Speaking takes more than understanding

A person preparing to study a foreign language has a definite goal in mind. One might need only a basic knowledge, in order to read business briefs at the office and translate them with the help of a dictionary. Another intends to defend a dissertation at a prestigious foreign university.

Different means must be employed to achieve different ends. As a rule, extended study is suited to someone who seriously intends to perfectly master a foreign language, and who knows that good results can only be obtained by patient labor. That's precisely the kind of person one finds at the Socrates Center: one who strives for perfection in everything, who wants to learn to communicate fluently in his chosen foreign language.

The leading specialists in the field of linguistics consider the Communicative Approach to be by far the most effective method of learning a foreign language. This method was first applied over fifty years ago. The effectiveness of this method has been proven by its excellent results, so that today it is used in a majority of leading language schools around the world, including the Socrates Foreign Language Center.

According to this method, studies of the English language are undertaken in groups of six to eight students. This number of participants is consider optimal for the acheivement of the main goal, i.e. the acquisition of the ability to freely express one's thoughts in the foreign language. A teacher can easily divide such a number od students into small sub-groups and pairs, giving these groups collective assignments. In addition, cooperative study between the students increases their vocabulary through the constant exchange of words and encounters with new idioms, not only from the mouth of their teacher, but also from their classmates.

There is yet one more advantage of the Communicative Approach: from the very first lesson, all classroom communication is conducted exclusively in the target language. Thus the combination of these two factors helps the student to overcome the "language barrier" -- the greatest difficulty in studying a foreign language -- within a very brief time.

In order to increase the effectiveness of a lesson, particularly in regard to conversational practice, the teacher will divide the class into pairs or small groups and ask each group to complete some sort of oral assignment. In the course of these group assignments, the students are freed from their own initial hesitance. They obtain independence in speech as they try to correct one another, increasing their ability to express themselves. As they complete the concrete assignments given them by the teacher, the students focus their attention on a specific theme, learning to employ new and familiar words and grammatical structures in situations that are made to mimic real life as closely as possible.

In addition to the work in pairs, the teacher organizes collective discussions and conducts role-playing games, acting as the leader. He sets the theme of discussion and makes sure to ask suggestive questions, so that each student gets the opportunity to express his point of view.

Theory + Practice = Perfection

A teacher's proffesionalism doesn't consist solely in his ability to rightly divide the time and assignments for the students. His most important task is to teach the students to correctly employ the grammatical structures they have learned. Therefore, in addition to oral communication, the lessons also include written exercises, quizzes, assignments from the textbook, and other materials prepared by the teacher.

In order to vary the lessons and make the process of memorizing new linguistic structures more effective, the teacher makes use of video and audio material in addition to the oral and written exercises. Forfaster immersion into the environment of their new language, the students watch contemporary films, read newspapers, and listen to news and songs on the radio. The students are also given the opportunity to employ all additional resources, including various literature in the target language, for independent study at home.

The multifacted method used by the teachers at Socrates for teaching English and other foreign languages combines all that is necessary for succesful study: development of conversational skills, study of the theoretical aspect and written practice, acquaintance with contemporary linguistic culture and basic geography, and the use of the material they have learned in real-life situations. Because of this, the results of studying at the Socrates Foreign Language Center are noticeable even after the first few lessons.