Learning a language is no doubt a daunting task. One would ideally learn a language (or more) naturally, growing up in a specific linguistic environment, like you learned your first language(s).

For adults, however, very often and for a lot of reasons, it doesn’t happen naturally. It needs grafting, this horticultural technique whereby two plants are joined so as to continue their growth together. This is how you can have a tree bearing different kinds of fruits (usually of the same genus), and it is very similar to learning a new language as an adult.

To be able to help you learn a language, teachers need to understand how languages are learned instead of teaching them like we have been taught, usually at school, repeating the same mistake generation after generation. Indeed, if languages can be learned by pretty much anyone at any age, one of the most common misconceptions is that it is teachable; at least like history or science are.

Indeed, learning a language is developing a new set of cognitive skills and if knowledge might help, it is far from being enough: it requires a lot more effort than absorbing information. It means a language teacher craft requires more than just passing knowledge on grammar or vocabulary, which is very similar to teaching how to read music sheets, but not playing an instrument. In that regard, teaching languages is more related to coaching, being a mountain guide or gardening.

Gardening means choosing seeds according to the environment, the expected outcome, the season… it also means monitoring, observing, letting it happen by carefully choosing when to intervene or not. It is constant attention to details, pruning what needs to be done, but never too much or not enough and, more importantly, at the right moment. It requires knowledge, experience, patience, observation and thoughtfulness.

This sums up our “teaching” philosophy and gives you an idea of the care we give to our learners’ growth and development so that they can learn French, from seed to tree.