Apart from Dentisty ESL and Medical ESL, The Language Island offers foreign language courses for: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, and many more languages from across the globe. These courses are geared towards, but not limited to, communication competence in a fun and safe learning environment.
Applying the same up-to-date approach and techniques as our English language acquisition (ESL) courses, teachers initially use a natural, communicative approach emphasizing listening and communication.
The Language Island offers total immersion courses in the target language which:
-
- Stimulate learning
- Provide faster results since the student is engaged in active learning
- Stress the most essential language acquisition skills
- Expose the learner to everyday, situational language use in a relaxed atmosphere
- Produce more language use
- Build confidence
We present a progressive approach to increasing vocabularies based on real-life situations by having our students listen and speak in “language chunks”. Repetition, memorization and drills are important and are essential learning activities when studying a foreign language. We use a core curriculum developed specifically for a natural progression in vocabularies, grammar study and communication skills
We emphasize rules of conversation early in study, both formally in small group classes and informally during breaks and social events. Conversation is a learned skill and while it may be easy for a student to answer the teacher’s questions, it is more difficult to engage in a conversation with classmates when opinions, thoughts, comments and questions are exchanged. Therefore, a variety of games, songs, drama, debates, art and other activities are used to encourage conversation.
We emphasize grammar when students reach a certain language competency. While a natural, communicative approach to acquiring a language stresses listening and speaking correctly in context (syntax, grammar, tenses, person), we feel that is not enough. The study of grammar makes it easier for the student to construct sentences correctly, communicate better and not be misunderstood. Learning grammar provides the building blocks for the structure of the language, decreasing the students’ need to translate word-for-word.
We teach to all learning styles whether it be musical/rhythmic, visual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, or body/kinesthetic. At The Language Island, we realize that students come to our school not only with different cultural and language learning backgrounds but also with a variety of learning styles. We teach to the eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet and heart of each student finding the correct combination of learning style that works best with each student.