The pie charts illustrate how foreign students registered for online English courses via four methods in three different countries, including Australia, America and Canada, in 2009 and 2010.
Overall, there was a change in students’ preferred methods over the years. Specifically, in 2009, 4 methods were equally chosen by students, except for the case of Canada where offline booking dominated. However, in 2010, there was a shift towards booking with agents in advance in America and Canada, while online enrollment became the most common in Australia.
In 2009, in Australia and USA, the shares of each registering method were quite equal, with more or less a quarter of students. In these two countries, Australian students seemed to prefer having an agent to help them while American students tended to use the Internet or other methods. However, in Canada, booking on arrival was the most popular choice for oversea students, taking up nearly 50%. Online booking or agent company followed with 27% and 22% respectively. Other methods constituted the remaining percentage.
In 2010, in Australia, more foreign pupils turned to using the Internet to book courses, with 39 out of 100 people choosing this. This made the Internet the most popular method among the four. In contrast, booking with agents became the least preferred means, with only 11%. In two other countries, however, enrolling English courses via agents was the most common method, with 28% of American foreign students and 35% of Canadian ones opting for it. In both countries, Internet and direct bookings were equally chosen by about a quarter of international learners and the remaining percentages were taken up by other means of registering.