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Berlitz Corporate Information Berlitz has been providing language services for more than 120 years, with millions of alumni. The time-proven principles of the Berlitz Method are supplemented by a constant flow of new and updated information and the latest multi-media lesson materials. Translation and publishing services throughout the world complete our full-service portrait. The Berlitz StoryThe
organization now known as Berlitz International, Inc. was founded in
1878 by Maximilian D. Berlitz in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
Descended from a long line of teachers and mathematicians, Maximilian
Berlitz grew up in the Black Forest region of Germany. He emigrated to
the United States in 1872 and arrived prepared to teach Greek, Latin,
and six other European languages according to the strict
traditionalist grammar-translation approach. After
building a successful career as a private teacher, Berlitz joined the
Warner Polytechnic College as a professor of French and German
language instruction. The college, however, was less imposing than its
name, and Berlitz found himself at once owner, dean, principal, and
only faculty member. Needing
an assistant to teach French, Berlitz hired a young Frenchman who
appeared to be the most promising candidate, possibly because of the
impeccable French in his letter of application. Invited to Providence,
Nicholas Joly arrived to find his new employer ill and feverish from
overwork, a condition that was not improved when Berlitz learned his
new assistant spoke no English. Casting about desperately for a way of
using Joly, Berlitz told him to try pointing at objects and naming
them and to act out verbs as best he could. He thereupon took to his
bed, emerging anxiously six weeks later prepared to face the wrath of
his neglected students. Instead,
Berlitz found the students engaging in lively question-and-answer
exchanges with their teacher, in elegantly accented French. The
characteristic solemnity of the formal classroom had vanished. More
important, the students had progressed further than any ever had under
six weeks of his own tutelage. Berlitz quickly concluded that his emergency measure held the seed of an innovative teaching technique. By replacing rote learning with a discovery process that kept students active and interested, it solved many of the problems that had plagued language instruction in the past. An Overview of the Berlitz Method
TM After
experimenting with the new technique and finding it consistently
effective, Berlitz developed a system of language teaching which today
is still the basis for the world-famous Berlitz courses. The
principles he laid down were deceptively simple. Only the target
language would be spoken in class, starting with the first greeting by
the teacher. Emphasis would be on the spoken word, with students
learning to read and write only what they had already learned to say
and understand. There would be no formal grammar instruction; instead,
students would absorb a grammatical system naturally, by using it.
Above all, to develop fluency, students would have to learn to think
in the new language, not translate - to associate new words with
objects and ideas, rather than with the distractingly familiar words
of their mother tongue. Teachers would have to constantly encourage
students to speak the language being taught, employing a barrage of
questions to be answered and a quickly expanding vocabulary. And, most
importantly, each Berlitz teacher would have to have a native command
of the language being taught. International
Berlitz Sites Berlitz has more than 400 locations in over 50 countries. Find out what's going on at Berlitz:
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| Language Courses available in: English
French (other
languages on request)
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