Online speaking clubs — Kazakhstan
English speaking clubs in Kazakhstan.
English is a stated national priority in Kazakhstan, sitting alongside Kazakh and Russian. The policy is settled; the practice is what organisations are still trying to buy.
Speaking English in Kazakhstan
Why organisations here book speaking clubs.
Kazakhstan is unusual in this region in that English proficiency is explicit government policy rather than an individual ambition. The trilingual approach — Kazakh, Russian and English — has been part of the national conversation about education for years, and it filters down into what schools, universities and employers expect.
Policy is easier to set than to deliver, and the shortfall is predictable: reading and grammar are taught reasonably well, while sustained speaking practice with a native speaker is scarce, especially outside Almaty and Astana. That is a supply problem, and an online club is a direct answer to it.
The March 2024 move to a single national time zone has made this markedly simpler to organise. A company with staff in Almaty, Atyrau and Aktobe can now put them in one group at one time, which was genuinely awkward before.
Who books them
Three kinds of organisation, one format.
The club itself is the same in each case — up to six people, sixty minutes, a prepared topic. What changes is the material and who is in the room.
Where the demand comes from
What drives it in Kazakhstan.
Kazakh demand for spoken English concentrates in a few sectors, each with its own reason.
Oil, gas and mining
The resource sector is international by nature, with foreign partners, contractors and technical standards. Engineers and managers need English for meetings, contractor coordination and safety briefings, often with people whose English is also a second language.
Banking and corporate services
Almaty is the financial centre, and its firms deal with international investors and counterparties. Spoken confidence is what determines who is trusted in front of them.
Transport and logistics
Kazakhstan sits on the overland routes between China and Europe, and the logistics sector that has grown around that negotiates internationally as a matter of routine.
Schools and universities
Between national policy and the classroom
Kazakh students sit unified national testing at the end of school, and English has a clear place in how families and institutions think about opportunity. International scholarship programmes have reinforced that for years by sending students to study abroad, where English is the entry condition.
The consequence is a large population of students with respectable written English and very little speaking experience. IELTS is widely taken, and the speaking paper is reliably the component that disappoints — not because candidates lack language, but because they have rarely had to produce it at conversational speed.
Six students for an hour, weekly, with a British host and no grades attached, is a direct remedy. It is also, for a school in a regional city, the only realistic way to give students regular native-speaker contact at all.
Scheduling
Working across the time difference.
Since March 2024 the whole of Kazakhstan has used a single time zone, UTC+5, and does not observe daylight saving. That puts it five hours ahead of the UK in winter and four in summer, and — usefully — means Almaty, Astana and Aktobe now all schedule identically. An 18:00 club in Almaty is 13:00 or 14:00 for the host.
Coverage
Cities we work with in Kazakhstan.
We also take enquiries from Shymkent, Karaganda, Aktobe, Atyrau, Pavlodar, Kostanay, Oral, Taraz, Semey, Ust-Kamenogorsk, Petropavl, Kyzylorda, Temirtau, Kokshetau, Ekibastuz and Zhezkazgan and anywhere else in Kazakhstan — because the clubs run online, where an organisation is inside the country makes no difference to the format or the price.
Weekly pricing
The same prices everywhere.
Prices do not change by country. Each club lasts 60 minutes with a maximum of six participants, and includes all preparation, materials and hosting.
| Weekly groups | Speaking time | Price per week |
|---|---|---|
| 1 group | 1 x 60 minutes | £40 |
| 2 groups | 2 x 60 minutes | £70 |
| 3 groups | 3 x 60 minutes | £90 |
| 4 groups | 4 x 60 minutes | £100 |
| Trial speaking club | 1 x 60 minutes | £20 |
Questions
Asked from Kazakhstan.
Does the single time zone really make a difference?
For multi-site organisations, a great deal. Before March 2024 a company with people in Almaty and Aktobe was juggling two zones for one meeting. Now everyone in the country schedules identically, and the only offset to think about is the four or five hours to the UK.
Is this useful for IELTS preparation?
It is not an IELTS course, but it targets what the speaking paper actually measures — fluency, extending an answer, reacting to a follow-up question. Candidates who have studied hard and rarely spoken tend to gain the most from it.
Can schools in regional cities take part?
Yes, and they are among the clearest beneficiaries. A school in Semey or Kyzylorda gets the same British host as one in Almaty, with no travel or relocation involved.
How big is a group?
Six people maximum. Larger groups look better value until you divide the hour by the number of people in it — at ten or twelve, the quieter half stops speaking altogether.
What happens if someone misses a week?
Nothing. Each club is self-contained, there is no homework and nothing to catch up on, so an absence does not leave anyone behind.
Arrange a trial club in Kazakhstan.
Tell us who the group is, roughly what level they are and which weekly times could work. A single 60-minute trial club costs £20.