LLAS News Blog

News articles of interest to higher education LLAS subject fields.

Thursday, 19 May 2011

Can you learn a language in just two days?

'In theory," says language teacher Paul Noble, forming a steeple with his fingers in true professorial style, "you should learn Chinese today and tomorrow quicker than anyone has ever learned it on the planet." In theory, because I'm the very first student to take his intensive two-day course in Mandarin, which he is teaching me with his wife, native speaker Kai-Ti Chou, in the basement of a north London art gallery. If their prototype course works as well as they are hoping, then two days from now I will, as the spiel on Noble's website boasts, "have learned to speak Chinese the way it is really spoken".

The Guardian
Posted by John Canning at 09:33
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do not know if you have listened to the sample from the Collins Paul Noble courses. It seems amazing that a reputable publisher will publish something that is actually incorrect. The French one for example gives 'you have' as 'vous/avez' - no liaison ie. simply incorrect. But this may not be surprising, given that the author's English is bizarre: 'you haven't forgot it', he says on the tape. Of course, it is good to see something simple that will bring learners to a taster of a language - but did it really have to be inaccurate?

June 02, 2011

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