“But I hated learning a language at school…” is sadly something we hear all too often here at The VICI Language Academy in Newbury; however just because you had a bad experience does not mean you cannot flourish and enjoy learning a language today.
Let’s be clear why you didn’t enjoy it back then – and it is unlikely it had anything to do with the teacher and everything to do with the material and school system.
Naturally schools need to focus on helping their student pass exams; they need to teach them what will be in the exam and will work their way through a textbook that is geared up to help them. Now, however inspirational a teacher is, however gifted at teaching languages, they have to follow the curriculum.
Here at VICI we don’t follow such a curriculum and instead help people to reach their language goals – whether they want to enjoy the banter in Barcelona or talk finance in France. We achieve this by focusing on five key skills:
- Reading
- Listening
- Writing
- Spoken production
- Spoken interaction
Everyone is different and will develop at a different rate and without the focus on learning for an exam our students tend to flourish. It is why this communicative approach is so effective with children who are essentially learning while having fun – and that is a lot less daunting for adults and especially those who were put off learning a language by their experience at school.
We were proud recently to publish a case study involving a student who had learned to love languages as a young boy and he asked to come back to VICI when learning French for his impending GCSE had lost that sparkle. It was the fun that was the missing piece of the jigsaw and while he had the grammar and all the content necessary to pass… it was missing a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’! We’re happy to say he is now predicted an A grade following mock exams.
Wait a minute! Why the fascination with exams anyway? Surely the only real test of learning a language comes when you are asked to speak it. If you can communicate in the language of your choice either here or abroad then surely you have reached the necessary standard and demonstrate the effectiveness of our language training.
Whether you hated learning a language at school or not, all we ask for is an ambition to learn today and do get in touch as we have a limited number of VIP passes available to guarantee you some risk free language lessons to show you how times have changed.