Thank you very much everyone for being here. I was just saying offline that I cannot believe it’s
already day five and I hope that you have enjoyed the classes so far as much as I have, we have very
familiar faces every day, which must be good news. Today is a little bit of a bonus session. OK, we’re
on day five and as a brief recap, day one to four, we looked at a lot of learning strategies, personality
in color, what type of learner you are and what’s going to trick your brain into learning French better
and faster. We looked at a blend of different techniques online, offline, and different resources, so
the way that you use those resources and how that can really help you to learn a foreign language.
And yesterday we talked about how to live the language and how you can engage with the language.
The day before, we looked at planning your language lessons and your language journey as a whole
with a bit of a blueprint of how we do things here at the Academy and it works very well, today, the
reason why it’s a bonus session, it’s because we want to talk to you about confidence in language
learning. And I think I’m right in saying that when people talk about starting to learn a new foreign
language about improving their language skill about reaching mastery. So regardless of where you are
in your language, learning journey at the moment, whenever we have an open discussion about it.
Confidence is a word that comes right at the top of the list. Yeah, I think we can all agree on that.
The thing is that there are many ways that you can be more confident in a foreign language, but
today we want it to be more of an open forum. Why? Because it’s an inner emotion, isn’t it? It’s
something that is deeply personal, so it is something that can vary from one person to another, from
one student to another, an awful lot. And whilst I feel very qualified and experienced to give you the
tools to learn French, looking at all that we’ve covered from day one to day four with lots of different
learning strategies and a lot of planning that I’m an expert at. I really wouldn’t feel comfortable
telling you how you as a learner of French can become more confident. I don’t think that I am
qualified to do so, and I don’t think that I know you well enough to confidently say that I can tell you
how to be confident in learning, experiencing, progressing in French. But what my team and I can do
is give you even more tools or tell you about stories that hopefully will inspire you, and I think that a
lot of people on the call have learnt French or another foreign language before, so I would really love
to hear about your experiences and how you may have found that you were getting more confident
in French using one thing or another, being in an environment or another. OK. That sounds good.
Yeah. Obviously I always share with you that the reason why I love the job that I do is because #1
being bilingual has opened many doors for me in my private and professional life. It made me be
more confident with myself as well as a person, undoubtedly. But also I don’t do what I do just to
teach languages. You know my why is a little bit deeper than that my why is 100% in the confidence
that I give students as human beings, not just as students, I absolutely love observing the booze that
people get when they feel they can achieve something through a foreign language that truly is where
I get a great kick out of what I do. As you know, I started teaching very young children and more
recently I’ve run a series of videos and I interviewed one of my oldest students, who is now 24. She
came to my French classes when she was maybe four or five and we had an interview. She’s now
fluent in French. She studied for a year in Paris and she now works in the city with French and I said to
her at the end of the interview, thank you so much for having been there 20 years ago, when it all
started, because I certainly would not be where I am today if it wasn’t for children like you who
completely inspired me and made my job a dream. And she replied no, I owe you more.
And this has made my day, my week, my year. I’ll remember this on my deathbed for sure. And that’s
truly, I think, what languages do to you when done in a proper way or experienced in a really nice,
pleasant way. They give you a huge amount of confidence. Again, the reason why I would rather we
shared stories or talked, perhaps openly about some of the resources of experiences that we’ve had
is because again, I think that confidence is very is kind of an inner feeling and it’s super personal.
Some people will say I’ll just have a go you know you go to the country, go on holiday, even in your
French class, just have a go and then you’ll get more confident for some other people, they cannot
think of anything worse. Others will say that school has given them a really good grounding, so it’s
made them confident enough to look at taking the language studies to the next level. Unfortunately,
the way this school education system has been set up and that’s not where we are here in the UK,
but in many European or world countries. All the countries not very much dampen students’ opinion
of themselves of being able to learn a foreign language, so for some people, school teaching meant
that they left school thinking, not like learning a foreign language is just not good for me.
Sometimes, such as myself, love learning foreign languages, so I love learning English at school, so
when I graduated from high school, my first thought was I’m gonna go over to America. I’m gonna be
an au-pair. I wanna come back speaking fluent English and when I got there, I found that, you know, I
lived in Ohio, which was really the most open-minded of areas, and I don’t think they’ve seen that,
me foreigners or French people, and I remember going to rent a tape, you know, because I’m fairly
old, so we had, we were watching, you know, those VCR tapes. And I went and got to one weekend
and one of them wasn’t working, so I brought it back on Monday and I said, you know, I paid for two,
but one didn’t work, so can I get a credit and the person behind the till wasn’t particularly pleasant.
But on top of that, apparently I wasn’t really explaining myself very well, we still agreed that I would
get a free tape whenever I came back. I went there many weeks later and when I got to the till and
explained the situation, she seemed a little bit puzzled and a little bit grumpy. And then she got a
piece of paper with my name on it and my ID light number was called Blockbuster at the time. At
the bottom of it from behind the till I could read “doesn’t speak very good English”. I still remember
it today. It was in 1995. And that really hurt me. See this could do two things, depending on your
personality. It could make you completely shy away from ever wanting to speak to someone in a
shop anymore, or it could be like me, feeling really hurt, get in the car, have a little tear and then say
I don’t think so I am going to be so fluent that if I ever meet you one day mine is gonna be better
than yours. But we all react really, really, really differently. So our job here today guys is to see if we
can share little tools with you. But also you can share your stories and perhaps we can give it some
thoughts together. So we’re going to have, yesterday we were having a meeting about today’s class
and Sasha shared something really interesting about his own way of gaining confidence, speaking
French even though that’s one of his mother tongues. OK, which I think you should hear. And then
my colleague Laura is going to share with you a new digital resource that we use with our students
called Hypnoledge, you may have heard of it, it is fairly new on the market, I think it’s only been
brought up three or four years ago. We have partnered with this French company, because we feel
that it could be another element of blended learning that we could bring into our language
programmes, we could really help our learners as a matter of fact, for our new ambition programme
that is starting in, Here comes Usha. Hi, usha. It’s starting and that’s the the new, the new ambition
programme that is starting in September, we are actually offering all our learners to get set up on the
platform 2 weeks before they start that programme for reasons that Laura will help a little bit later
on with. So oh, and also I would love to share, I’ve put in my notes here I have a friend who is a
language coach for language learners in Washington DC we’ve done some work together and more
recently. Can you hear me? Ohh sorry, I just had a note to say I can’t hear you. OK, ignore me. More
recently I ran a series of videos which you may have seen if you subscribe to our YouTube channel,
I’ve run a series of videos interviewing people who I felt could really help our learners and Melissa
Chapman being a language coach for language learners helps people an awful lot with all their inner
feelings and what’s happening inside themselves to make them more confident. And so, for
example, she looked for the like spots in Washington, DC she has some great things to say about her
methodology. So I interviewed her. It was back in the winter, I’ve got the video, which I will drop in
our chat as well, and I thoroughly recommend that you take some time to look at it. It’s only about
20 minutes. So without further due, why don’t we start with you, Sasha? And why don’t you spend a
little bit of time telling us what you told Laura and I yesterday about how you got more confident in
recent years speaking French.
Yeah, absolutely. Hello, everyone. So one of the main things for me, which is definitely immersion.
You have to be in an area where you know you can’t be bailed out. You can’t think ohh if I don’t know
this, it’s OK because I can just go back to English and for me that was going and visiting my French
grandparents every summer. Every Christmas, Easter, whenever I could be there. I was there from a
very young age, until even now. And it meant that I was in an environment where, you know, if I
didn’t know a word or if I was saying things wrong. Yes, they would correct me, but in you know the
nicest way possible and just very, you know it was never turn into a lecture. It was just. Ohh no, it’s
not that and I would pick up on it. Without even realising and then I find myself making less and less
mistakes as time goes on. As well as the fact you know I’m with my family. So it’s a very comfortable
environment. I’m not nervous about making a mistake, but I also appreciate, you know, not everyone
has a bilingual family. Not everyone has French grandparents. So another thing was, I decided to do
French for A level, so I took my GCSE very young. I was about 12. Well, and it meant I hadn’t had
structured French lessons in four or five years. And so I got to A level and I initially didn’t take French
and then I switched the course and took French, but I realised that while my French oral skills were
perfect, my writing wasn’t as good as it should have been. Because I grew up in an environment
where I was always speaking French my mum never sat me down and had me write French lessons,
which I think is a good thing cause I think all that would have done was make me just hate the
language. And so I decided to do a course at VICI with Cecile, who we met a few days ago. And she
gave me a really structured learning which brought my French to as close as my English as possible,
and that not only did it make me feel better about myself, because I was able to finally speak the
level of French I’ve always aspired to, but it just made me more confident. One thing I noticed when I
would speak French is I would stutter a lot because I’m catching myself from making mistakes, but I
think that happens a lot lot less. Because I’m far more confident and if I do make an error I almost
don’t care because I know I know when I make an error now, and sometimes it’s force of habit,
because I’ve been saying that same thing wrong for many years but I know when I’m making the
mistake so I don’t need to be caught up on it, and that knowing I have that just meant I was far more
confident in my friends ability than I ever was before.
Brilliant. Thank you. So for me, what I hear obviously I know the story, but what I hear here is being
in a safe environment, feeling comfortable in an environment where you can make mistakes that is
so important, but also structure. And to me, all these ingredients are vital. If you feel that you are
evolving in an environment where making mistakes is part of the norm and I am 100 to 500% one of
these people that believe that no mistakes, no progression in a foreign language, this is virtually
impossible. This is the one thing you will learn where making mistakes is part of the journey. Like
there is, it’s impossible to not make mistakes in the foreign language and progress. No, it’s just
impossible, isn’t it? Laura there’s just no two ways around it. So to me, being in a safe and
comfortable environment is extremely important, but the structure is also important so you
understand the more you progress, the more you’re motivated and the more confident you get.
Would anyone on the call today would like to share their story? It doesn’t have to be about French.
If you are at the very early journey, you know of your language here, it could be with another
language or it could be with anything that you’ve learned. How have you gained confidence and
how did it happen? Would anyone like to share?
I just say that and I’ve got a I’ve gotta a school friend, an old school friend who moved to Italy when
she got married because her family moved to Italy, and every time I go, I always think I’m gonna
learn Italian. I’m gonna learn Italian. I like with the French. I can pick out bits of Italian and get a gist
of what they may be saying. But I’ve tried to self teach myself and that just didn’t really work. So I
agree with you about the structure and also being speaking in confidence is going to be my biggest
hurdle is being confident to speak the language. So I was a bit disappointed with that Italian, but
obviously I was going with the way with it the right way. But I’m so excited about the French there,
I’m pretty sure I’m gonna work this one out.
And also you’ve got a huge compelling reason with your granddaughter to want to learn. I mean
you can’t match that for sure and I just wanna pick up on a self study. I’m a huge believer in self
studying. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that you know I run a company that provides
language training programmes where we give our students an awful lot of support. The reason
why I love self study is because it means that you are #1 taking ownership of your own progression
and that helps an awful lot. #2 is the immersion fact. The more you do little bits and pieces there,
remember when we talked about the one minute rule yesterday and the more you will be
immersed in the language and more, you’ll get your brain engaged in the language, et cetera. So
that’s the snowball effect. But the self study element means that you take ownership of what’s
happening and that is an important part. Having said that, I do not believe that you can learn a
foreign language only through self study. I think we all have and that may be another discussion
for another day. We all have a different definition on what it means to be able to speak a foreign
language. We touch upon this really lightly on day one, the term bilingualism is defined extremely
differently from one bunch of linguists here to another there OK for some and and in our industry
it’s a constant debate, isn’t it, Laura? Like you watch, you know, you read article on LinkedIn, you
go to webinars. There’s always a debate on what bilingualism truly means. For some people, it’s
just being able to get by confidently. For others, it’s completely mastery of the language, but this
aside, even getting by in a foreign language I don’t believe can be achieved through self studies
only, unless you are clearly really gifted at the language and also that you spend considerable time
on it, it is extremely difficult even if you’re super motivated to pull yourself together every day and
study for a period of time. But most importantly, you don’t actually know what you need to do
unless you are already a linguist and have analysed your own way of learning how you know you sit
there and go. OK? So, like, what do you do then iIf I put you in my job tomorrow. You could sit here
all day and be very willing if you’ve never run a language training company before. With all the
willingness in the world without knowing how we work, what you’re going to do, being polite to
customers and offering coffee and answering a few emails politely and courteously, but we’ll be
able to run the company. It’s the same thing. So, there was a study many, many years ago about 8-9
years ago, I read a study of people who had learnt. A foreign language on their own, one hour
each. Right some of them really managed to hold a really decent conversation. Guess how many
years it took them to do so. You sure you would just about be ready for your granddaughters
graduation because it takes 17 years. I think that you can definitely cause we’re talking about
confidence. I think you can definitely find confidence in the routine that you’re going to have the
little kick that you get. I know you want to go on the ambition programme like you’re going to get
a platform with lots of different short, authentic French videos. If you get into the routine of
watching a little video, even it doesn’t have to be every day, it’s not a requirement to study French
every day. But even if you go every other day for 5 minutes, you’re gonna get a huge amount of
confidence out of that and in the early stages the confidence is not going to come out of the
language that you learn. Because it takes a little bit longer than that, the confidence is gonna come
out of the commitment that you’ve made to really get on with that, that’s where the confidence
will come from. So don’t be discouraged by the fact that you had already told yourself you may
learn Italian and you didn’t do it. I’ve been saying that I wanna learn Spanish for a very long time.
And I’m not very far yet, and I have the team to help me having a compelling reason guys truly is,
you know wonderful. Sasha went to Valencia this summer, he came back saying that he really
wanted to learn Spanish and I felt great, let’s do it together. I’ve always thought I should either
learn Spanish or Italian, but now he’s saying that after university wants to do a master in Italy. So
I’m like, Oh well, if he learns Italian, maybe I can learn Italian. So it’s a little leisurely activity for me.
I was a lot more focused when I was learning English. So once you know why you’re learning, even
if it’s just a series of your personal development and once you have a plan, you’ll definitely get
there. I’m gonna kick your **** anyway. Just so you know that’s part of the prize, it’s part of the
package you pay for that as well. You’re welcome. Lynn, would you share because you’ve got a
lovely story. Your English. You lived in France for a number of years and you feel that you’ve
reached a bit of a plateau with your French learning and you’d like to go for French nationality, you
need to take an exam. Any stories that you could share with us? How confident you’ve been from
the early stages of your learning French until now and now if you’re not really getting to the B1
level you’d like to get 2 is this a confidence thing? Is this anything else?
It’s kind of a mix, I guess. When I first arrived in France my children were all under 5. So in school I
had to communicate for them. So I was forced to speak French and I felt that I was progressing really,
really well, to start with. But now they’re all teenagers doing baccalaureate and above, and there’s
no input for me, I have no part of it, so I don’t need to speak French for them anymore. I’m still
forced to speak French in certain circumstances when when my children were younger, I made a rule
that I had to speak French every day. Even one sentence to somebody, I had to speak French. So the
poor mums at the school gate started to avoid me because they didn’t want to have to put up with
my French. So it was a bit difficult for that. I did make some absolutely lovely, lovely friends. The
other mums, the friends of my children, so I made some lovely friends who’d find me for coffee. We
speak French about, you know, day-to-day things. So yes, I was progressing. And at that time, I was
having lessons. It was only once a month. It was a retired French man and he just did it for a little bit
of extra money. So whenever there was anything I heard that I didn’t understand or maybe I hadn’t
been able to explain, well, I would make a note of it and then ask to review it in the lesson. But it
became difficult because the other people in the class in the group kind of resented me taking over 5
minutes of their lesson to do that. So you’ve got hurdles all the way, I think. And you’ve gotta find a
way to get around those hurdles. But now, as you know, I’m an English teacher, so I speak English all
day at my job, just the occasional conversation with a secretary or something in French or
administration in French. And I speak English to maintain my children’s English because they speak
French all day so that’s it. I lost my confidence in a big way when I was mocked by some colleagues.
English colleagues and now I refuse to speak French in their presence..
So here we go.
So This is why now I have no confidence.
So, well, first of all, I’m very sorry to hear that, and I can totally relate, OK, because it’s happened to
me as well. It’s happened when I was in America, it’s also happened in England. I get complimented
on my English very often and I often say that, you know, perhaps I was quite lucky. I’ve never really
had a strong French accent. I always had a bit of a flair for the language. But I also worked extremely
hard at it to gain respect. And it’s a little sad because I think that we should, you know, all accept
each other and the world would be a better place. But facts are that people like yourself still get hurt
by unpleasant comments, so I’m really sorry about this and I really want to try and talk about things
that you can do to go around that. Because I think that your story is very interesting, and it is yet a
stories that shows that you need the right environment. You need the right people in front of you,
you need the right structure, you know, going out and live in France is not going to make you
completely fluent if you don’t have all this in place, that there’s really there’s. This is a common belief
that all you have to do is kind of export yourself from one country to another and whilst it will go a
long way into helping you to improve your language skills, it will not make you completely fluent. I
have countless stories of people who have not managed to be completely fluent because they kind
of just left it to be in the country, and hoped for the best, and it’s just not working. I think for me
from what you said, the keyword really is environment. You know you talked about the environment
when you took your children to school. Suddenly that environment is taken away from you because
they speak French like native kids and so don’t need you anymore. Then you find yourself in an
environment with this gentleman. That was helpful but perhaps not really the right structure. And
now you teach English all day. And so, you know, you know, you just don’t really have the time to
practise. Laura, you may not have the answer. This is not a prepared question, but on the back of
what Lynn says or just said you are an English person as well, even though you’ve been raised
bilingually just like Sasha English is your stronger language. Do you have any tips for Lynn? Have you
also ever been in this environment or in this situation?
I think anyone who has ever dared to speak a foreign language in front of other people has been, has
some kind of negative comment, has been mocked. It’s horrible. And people, I think often don’t
realise the bravery that it takes and also, let’s not forget that a lot of people who are going to mock
an accent are people who only speak one language. And you often make mistakes in their own
language. Do you know how many times that has happened to me as well? People would hear me.
For example, when I was very young, my dad is Belgian, he didn’t speak excellent English. He didn’t
speak any English when we arrived in England. So I would speak in French when I was young and I
would hear the people in the queue in front of us just mocking us for speaking another language
which you know is just baffling. Anyway, so I think that firstly it’s knowing that you know you’re not
alone in that feeling of having been mocked by someone for an accent or for speaking another
language. I don’t know why people do it, but they do, so I think personally, personally. Sorry is. Kind
of building that resilience of saying you know what but I’ve gone there and I’ve tried and I’ve done it
and I have communicated what I need to get and that is you know that is the goal of language. That’s
the goal of learning to be able to communicate something so I do, I thought through a lot that you
have decided not to speak in French with these other ladies, but I fully understand that sometimes
you know it does have a huge knock on our confidence, so part of language learning really is as well
building that confidence in the second language or the other language to really build
yourself. But in terms of practical test, I think it depends on the kind of person you are as well. It’s so
personalised for you, but I think that it is, you know, firstly remembering that you are alone, you’re
not, you’re not sorry, alone in that feeling of feeling much for somebody else for speaking another
language. That it’s just something that happens to everybody. And secondly that you’re so brave for
trying and for doing it and daring to speak to somebody because it can be very, very intimidating.
Well, so I think it’s just, you know, the more that we practise and the more you do it, the more you
build resilience and the more the lesser that affects you. I mean sometimes I have, so I grew up
speaking bilingually like Sasha, but I struggle a little bit with the writing side of it, because I didn’t
grow up writing French, so sometimes I will write a message isn’t perhaps as eloquent as I would
have liked it to have been, and even you know, at mine and Sasha’s stage and Matthew’s stage now
where we are so proficient in our in our language. Yes, sometimes we make little mistakes,
sometimes people are what we say, that’s part of being a human as well and daring to pick us up out
in the world. So I’m afraid I haven’t really answered the question of practical tests but I think it really
is just building that resilience, that whatever that means for you, that resilience to be able to
continue, daring to put yourself. That, and just the more you practise and now sometimes we just let
those comments like wash over us, you don’t even listen to it doesn’t affect us so much, you know, to
to just grab on to what Laura said about her I still make mistakes in English, but then so do I in French.
I think you know that’s the beauty about speaking a foreign language. It’s not a scientific equation. 2
+ 2 can be 4, it can be 4.2. Maybe 4.7 providing you put your point across it works, so I don’t think
that anyone can honestly say that they make no grammatical mistakes or structural mistakes in their
own mother tongue so that’s the way I look at it. The way I look at it is I’ve been here for 21 years. I
think my level of English is very good. Could it be better? Probably. Do I still make mistakes? Of
course I do. But then so do I in French, especially when your brains start to think in two languages all
the time. So think about it as a, you know, a mistake when you speak a foreign language a slightly
strong act and all of that to me is a sign of bravery. It’s also really it because at least you’ve tried and
you’ve put yourself out there. That brings me to say that there is an element of being willing to put
yourself out of your comfort zone. I can give you all the best tools in the world. I can, you know, map
out everything that I’ve learned in the last 20 years of running a language training company. I can
chew the amazing results that we’ve had with our students. I know what we do works. You will need
to get a little bit out of your comfort zone at some point. That’s just a huge element of wanting to
learn a foreign language and to the point of Laura, she still makes mistakes when she says, for
example, wants to write a blog in French. I do the same in English, so we send each other’s work and
we spoke about that, didn’t we? I can’t remember what day it was. We spoke about having a
language buddy, someone with whom you can be without being judged. You know I’m Laura’s boss. I
could say, well, I’m not gonna send you a blog, cause surely I should, like, write a blog without
mistakes? Absolutely not. Part of progressing is also being vulnerable. Is also saying when we need
help that works for anything in life. So if I write an article or for our website for the newspaper or you
know this master class that we’ve run this is the first time we’ve run it. We’ve had amazing feedback.
So we’ve spoken about putting it into an entire booklet that we can then give people and that will be
our blueprint of how you should be prepared before starting our language programme from when
we design it. I’m likely to say to Laura, you know, it’s gonna be in English. I’m like, could say to like,
you know, how does that sound? Should I change that prepositions in English? And you know what
makes me feel good is sometimes I can see she needs to think about it. So it tells me that I’ve got, it’s
legitimate when I ask the question, but find a language buddy. Someone you can pair it with
someone you can ask questions to because that will really really help you. I miss being a chatterbox.
Is that you, Lynn? Ohh, yeah. Two people. Ohh, great, right? Ohh that’s really good. So you know,
another thing is well, Lynn is there something or somewhere where you can go? Be it where you live
in France online, where you could have this little safe place? Is there a little group you can find? Is
there, you know? A little club that you can go to. Could you be online? You know, we talked about
Facebook groups the other day. I’ve actually gotten to know people on Facebook groups just because
we had the same interest. And then we ended up chatting. I was chatting to a lady last night and I
mean obviously that was in English, but I’m thinking you know, could they be somewhere you could
go or you know we definitely people would come on our ambition programme. We really tried as
much as we could to match people up. And so try and have even just once a month a little virtual
coffee together. It’s really, really, really helpful having the community around you will definitely help
you progress. So it would be really nice now for us to kind of showcase this new platform called
Hypnoledge. What I’m going to do. So Laura is going to take care of that cause Laura as well as
running the French company is also our language coordinator and she’s we’ve got three different
digital platforms that we add to the blend. I like that word or buy language programmes too, for
adults and one for children. And Laura is the expert she knows them way better than I do. So just a
little bit of background about Hipnoledge and then I will send you, I’ve got a couple of videos
actually, one in French, one in English. I interviewed the founder of Hypnoledge, the psychologist and
hypnotherapist. One of them is three of them who’ve decided to put together a digital platform in
order to help people learn foreign languages. So I will send you both videos, you can watch them in
French and English. One of them, the one in French, is from the founder. The one in English is from
one of their business development manager who speaks in English. The one little thing I want to say
before I hand over to Laura is this is not a sales pitch. We do not make any money out of using
Hypnoledge, we pay the company a fee, which is the exact same fee you would pay if you went and
bought it yourself. So when we promote technology, it’s really because you are constantly
researching new resources out there that could really potentially benefit our past students, you know,
so this is not a sales pitch. We’re not, we’re not financial partners of Hypnolede or anything like that
we do believe in the platform we’ve both used it we enjoyed it. Cards on the table out of about 20 of
our students who tried it out, about half loved it and half were not so keen on it. But so I just wanted
to tell you that however, it is entirely designed to help primarily confidence building that’s why I
thought it would be a really, really good time to present it to you today. So, Laura, over to you.
Thank you. So yeah, we’re gonna take you a little walk through the site, show you exactly what you
can do and how it helps you really build on your confidence as well as just your language skills. And
so to begin with that address the name Hypnoledge, so you might have heard it has the kind of hyp
like hypnosis in it. I’m going to begin by saying this is the medical kind of hypnosis. And not the
kind of show hypnosis where you might see where they stick your fingers and you put like a chicken,
it’s not that. OK. That’s like a whole show. Hypnosis really is founded on medical and psychological
principles of hypnosis in the terms of meditation and things like that, so I don’t know if anyone is
interested in meditation and things like that. If there’s something that you feel works for you or that
you believe in. If you do, then Hypnoledge is probably going to be something that you’ll enjoy.
However, as Natalie said, some people find the concept just frustrating. It’s not necessarily that’s
getting it’s like what we said about blended learning, not everything is gonna be your thing and
that’s right. You know that really works well for people who do very much believe in sort of
meditation and that sort of believing in and finding your conscious brain. That is really what the
whole platform is about. So I’m gonna share my screen and I will show you. So I think. Now you can
see the screen I have. Here, then, so let’s have a look at Hypnoledge. So we have a few different
parts of it that I’m going to talk you through so the first thing you can do is a placement test, so this
is really nice and this relates to the CEPA levels that we spoke about to the A1 all the way up to C2.
So the first thing you can do is the little placement test to help you see where exactly you should
start as I said that this is a placement test that is very much integrated within the platform. So it’s
it’s less precise than maybe the other ones that we offer from external accredited placement tests
as well, this one is just very much to kind of see how you work with the platform and how well you
can do things that are that are there. So let’s have a look, so you have a series of lessons that you
can unlock as you go along. So you see I haven’t spent very much time on French one because I
haven’t big French I’ve been studying Spanish on it lately, so you’ll see that here I have not very
many classes that are unlocked the more you do the more it unlocks, so it’s very much a structured
way. Again as we said; wasn’t going up, so let’s have a look. You can either go by lessons which
revolve around themes, so this one. So this means that they are meeting each other and they’re
gonna speak about meetings. So this I’m on very basic level as you can see you can go up to
beginner, intermediate and expert. So there are a lot of different levels. We’ll start with a very basic
one though, because the videos, so the audio, sorry as we increase and level do get a little bit longer
as well, so I thought we just have a very quick look at one of the beginner videos. So we do is we
click on the video, the audio, sorry. So the first thing that we can do is listen to the lesson. So the
thing and it’s really interesting about Hypnoledge is that it is accessing your subconscious mind and
helping you to feel calm and prepare your brain for learning. That is really what the speciality of this
platform is. So you’ll see that before we listen to the lesson, we undergo a very short session of. If
necessary, call I think when I do this, I think of it more as like a little mini meditation to get you calm
to remove all of those thoughts that are wearing around your brain just to get you very calm and
sort of in the, in the process in the state, ready to learn, ready to remove all of the additional
information, all of the additional things that we’ve all got I think around bring all the time, clear that
away and get your mind really ready and focused on the language. So you choose either a gentle
hypnosis or a deep hypnosis. Yes, you know you can choose the deep hypnosis is a little bit longer.
The gentle hypnosis is a bit shorter and you can choose the accent that you prefer as well, which is
quite nice you really personalise, it’s something that you find very calming and it helps you the best.
So should we have a little listen to the I don’t know if you’re able to hear the sound.
No, no. Is it playing at the moment? Because I can’t, yeah.
No, OK, I didn’t. I wasn’t. Sure. If you would hear the sound so I would have a look at this. The best
thing essentially is a little mini 2 minute session where the voice that we chose is telling us to close
our eyes. We do some deep breathing and then it’s very much about relaxing the mind, relaxing the
body and getting you fully ready to learn so it really is about preparing your your mind and body for
that state of learning. The next thing is a little very authentic audio that you will listen to. They
suggest you do it while your eyes closed and you will really concentrate on the language. I admit that
sometimes I do these as they go for a little walk as well, so they suggest that you stay sort of away
from your computer and you close your eyes and really focus on it. Sometimes I do them while I’m
walking to kind of get that into my daily routine. Again so it’s up to you what you prefer. To listen to
the little audio, it will be conversations, very functional language. So we’re around themes of
meeting people, making guitar reservations, talking about school, talking about work, things like
that. So you listen through to the audio and then afterwards we can look at the vocabulary that we
will have heard. So we can see we have some little flash cards. We can also click on them to hear
how it is said as well, so we can listen to the words. The thing that’s interesting here and the thing.
That is very. Revolved around science on how we learn language is that you see we
Have, yeah, the word in French or short it, we have the words in English nice to meet you. We have
a sound that you can listen to and you have a picture. So this is what we were speaking about
earlier in the week where the IT means that you associate the word with the concept and not just
with the translation in English, this is literally making a little too much of the science. It’s very
much making neurological pathways in your brain from the concept to the word or the sounds as
well, so it’s combining the orthographics with a written form of the word the oral what we hear
sound of the word and the concept combining these three things together and not necessarily
passing through English to translation for it. So This is why the the whole platform of English is very
much based around how you how the brain works as well. It’s a very, very very cyclical, you know,
it’s been created by psychologists. It’s really something that is revolved around the brain. And so
you go through the vocabulary, you’ll have a look, you go through all. Then as we come back and
after we’ll have a look at the grammar congregation. So the reason we do grammar afterwards is
because you would have already heard the discourse. You would have heard the dialogue. Then we
point out some of the rules that you would have heard within the audio. So this is very, very much
working on helping you to immersing the language first and then helping you to recognise the
graphical rules and what you have heard. So this is really great if we have a look at this we can go
to the exercises so the first kind of exercise is we have grammar and congregation ones, so working
on the rules that you have just looked at. So does anyone wanna help with this one? So something
is kind of young so don’t have an idea what we will put in here. I’ll give you a clue. We would have
heard it in the audio quite often, if we had listened to it. Does anyone have a guess how we could
say you are Canadian, you are a girl. Great, excellent, perfect everybody won in the chat. Let’s
make sure we’re right. Exactly. So we would go through and we would choose the right answer. For
example, L with an S into Leon, E with an S edition with C and Italian. Then I’ll have an idea which
one would be the correct answer here, I’ll give you a clue that one of them is grammatically
correct. The other two are erratically incorrect. I want to see excellent. Great. So as you see, we go
through and these are different kind of art. So some of them we have to physically produce the
language, breaking it in and some of them we just have to receive the language finding the correct
answers. So this is balancing the production and the comprehension side. Again we won’t go
through all of these as you can have a good look at them all in your own time. So we could
continue later so we can come back to it afterwards as well, which is Nice. And then finally, we also
have some different vocabulary exercises. So this is again finding the expressions that are related
to what we have heard in the text. So it’s just exercises really to continue practising on language.
Afterwards, we also have the thing that is very interesting about English as I said, it is all about the
science behind the brain. So I would just like to take you to through the inner keys. Let’s have a
look. So look the more you work, the more hypno keys you you gain, so it’s kind of like if anyone
who’s Duolingo, you get the lingos that you couldn’t, you could buy special outfits for your owl or
stuff like that which I love is very fun in Hypnoledge however, the hypno keys that you can get, you
can buy, you can unlock different courses. Notice when I say buy, I mean with the currency of the
platform, meaning you’re not spending extra money on it, it’s the more keys that you earn while
you work you can buy different skills. So these boosts are, as they’ve said, unique hypnosis
sessions to improve your abilities and well-being. So this is really where it is helping you unlock
that confidence within yourself. There are many meditation sessions that you can do again and
again, that focus on improving specific skills that are related to language learning but that are not
learning the language itself. For example helping you understand how you can improve your
memory, you can go and to be able to remember new vocabulary, new sentence, structures to be
able to use them increasing your ability to concentrate again very is very essential as well if we are
learning a language, so there are just a series of different skills that you can learn increasing your
well-being, feeling confident. So there really are sort of soft skills around
language learning that are all to do with increasing your confidence and being able to, you know feel
better within yourself and be able to feel more confident when you are speaking and when you are
taking those risks to come and speak with people. So as I said, it is very, very much the soft scales
that are around language learning alongside the actual learning of the language itself. So we’ll have
a little scroll through maybe if you find any that you think you’d be really interested in doing, we can
write them in the chat quickly if you find one that you think, oh, it actually really love to do that.
I think that confidence in all situations and developing self esteem can be really good. These are the
ones that I recommend to learners who come to us with a really strong willingness to learn the
language. But I can tell that a lot of things are holding them back. I often tell them to start with the.
With with this programme.
Yeah, definitely. And we have about public speaking as well, which is, you know, a skill that we have
to develop in our first language as well as our second language and speaking in front of an audience
so you can see these are very, very much kind of helping on your personal development as well and
the last other thing I wanted to show is we have a psycho emotional question. Yeah. So I have
already done the questionnaire and it is all about evaluating your own psychoemotional strengths
and weaknesses. So it’s a series of questions that you can look at to decide whether you are quite
sort of strong in certain areas such as if you feel confident to go speak if you don’t know or not, and
where your weaknesses are in other areas. So to really help you understand what you need to target
to improve your own confidence. So I personally I really enjoy Hypnoledge. I use it quite a lot every
week. Actually I have my little Monday evening scheduled session every Monday. I I really enjoy it. I
think it’s very interesting. I enjoy kind of the relaxation side of it because I can be someone who is
maybe a little bit more like a bit. And with the high strung, but someone who is maybe a little bit
less calm in certain situations, so for me I find it’s very good to kind of help me relax, remove the
stress of the day and really get into the process of being ready to learn. I think Natalie you quite
enjoyed it as well.
Yeah. So for me, I enjoyed it because I tried it with Spanish. So within the team, we all tried it with a
language that we aspired to learn. I tried it with Spanish and if you watch the video when I talk to
one of their team member, it it really is quite incredible because I could feel after the little bit of
relaxation that when I was doing the exercises at my basic level it was coming out much quicker. I
wasn’t thinking too much about the answer I was giving it a go and you know, remember that despite
the fact that I do the work that I do I learned English in a very traditional way. Today, when I learned
English, there was no digital platforms. There was no blended learning. It was very much school, very
structured learning, which actually for my personality was not very fitted. So for me to go on this
platform and have a look at how my brain could change the way that I was learning I have found it
really really good, but for me it was just really that I literally I would listen to the little exercises and I
felt that it was flowing. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t always getting the answers right but I was just
going for it. So for me, I felt that the confidence in giving it a go the app was really giving me that.
I found as well. I think it’s really helped my oral comprehension as well so I can see it when I’m doing
other activities in Spanish. If I’m trying to watch TV in Spanish or something like that. Listen to
YouTube videos, I feel that my oral comprehension has really boosted in the last couple of months as
well, which I think is hugely down to that as well.
Lynn is asking a very pertinent question. I know the answer to the first one. I’m not entirely sure
about the the second one. Are the keys in the language you’re learning on in English? No. So if it’s in
English or for me it would be in French. OK, so for me, the platform is in French and the target
language is in Spanish. Can you change between both? I don’t believe you can. Laura, can you?
I I don’t think so. I’m not a professional so that is a really interesting question that I will research. I’ll
look into it and I’ll let you know, but I don’t think that you can. Although actually I can change my
native language to English, so I suppose in theory yes, you could just go and change your native
language and then do it in the language I think actually in theory you probably could do.
It, But I’m not a 100% sure. I would have to look into it for you.
And for me, the reason why I really, really like this platform and again we’re not here to promote it
for any financial gain. The reason why I really like it is because for us it takes a couple of boxes for us.
It adds the variety to the blended learning approach that we keep talking about. And secondly, it is
really helping our learners with confidence building. So that’s why I really, really like it. And I and I
agree with you, Lynn, just reading your comment in the early stages, do it in your language, you
know 100%. It is also why when people join our programme, we give them unlimited access for the
first two weeks of the programme. Because we really want, we really asked them to get into a little
routine of using it. It’s proven to be really effective when people use it every day or every other day.
We did. Laura picked a lot of students and she did loads of trials to see what was working best and as
a result, OK, some of our students love it. So they just use it, they have a membership every month,
some students had tried it and weren’t so keen but what we have found is just to use it in this short
compact time of two weeks before this cyber language programmes was working wonders. That’s
what we’ve now incorporated it into the Ambition Programme and again for some students they
carry on using it after because it’s really their thing. But all of them start with this. It’s really, really
good. Do you have any questions for Laura around the platform? No. So if I can just briefly
summarise all we’ve spoken about today, we really spoke about all the tools that we looked at on
day one, two, three, and four and the planning to help you to be confident learners confidence
definitely be the keyword. And obviously in this session we looked at various ways of getting you to
be confident in that language. I think we’ve agreed that this is a very inner, deeper personal feeling
and we’re not all going to find the answers in the right thing, but we talked about a safe and
comfortable environment. We talked about structure, we talked about getting out of our comfort
zone. We talked about having the right environment. We talked about daring. We talked about
finding a community connections with people and finding a language buddy. OK. And we could take a
few minutes if Gina wanted to answer Lynn’s question. So Lynn says it’s not about the platform, but
I’d love to know how Gina stays motivated with all the languages that she is learning. Gina, would
you like to answer that?
Well, most of my languages, and translator I added French because it was either French or Latin or
Greek, which Latin didn’t appeal to me or Greek either. So I was like French, OK. And Italian came
after my school. I learned that by myself. Because I was in love with an Italian guy and so you learn
language, right? And I travelled to Turkey. I liked the language and I liked the people so I just learned
that by myself. Again the same with Greek and it’s not that I don’t keep up with all of them now, but
I still can speak Italian pretty decent. My French is really rusty and basic Even thouh, it was it was
one of my favourite language. And but I’ve always also been forced I was the first one in the family to
to speak a different language. So it it always will move in somewhere. My parents they got it, took
me and shoved me there you go translate and I’m like and then we’re going to Spain and my parents
go shopping and my father just pushes me to the counter and tell them I want this cheese and I want
that cheese, I said dad, I don’t speak Spanish. I speak French.
What was your by getting out of your? Comfort zone, you know.
And I was like, so I, but I made it work between French and Italian. I made it work and the guy,
actually and I, I actually found I’m a naturally shy person until I get to know somebody. But when it’s
language, when I hear you have an accent and I’m like hello. How are you? Where you from? Ohh
that’s. It’s got such a cute accent and then I’m I get interested or I love to cook. I cook anything from
Turkish cuisine to Philippine to Japanese to Chinese to Indian and so naturally I’m curious about the
language as well. So and and that’s what motivates me is just. I’m a German, what can I say? I have
1000 projects on my plate.
And do you know Gina something which made me realise that we all have different goals when it
comes to language learning? We all have an ideal kind of level that we’d like to reach. But please do
not compare yourself to other learners, some students would rather know a little bit of a lot of
languages other people would rather just focus on one. It’s really not about comparing yourself, but
asking as you did. Lynn, you know, how do you stay motivated? I think you’ve you know, you’ve
illustrated a lot of things. We’ve spoken about dining you because, well, your dad did seem a bit cruel
to some you didn’t get you out of your comfort zone. You probably got, you know, a lot of confidence
out of that. You love to go to other people. I love the fact that you talked about. Ohh, I love cooking.
I love this. I like that brings a conversation together, Laura is right, she said accent is a point of
conversation. You know 100%, but also was quite remarkable, as you said, I am a shy person. Please
don’t ever assume that the best people in language learning are extroverts, because this is
completely different, yes. And the things though as soon as I’m talking to somebody in another
language, my shyness goes away and I have found while I can really, truly emphasise with Lynn, she
was made fun of I have only had the warmest embraces from everybody when I’m in Turkey and I
just ask for some Chai litvin and they go, Oh my God. She speaks Turkish. Blonde lady speaking
Turkish and it’s like, and they bring me gifts and and praises and food. And it’s like I can’t eat
anymore food or every house you go to, you need to eat the 10 course meal. And it’s like Oh my God.
And it’s like you just say 2 words. And they’re like, wow. And that has happened pretty much
everywhere.
A little language goes a very long way, you know when Sasha spoke about his childhood. I remember
when we used to go to France and he was younger and he would speak French to anyone around
him and quite a few times and he started to make friends and and in my parents village and and
they’ve gone round the swimming pool and all played together. And I remember a few times when a
few children went he just said that like he just said that cause he may get, he may have got the
masculine and the feminine wrong, the pronoun wrong, and the order of the pronouns in French are
hardly a walk in the park. Everyone clearly understood what he had said. He was speaking in a
perfect French accent. You could there was no hint of English too but in the way sometimes he
structured his sentences or or did a bit of english grammar with French words. You know it, it was a
little bit wobbly. And I remember children going. Hi. He just said that he just said that and I always
stood back and and observed him to see if his confidence got kind of knocked out out of that really
quite a strong willed child, which could have helped, however all he then needed to do was turn
round and speak to his brother in English, and the minute the children could see that he could look
right and speak to them in French and look left and speak to his little brother in English. That shut
them off instantly. It’s like ohh, but he can do that and we can’t so in any sometimes uncomfortable
situation. There’s always a but I can do this, but I can also do that. And you know, if you get free
food, I think it’s definitely worth getting out of your comfort zone, right? That made me wanna try
Turkishfood.
Thank you very much and I I we’re gonna finish on that. So I mean it’s wonderful, Lynn said. Gina,
you’re my inner chatterbox. See, I think you two could definitely power up and be language buddies. I
think that would work very well. So ladies, thank you very much for for having been here today. It
was a real pleasure. We’ll be here again tomorrow. And again I will reiterate what I said yesterday.
This is a nine day French master class. The first few days were, you know, a great deal of content into
learning strategies and planning. From today until the end, it’s a lot more of open discussion of
sharing stories, and if you feel that now you’ve got the right tools to go away and learn French on
your own or whatever you are already currently doing, then that’s absolutely great. I appreciate your
time. You do not have to come back. We will start to talk to you in a little bit more details about our
French ambition programme very briefly. The French ambition programme is a 12 month programme
to learn French on your way to French bilingualism whatever that term means to you, it’s very much
bridging the gap between app and self study and casual learning and part time or full time language
courses. OK, it’s very much in the middle it’s a lifestyle programme it’s a serious hobby but it isn’t self
study and just looking at something a few hours a week and it suddenly isn’t part time or full time.
OK, we expect you to have a life outside of that programme, but it does give you a lot of resources
and a lot of support and it completely plays on the strength of blended learning which we have
spoken about so many times over the course of a year, you will have 150 hours of learning. That’s our
aim for you that those hours will be divided between small group classes one-on-one and self study
material. So you’re gonna have an awful lot of resources and people that you can tap into. OK, but
we’ll talk a little a bit more about it tomorrow. We can send you information if you like. Tomorrow is
all about interacting with students, so we’ve invited Matt. Matt is a great French student who’s been
in the Academy for, I think about six months and we love the story that he has, we love the story that
he shares because he has told us many times that he thought at school that he could never learn
French, that it wasn’t for him until at an adult age. I think he’s 40 years young. He decided that he
absolutely loved France and he made a real commitment to learn the language and potentially
buying the property out there. But he’s got a really great story to tell, so we’ve invited him. I invited
other students as well, so they can all share their stories with you and you will be very welcome to
ask them questions as well. So we went a little bit over today by 10-15 minutes, but I think it was
very, very worth it. It was lovely to hear all your, all your wonderful stories. And as always, if you have
any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out personally. So thank you very much. Have a
wonderful end of the week and I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care. See you.