50 Is ARCA the Right School for You?
Before you decide on a school you need to ask yourself what kind of school do you want. Do you want a school where you sit more or less passively and receive instruction for most of the lesson? Call this approach the traditional approach: highly structured, and intent on teaching you grammar. This approach you can find at most Italian language schools. You can also find the same back in your hometown.
Italian-owned language schools from my experience, and from what I learnt from others, focus on grammar. For example, when I tried to explain to Robert Tartaglione, the Director of Scudit, that grammar should not be the major emphasis, he launched into a tirade about the importance of grammar, and that one could not speak without knowing it. If you attend this type of school, and are lucky, your mornings will be broken into two hours of grammar and an hour of oral work. At Scudit we didn’t even have this hour of oral work. If this is the approach you want, then I recommend Leonardo Da Vinci [Siena] or Linguait [Verona].
If you judge your “money’s worth” by the quantity of information received as manifested by the notes given and taken, you will certainly come out from a four-week course at one of these schools with a substantial amount. But I doubt if you will be able to speak nor will you remember much of what you were fed. And being “fed” is an apt description. At all three of the schools mentioned above, the instructor spent the last days giving a list of words that we might find “useful”. If they had been given at the beginning of the course and we were then led to use them they might have proven useful. But as such, they were indigestible, and soon forgotten.
On the other hand, if you want to speak the language, then I recommend ARCA’s communicative approach. If you are used to the traditional method you may feel uneasy that there appears to be little structure and minimal content. Don’t fret that things seem so slack. As Polonius might say, there is method to their madness. You are receiving what you need in order to communicate, which should be your goal. Relax. Learn what grammar they give you in class, and embrace the many opportunities to speak. Don’t be afraid to try out what you have learnt in the school’s relaxed atmosphere. You will improve, which is all you can expect in four weeks.
In my next blog I will start my discussion on features, or the lack of, beyond the classroom.
Italian-owned language schools from my experience, and from what I learnt from others, focus on grammar. For example, when I tried to explain to Robert Tartaglione, the Director of Scudit, that grammar should not be the major emphasis, he launched into a tirade about the importance of grammar, and that one could not speak without knowing it. If you attend this type of school, and are lucky, your mornings will be broken into two hours of grammar and an hour of oral work. At Scudit we didn’t even have this hour of oral work. If this is the approach you want, then I recommend Leonardo Da Vinci [Siena] or Linguait [Verona].
If you judge your “money’s worth” by the quantity of information received as manifested by the notes given and taken, you will certainly come out from a four-week course at one of these schools with a substantial amount. But I doubt if you will be able to speak nor will you remember much of what you were fed. And being “fed” is an apt description. At all three of the schools mentioned above, the instructor spent the last days giving a list of words that we might find “useful”. If they had been given at the beginning of the course and we were then led to use them they might have proven useful. But as such, they were indigestible, and soon forgotten.
On the other hand, if you want to speak the language, then I recommend ARCA’s communicative approach. If you are used to the traditional method you may feel uneasy that there appears to be little structure and minimal content. Don’t fret that things seem so slack. As Polonius might say, there is method to their madness. You are receiving what you need in order to communicate, which should be your goal. Relax. Learn what grammar they give you in class, and embrace the many opportunities to speak. Don’t be afraid to try out what you have learnt in the school’s relaxed atmosphere. You will improve, which is all you can expect in four weeks.
In my next blog I will start my discussion on features, or the lack of, beyond the classroom.
posted by Toby1939 at 11:57 AM
<< Home