| Welcome to The We are a women-owned small | | | | any language, including their native one. The same |
| business, allowing us to be flexible and to provide | | | | way in which you, the parent, coached your child |
| you with customized, top-quality service. For this | | | | to say words, phrases, and sentences, is the way |
| reason most of our business comes from | | | | in which a second language is learned. The |
| satisfied longtime customers and referrals, and | | | | mechanisms your child used to learn his native |
| our company has been in business successfully for | | | | tongue are the same ones you need to acquire a |
| over three decades. The language laboratory is an | | | | second language. |
| audio or audio-visual installation used as an aid in | | | | Does this mean someone who wants to become |
| modern language teaching. They can be found, | | | | bilingual should ignore grammar? Absolutely not! |
| amongst other places, in schools, universities and | | | | What this does mean is that one comes before |
| academies. Perhaps the first lab was at the | | | | the other. The horse pulls the cart. It is not the |
| University of Grenoble[1][2]. In the 1950s up until | | | | other way around. The horse is spoken fluency |
| the 1990s, they were tape based systems using | | | | and the cart is the study of formal grammar. The |
| reel to reel or (latterly) cassette. Current | | | | logic of what I am saying should not escape |
| installations are generally multimedia PCs. | | | | anyone. I reviewed and suggested two |
| Our mission is to facilitate communication in any | | | | commercially available products that closely |
| language, any subject in any part of the world. | | | | simulate the process in which you learned your |
| YOU CAN LEARN SPANISH or Any Language No | | | | native language. In the book, I explain the science |
| Matter Your Age or Disposition, I discuss how | | | | behind second-language acquisition. Without |
| most, if not all, second language courses in the | | | | rewriting the book in this article, let me mention |
| Free World are taught: Grammar First. Not only is | | | | the natural process of acquiring language is to |
| this method frighteningly boring, but I also explain | | | | engage in intensive input first. This is what children |
| why it will not-indeed cannot-give you what you | | | | do. It is called, "the period of silence." Before |
| want: A high degree of spoken fluency. I recall all | | | | children begin to speak, they listen intensely to |
| too well walking into my first Spanish course at | | | | what is being said to them and especially to things |
| the University of Kansas. I was handed a huge | | | | that interest them. For the first time, he thrusts |
| textbook, a workbook, and was told I had to login | | | | out his hands at what he sees and makes all |
| so many hours each week in the language lab. | | | | manner of grunts, groans, screeches, and spewing |
| Now, instead of a language lab, you just get | | | | saliva. The caregiver instinctively says something |
| some CD's or tapes. It is so simple that all of you | | | | like, "That's a doggie. Do you see the doggie? Can |
| who raised children already know it. This approach | | | | you say doggie? |
| is not the way humans acquire spoken fluency in | | | | |