Teaching Methods
The teaching of real language for real purposes in an action-oriented approach is at the heart of Eurocentres methodology.
We teach the language you need to communicate in real life. You do exercises to improve your fluency and your accuracy. Then we provide activities which require real communication. We pay very careful attention to the degrees of control in the practice leading from initial presentation of new language towards realistic communicative use of that language. Working in the other direction, we use communicative activities to identify your need for practice in accuracy or in fluency. This language learning cycle appears as follows:
The coherence of the links between the presentation of new language and free practice in the realistic use of that language is one of the most significant signs of quality in a language course. It is the basis of the communicative approach.
This is why, in a Eurocentres course, we place such an emphasis on:
| consultation and planning | Framework |
| activity | Experiential Learning |
| assessment | Monitoring Your success |
Your class teacher identifies your needs with you. The team of 2-3 teachers plans a program integrating the language you are learning with the skills practice and activities you experience. They discuss these with you every week. They tell you the plan for every day. On a Eurocentres course we treat you as a partner. We make you feel at home. We help you concentrate - and learn.
Eurocentres Framework
The Framework for our approach is provided by the Eurocentres Scale of Levels, which is based on over 15 years' research and development. They were further developed to produce the Common European Framework, and the related official European Language Passport.
You can use the Eurocentres Scale of Levels to set yourself an aim, and to see where you are now. You can use the Progress Calculator to see how much language practice you might need to reach your aim.
When you take a Eurocentres course, we use a placement test to put you in a class at the best level for you. A summary of the level entitled Our Aims tells you the key things you will be able to do when you achieve the level. The Examination Chart shows you which exams are available. The Weekly Plan shows you the Topics, the Tasks and Skills, the Grammar and the Vocabulary which are the focus for the week. Your class teacher explains how this week's work relates to the overall aims. The Our Aims and Weekly Plan help students focus on what they need to learn to achieve their language goals in various levels throughout their stay.
Our teachers use an analysis of the Language Resources necessary to use the language successfully in Communicative activities at each level. This helps them to plan your course with you. Many writers have highlighted that competence in a language has these two sides:
| Language Resources | Communication |
| Knowing a language= | Knowing how to use a language+ |
| Accuracy | Fluency |
On the one hand you need language resources: knowledge of the grammatical structures, the vocabulary, the turns of phrase and pronunciation necessary in order to be able to communicate. On the other hand you need communicative interaction: Experiential Learning in which you get used to formulating what you want to say, reacting spontaneously, finding ways around difficulties of expression. A balanced competence in both aspects is necessary to ensure continuing success. That's why we make sure that you make progress in both aspects of language learning when we Monitor Your Success.
Experiential Learning
Learning a language is like learning swimming. You can only learn to swim by swimming. A certain amount of information about swimming is useful and practice in isolated strokes is vital. But you have to have lots of experience actually swimming. You'll find that with enough experience things naturally start to take care of themselves. Then you can just polish your technique.
This is why the best place to learn a language is in a region where it is spoken - where you can live the language. This is why it is vital to acquire confidence, to get into the habit of relaxing and letting your language just come. That means lots of experience of using all your language resources to express what you really mean to say fluently. That is why our Framework is based on activity.
To make sure you achieve your potential, everybody takes great care to see that you feel comfortable. We check that the activities you experience are exciting, pleasant, challenging - and varied.
Successful learning involves a mixture of work and fun. Learning involves concentration - but you concentrate best when you are also having fun. Good teaching stimulates hard work by engaging curiosity and creativity. Fluency is developed in grammar games, quizzes, role-plays, and simulations, in which motivation and attention are harnessed by play instincts. Every week there is a longer fluency activity taking at least one lesson. These longer activities are used for Monitoring Your Success.
In addition to this, each Eurocentres school develops an experiential syllabus. We take care to ensure that you have all kinds of different pedagogical, cultural, social and personal experiences during your stay. This makes your stay unforgettable. It makes the language you learn significantly more memorable too!
Monitoring Your Success
In Eurocentres we pay great attention to evaluating the course and to checking that your language is developing successfully. There is regular homework to reinforce what you learn in class. There is a feedback session every Friday, which is used to discuss the previous week and the plans for the following week. Often there will then also be a quiz on the language learned that week. At regular intervals, school management talk to groups of students about the programs and their experience of progress.
We have also developed our own progress assessment approach, which reflects our concern with the development of both your accuracy and your fluency. At regular intervals and at the end of your stay the level your language has reached will be assessed. There are two tests reflecting the philosophy behind our Methodology and the basis of our Framework of levels:
The test of your language resources is taken from a bank of questions testing your knowledge of the grammatical structures, the vocabulary, the turns of phrase necessary in order to be able to communicate at your level. This test may be taken on paper, or on computer in the Learning Centre.
The test of your communicative ability may not appear to be a test. Every week, you have a longer communicative activity, which the teacher uses to spot your strengths and weaknesses. This is part of our approach to Experiential Learning. In addition, the teacher uses a detailed set of criteria to evaluate the language level demonstrated by those students who are leaving that week. Of course, your teachers already have a good impression of what you can do, but they follow a standardized assessment procedure, in order to ensure that their impression is fair. It is all part of the Eurocentres guarantee of quality teaching, based on proven methods and objective evaluation standards.
