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I have been in the English teaching industry now for nearly 20 years, we started in the early nineties in a one room classroom in Wardour St in China town London. I have seen many trends come and go and recessions also. In fact I remember our school being closed on so many occasions because the IRA (Irish Republican Army) if you don't remember, were threatening to blow the street up!!
London has a certain attraction not only is it famous for all the things it is famous for it is lucky in the fact that it is famous for being famous. This leads me on to my point, the main reason I believe that students come to London to learn English is initially to see the most famous city in the world. However, it is a fast vibrant place that generally speaks English. So the student on arrival is thrown into a world of the English language, it is a fight or flight situation where you must learn to get on.
This total immersion style of learning is well know and I can tell you works. We as a species are generally lazy, especially our brains. Once we leave school or University we think that is it and what we have in our heads is it. The brain slows down and gets lazy it relies on the normal routine and will fight you to keep that routine in place, the nerves before leaving, the what if it all goes wrong, is just your brain trying to stop you from going out of its comfort zone. To get it going again it needs a frightening situation and total immersion is this. The brain is a wonderful too, but lazy so it will only show its true potential if it is in a position of fear where is has to work to survive, it is strange but the brain must keep you functioning however if you sit and think about what it does for you sometimes it actually works against you!!
When we see students that have little or no English on their first day with us, it used to be a worry but now we know that within a week to ten days their brain will have sorted out the basic survival skills to operate in London. Grammar will not be perfect nor pronunciation but getting the meaning across will be perfect. This we believe is the core of language today the meaning, we then come in and do the polishing up process, and by now the brain is on our side and can see we are there to help so accepts us as something that is helping it to survive in the new culture, language and surroundings.
Language especially the English language is of vital importance in the modern world today. The place is so small and it seems with twitter, facebook, emails, text etc we are writing more than we ever did before. The English Language changes before our eyes with new isms etc being introduced every day, who heard of twitter being small segments of information, before a year ago. When I was a kid it meant two birds jabbering to each other in a tree!!
Author: Steve Blanchet, LSSE (UK) Ltd contact steve@lsse.ac.uk/www.lsse.ac.uk
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