Our Teaching Method

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What you teach is just as important as how you teach it. Here at 3ALI we believe that the student should achieve a level of speaking fluency quickly. At the same time, the student should also have an excellent command of grammar and idiomatic expressions. These two goals of learning a new language are often said to be at odds with each other. To learn how to effectively communicate with expressions and idioms requires time. And to learn quickly, students often sacrifice real meaningful useage of the target language. Now the student has a choice to make- learn quickly or learn correctly.

But 3ALI believes that it doesn’t have to be a choice.

Our teaching methodology gets fast results and quick learning through the Audio Lingual method of teaching a foreign language. The Audio Lingual method achieves fast results by the student hearing the correct sentence, and then repeating it back to the instructor. By listening and repeating grammar or sentence structure-based drills, given by an American instructor, the student will learn the language and correct pronunciation quickly. However, critics say that listening and repeating does not give the student real experince with the target language and could be simple memorization.

This is why 3ALI believes in coupling Audio Lingual drills with the Communicative Language method. This method allows students to practice the target language in a meaningful way and learn to use expressions and idioms to communicate everyday topics with ease. At least half of class time is devoted to practicing conversation from topical questions. This conversation time allows the student to use the language they just learned to express themselves, reinforcing grammar and sentence structure. During this time, the instructor can observe a pair of students practicing a conversation and use our rubric to give them feedback on grammar, prounciation, and fluency.

Finally, by combing these two seemingly opposite methods, we can create a learning environment that emphasizes both quick results, and real, meaningful communication of the target language.