Rob

Having worked in a call centre speaking more Dutch and French per day than English, the practice of those languages enhanced tutoring adults and primary school children with the respective results of being able to converse with Head Office in Belgium and parents being asked if their children were being tutored as they were getting very much ahead of their peers.

We all learn to speak by mimicry; copying our mother and father, sibilings, grandparents, aunts, uncles; indeed anyone who verbally communicates with us. For another language, it is exercising the tongue, lips, larnyx and pharynx to produce the recognisable sounds of that language.

Imitation is used with amusing provocation and unabashed reciprocation resulting in a mouth-muscles set which enables appropriate pronunciation.

Grammar is presented not as a means in itself but as the mechanics for expression. Simple conversations are used to make the point.

By providing a background to vocabulary and grammar, students find themselves not having to think how to respond in converstation but actually live the language. Success is thinking the language and responding automatically.