded the most-improved student for 2015 at Horne Learning Services

3. Top Contributor

Alya is our top contributor for 2015 at Horne Learning Services

Our policy on replacement classes

Replacement classes for students are usually difficult to plan and can cause some confusion. This is our policy on replacement classes at Horne Learning Services.

As we continue to grow and teach English to increasing numbers of students, in addition to our classes at home we also have a number of private classes and are involved in corporate English training at various companies from time to time each year. 

With that said, most of our students/parents understand that if they cannot attend a class, it will be missed and they will move on to next week. However, we have always tried our best to accommodate requests for replacement classes.

Following is our policy on replacement classes:

* It remains the responsibility of the student/parents to send their children to the class they are registered for

* Those who do not attend their class without giving us any reason will not be offered a replacement class

* We strongly urge you to let us know in advance (ie. at the beginning of the week) if you can't attend a class so that we have more options to arrange a replacement class for you. We can be contacted by whatsapp, facebook, sms or phonecall

* We will try our best to find a suitable class for your replacement. However, all of our classes are fully booked so it may not be possible

* We only offer replacement classes for the same week. We have a prepared syllabus specific for each weekly lesson, so to avoid confusion we will not be entertaining requests for replacement classes to be conducted on different weeks

Do contact us if you have any questions about our policy on replacement classes and we will be happy to discuss or clarify it further with you.

Parents feedback on our English speaking presentations

As we discussed previously, our English class presentations week was extremely successful. Our focus is on building confidence in speaking English. Learning English with Horne Learning Services (HLS) will be a different experience for students both young and mature. 

Mr. Duncan prepares his own syllabus each year and tries to include at least one speaking exercise for every single class. Class presentations are a great way for students to use their creativity to prepare a speech and present their results to the class. It represents a good public speaking practise and will prepare them well for the future, whether that be furthering their studies at university or moving forward into the workplace.

HLS was delighted to receive feedback from parents of our students regarding the August 2015 English Class Presentations:

"Thank you. I hope they can do it again."

"[She] was happy and enjoyed it."

"I can't believe she can do it. Thank you so much. At home she memorised it all, but at class I think she was scared already. Next time I hope she can be even better. Your class is so interesting. Thank you."

"Thank you. [His] father said if you can, always conduct this kind of speech. Train them to speak to the public. Very good."

"Thank you Sir. It is not easy to stand up for presentation or public speaking. I feel nervous to do so at my workplace. In a meeting when all the bosses are in front of you, the words get stuck in my throat. Maybe Sir can arrange more of these activities in the future, it's good for the children. Thanks for the effort."

"It's a very good idea. I totally agree. You're really a good teacher, thanks for your effort."

"Your class is really awesome. Makes me feel like joining too. I saw that all the students brought their favourite things to present. That makes it a lot of fun and interesting. Keep it up!

English Class Presentations

English Class Presentations week was a resounding success.

HLS English Class Presentations class photos. Thank you to every student who took part!

Each student had three weeks of August to prepare a 5-minute presentation to the class on any topic of their choice. Presentations were carried out from 24th - 29th August, 2015 and we saw a variety of interesting topics and hobbies performed in our classes.

We received a number of whatsapp messages from pleased parents asking us to continue with these sort of public speaking assignments in the future. After seeing how beneficial this week was for everyone, we are definitely planning for more similar activities soon.

Here are some of the unique and memorable presentations:

Alya brought along her jewellery box amongst other things for HLS English Class Presentations

Joshua introduced us to his pet rabbit for HLS English Class Presentations

Sharmayne shared her impressive sticker collection for HLS English Class Presentations

Justin showed us his lego car for HLS English Class Presentations

We enjoyed seeing Li Yan's toy car collection during HLS English Class Presentations

In one of the adult sessions, Kelly gave a very motivational speech on the power of smiling for HLS English Class Presentations

Yahya gave an exciting demonstration of his yo-yo skills for HLS English Class Presentations

Zheng Yu took us by surprise during HLS English Class Presentations by presenting about Mr. Duncan! He reeled off an accurate biography of my life! He found it on my blog - clever boy!

Jocelyn shared some of her favourite food blogs before distributing cakes she had prepared earlier for HLS English Class Presentations

Ms. Lai showed us her fantastic painting as part of her HLS English Class Presentation

Ser Han fired his nerf gun at a couple of targets during HLS English Class Presentations

Keivin brought his awesome artwork to HLS English Class Presentations

Isaac gave an interesting speech on chocolate for HLS English Class Presentations, and then freely distributed it to us all!

HLS English Class Presentations saw Amanda bravely speak about her father who is currently ill. A very touching speech and we all wish her dad the best in these difficult times

Abby played on her ukelele during HLS English Class Presentations

Manchester United fan, Jun Hao, spoke about former manager Sir Alex Ferguson for HLS English Class Presentations

As the focus of Horne Learning Services is on developing students' confidence to speak English, this was a great week in classes. Students spoke English in front of a crowd, listened to others speak English, asked questions, gave answers, and got to know more about each other's hobbies and interests.

Looking forward to more similar activities!