Focus Language School: Chicago & Phoenix» language schools

Learn a New Language with Focus Language: in Person or Online

jpfocus — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:42:27 +0000

Would you like to learn a Foreign Language? Focus Language makes it feasible and enjoyable.

Easy to learn:

Many people believe that learning a new language is a difficult and boring task. We make it doable and fun. We provide you with the right teachers, the right materials and the right programs. We have thirty years experience helping people learn.

Fast:

We understand how to structure our programs so you can learn efficiently and fast. All you need to do is apply and enjoy yourself.

Cost-effective

We want to make it feasible for anyone to learn: students, business people, travelers, children. Our rates are always reasonable.

Customized programs:

We realize that everyone has different needs. We provide the right program, the right approach and the right schedule for you.

Excellence:

We constantly strive to find the best methods and the best resources to provide the best language programs possible. We also provide you with great support materials.

To set up a course:

Email us at jps@focuslanguage.com

*or Call anytime*

in Chicago: (630) 338 1144

in Phoenix: (602) 954 0465

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Meditation and Language Learning

jpfocus — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:40:05 +0000

We think of meditation as a spiritual practice or as a tool for reducing stress. But what do they have to do with learning a new language? Actually, meditation is the ability to be fully focused on whatever activity we are engaged in in the present moment. An artist captivated by his work, or an athlete fully associated in the body and its every movement and nuance are meditating.

The antithesis of meditation is multi-tasking. I am riding my motorcycle while texting my friend, eating lunch and planning my afternoon meeting. The problem with that is lack of depth. The biggest challenge through time in learning a language is remembering thousands of words and their proper context. It is virtually impossible to do this efficiently without creating deep associations. Without associations memory melts like snow in the sun.

What are the principal elements of meditation? Focus. Relaxation. Comfort. Effortless patience. Pleasure.

We have already mentioned focus: the one-pointed concentration on a piece of information and the use of multi-sensory associations. This really is the great key. Which do you think you would remember faster: your neighbor’s social security number or the number to a Swiss Bank account in your name containing $500,000? The difference would be the focus applied to memorizing.

Relaxation and comfort are also vital. Stress is really a form of pain. Can you dance if there is a nail poking through the sole of your shoe? So get comfortable. Study in a place you enjoy, a place which relaxes you and makes you feel comfortable.

Effortless patience is an interesting one. Meditation gives you the ability to be fully present in your body, to enjoy the physicality of the moment you are living, to let your thoughts move through as clouds in a Summer sky. Every physical, mental or emotional experience that surfaces becomes the source of your meditation. Applying this to memorization is very fruitful. You are fully associated as you process, code and imprint the new words. Someone who enjoys reading poetry would automatically do this.

Pleasure is the direct result of all the other aspects, whether you are sitting in meditation, painting a portrait or learning new vocabulary words.

So there you are! Meditation is another powerful tool to be applied to learning a language.

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The Treasures of the Internet

jpfocus — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:54:29 +0000

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to learn a language, you bought a book and a cassette series, and you looked for a teacher in your city. With the Internet explosion of the recent years, there are treasures beyond all imaginings for the language learner. There are organizations, schools, individuals, blogs which provide us with countless tools: podcasts, games, lessons, language exchanges, free materials etc.

What this means is that you can customize your way of learning exactly to your own specifications. You can work alone, with others, online, at home, anywhere and any way you like. If you find one learning style boring, there are many others to choose from. And there are so many people willing to help and share their knowledge and their tools. Yes, there are entities who may think of us only as consumers and sources of income. They make seductive promises so that we buy their products. But there are also many people who are sharing information out of kindness, joy and a desire to help.

With the onset of IM, Skype video calls, etc, we are able to communicate directly with anyone in the world instantly. Instead of Bali, Morroco or Italy being days and thousands of dollars away, they are within instant reach – and for free. So as we organize our learning, we can easily expand and connect with people who speak the language we are learning. This is the delightful gift of the Internet to the language student. Have fun in your treasure hunt! and if you want to practice your new language online, you can contact me at my school, Focus Language. Our prices are reasonable and we will help you shine in your new language. Jean-Paul

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The Importance of Love, Beauty and Nature in the Learning Process

jpfocus — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:45:43 +0000

We normally think of efficiency, brain enhancing substances, extraordinary software and stream-lined cutting edge methods when we think of improving our learning capabilities. There is an entirely different aspect of learning which I have encountered in my long career as a student and a language learner: Love, Beauty and Nature. We are so efficient, having become multi-tasking masters and super-focused planners. We may be doing more, but are we actually becoming more accomplished? Are we more fulfilled and happy? I believe the answer is we are not. Being an artist, musician, meditator and lover of nature, I have followed a very different path: I require the presence of beauty, fulfillment and pleasure in all the tasks I undertake. Cast me into hell and I will paint on the walls of my dungeon, I will write poems about the beauty of the rising flames, and I will breathe my awareness of the present moment.

Yet, in spite of following paths considered less desirable or dead-ends by many in our efficient, goal-oriented society, I have succeeded in becoming fluent in eight or nine languages. I do study hard – sometimes almost fanatically – but I am able to maintain my focus and happiness through time. Looking back on how I became accomplished in multiple language, I notice some common elements and patterns. They are perhaps obvious and easy to apply but they are at the core of my success in learning languages.

Love, Beauty and Nature

Learning a language is a subconscious activity. You may work like a slave in Roman salt mines but you cannot impose the absorption or integration of a language onto your brain/mind. The more you experience the beauty of your new language, of its sounds of its grammar, of its culture, of its world view, the easier it is to keep a powerful,spontaneous and unending desire to improve your skills. I have had highly intelligent language students who became very frustrated in spite of their urgent need and high motivation to learn a new language. They lacked one thing: the actual desire to learn and a genuine attraction for their new language. They were in purgatory or jail, waiting to be released with a new skill at their command. Painters love color, creative programmers love the elegance of their code, lovers love their beloved. Language learners must also be in love with the object of their pursuit.

Language is music, mathematics, theater, history, culture and art rolled into one. Ignore this, and even if you learn a new language, you will miss much of its depth and the pleasure of knowing it.

What do nature and breathing have to do with the intelligent pursuit of learning a language? Everything in my case. Separate me from access to nature and I feel restricted and incomplete, while the breathing techniques I use daily (from yoga and qi gong) improve my brain functions, relaxation and general health. They allow me to concentrate powerfully on the object of my study without normal fatigue. Without nature and breathing meditations I would be a pale insubstantial shadow of who I am today.

At a later date, I will write in more detail about this accessing of the right cerebral hemisphere. One of its consequences is the experience of bliss in ordinary circumstances. Poets and artists routinely experience this phenomenon. It can only enhance whatever experience you are engaged in.

You must naturally discover your own path of beauty and bliss as you apply it to your language learning. Yet, the more powerfully you access it, the easier and the more effortless your progress will be.

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Language and Climate in European Languages

jpfocus — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:19:46 +0000

Focus Language School has been in operation in Phoenix, Arizona for almost thirty years: the land of desert and eternal sun. Winters are idyllic and summers make you curious about the fires of hell. We have just opened our Chicago area office – in February – and the contrast is striking. In the white beauty of the Illinois winter, you are reminded of wind and ice as forces of nature instead of the relentlessness of the Arizona Summer sun. How does climate and weather help shape languages? The following ideas are intuitive impressions and not the result of a scientific study.

In the European languages it seems that the Southern, warm-climate languages are more vowel-based and gentler to the ear. It is easy to sing them. Consonants are soft: French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, etc. are usually perceived as soft and musical languages. There is a certain ease and grace to the people who speak them. The Northern European languages – Germanic and Slavic – seem stronger or harder. Consonants are more apparent to the ear. There are frequent guttural sounds. The Vikings and the Slavic tribesman perhaps had less time for singing and easy living as they faced harsh winters and survival.

The character of the Southern and Northern people tend to reflect the same differences: the practical, no-nonsense of the Northern Europeans versus the more romantic traits of their southern neighbors.

Soft languages seem to appear in many warm climates: Polynesia, Malaysia, Indonesia, many of the South American native languages.

Asian languages tend to sound strong and more staccato to the Western ear, yet there is more of a lilt and singing quality to Cantonese then there is to Mandarin – a northern dialect.

Southern Indian languages are usually much softer than the Northern Indo-European dialects such as Hindi, Pashtu or Punjabi.

There are also some obvious counter-examples: Arabic, although spoken in warm climates is a strong language and it contains many hard sounds. Is it the harshness of the desert hardening its people and their dialects?

This informal review of sound systems in relationship to climate can make us wonder about the incredible evolutionary sound machine which humans have become. Words pass through millions of mouths and through many generations, evolving uniquely in every location and they shape our own evolution.

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Focus Language School in Chicago

jpfocus — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:15:44 +0000

Focus Language has come to Chicago, one of the great American cities. We are excited to be opening a school here. There are very active, well-developed cultural venues: one of the largest Chinatown in the US, a powerful East Indian community, and so many others. Learning a language involves immersing yourself in the culture, breathing it in, living and dreaming it. Chicago is a tremendous resource to our students both local and coming form out-of town. We are now offering online classes. It is a fantastic way to learn a language very conveniently. Short, frequent, inexpensive classes make it so much easier to acquire your new language.

The most frequently asked question is always: “How long will it take me to to be fluent in this language?” It depends on three things: where you are starting from, how complex a language is it and how much time you have to devote to learning it. The key elements are your motivation and your actual enjoyment of and attraction for the particular language

Learning a new language is an exciting journey and we look forward to guiding people on this journey in our new home in Chicago.

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Mother Nature to the Rescue

jpfocus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:27:11 +0000

If you have read some of the posts I wrote about improving your comprehension through listening intensively, you are ready for the next step. To do nothing. That’s correct. Nothing at all. You actually need to listen to recordings daily for a while until your internal language machine takes over. Have you ever used voice recognition software? (Dragon Speaking Naturally, for example). You actually have to train the software to recognize your own unique voice. Until it does, it cannot type out what you speak.
This is exactly what you are doing here. You need to hear French or Chinese intensely until your brain, ears and mind automatically accept it as meaningful sound. Until then, it is only noise to your nervous system and it tries to escape from it and return to English, away from the awful, exhausting and meaningless chatter.
I remember going through this process when I came to the US at the age of 13. As I watched the Felix the Cat cartoons I initially could only understand two words: Felix and Professor. After a few months of intense television watching I understood fluently and could understand all the subtelties of the Flinstones and the Twighlight Zone. Of course, I was also going to school and working really hard to integrate into American society, but the comprehension piece came from listening over and over, not from interacting with the natives. I used to record my favorite shows and movies on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I listened to them until I had them almost memorized. Focus and enjoyment are powerful means.
So listen and then listen again. Every day. The trick is to have fun and to watch/listen to things you enjoy. Let your mind totally focus on the flow of language. Understand whatever words or phrases you can catch. Let your unconscious recognize, identify and understand.
After a while you will notice that even when you don’t understand, you hear everything. You hear the words that you cannot recognize. If a word keeps coming up, your brain/mind will begin to assign a rough meaning to it.
Listen to texts you know, and texts you have never heard. You will notice that you gradually hear and understand more and more. Let it be part of your daily routine. You automatically listen every day. There is no choice or decision involved. You will be pleasantly surprised as you break through the sound barrier.

Our other blogs: www.intensivefrench.org and www.teachyourself-spanish.com

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Working with native Speakers

jpfocus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:24:27 +0000

If you can begin to practice your new language with native speakers, you will be able to progress faster – and have fun. The process can also be unnerving or frustrating. So what are the ways to make this practice time fruitful, while keeping your morale up.?
Understand that there are two kinds of natives: good natives and bad ones. Joking aside, only ever work with people who are helpful, patient and benevolent towards you. You must feel inspired and hopeful at the end of the session. Some people want to help, but they are not a good match for us. Do not work with them, as they will sap your confidence. Always try out one short session with a new person, with no expectations of ever organizing another one. Keep your freedom.
If you do find someone who is a good match, organize clearly delineated sessions. A half-hour is a great length of time. If there is a natural flow and you both want to keep going, that’s great, but do not force it.
If you are teaching this person English, keep the two languages separate. Decide ahead of time which language you are practicing. Avoid “language competition”.
Let them talk freely and listen attentively. Prepare some interesting topics ahead of time – traveling, culture, money, dating etc – and let them speak. Let the native know you will just be listening. Perhaps have them give you a quick overview in English before they begin. This will really help your comprehension. Record.
Always record if you can. Let the speakers know ahead of time. Make sure they don’t mind.
Listen to the recordings four or five times (or much more). You will be amazed how much more you pick up each time.
Prepare some short talks and deliver them uninterrupted. Ask for critiques and corrections to be given at the end. Also record those.
These are many possible activities you can engage in to practice with natives without being overwhelmed. Let your imagination create them. Always make sure everyone is comfortable and having fun. Of course, if you are comfortable being spontaneous, let the conversations go where they may.
copyright 2009 Jean-Paul Setlak

Developing Comprehension: the Bouncing Ball

jpfocus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:32:31 +0000

What is the secret of developing your comprehension in a new language? Follow the bouncing ball! Yes the old musical movies and the Karaoke parlors revealed this secret decades ago.
First, let us make some preparations. You need to get the code first. If you do not understand the basic vocabulary, you will not be able to break through into understanding. So select several 10-20 minute-long recordings or podcasts of well-recorded natural native conversations. You must have a transcript of the text for best results, as well as a translation. (The Google translation tool is state of the art and free to boot.) If the language in the recording is simple, a vocabulary list may suffice. The basic idea is that you must be able to recognize all or at least most of the important words in the “story” before you start listening!
Once you have studied the text – and this can be time-consuming – read through it a few times, making sure you can follow the story fairly well. You don’t need to understand every word and phrase perfectly, just approximately. I suggest you make a list of the words you didn’t know in a separate notebook. You will review with it and use it in certain exercises.
Next, listen to the text while reading the transcription. You should be able to follow reasonably well. Do this once or as many times as you feel you need to. Alternate with reading the English translation while listening to the recording. Do either or both of these steps until you really catch the gist of the recording.
You can also follow the recording while looking a the vocab. list you wrote earlier. This is a great way of deeply learning the new words.
Finally, begin to listen to the recording by itself. Listen to it several times in a row for several days in a row. You will notice your initial comprehension level radically increasing as you keep listening.
If you feel you are missing too much of the “story”, you need to go back to the previous steps. It simply means you are missing too many words. Also review the vocabulary notebook you have been compiling. Reinforce and test your recognition of the new words there. Then go back to listening to your recording.
When you feel that you understand the recording nicely, you can repeat the process with a new recording. But keep listening to the one or the ones you have already conquered. They will keep reinforcing your comprehension skills.
Supremely important instructions for the listening part:
Here is how you should listen to the recordings to get the most out of them. Do you remember the bouncing ball in old musical movies or in karaoke parlors? Doesn’t the ball let you see which word you need to sing at that precise moment? This is exactly how you need to listen! Only pay attention to the word which is being spoken. Do not think, backtrack, translate, analyze, or process any thoughts and feelings. You are strictly to function as a language input mechanism! Only do three things. 1. Keep your body relaxed. 2. Breathe comfortably. 3. Follow the bouncing ball, i.e. pay attention only to the word that is being spoken right at that moment. This process actually sound like Zen meditation. It is focused sound concentration and it works. You will be delighted by how well your comprehension of the text increases and multiplies over a relatively short period of time. In addition – and this is much more profound – you will also notice your global comprehension of the new language increasing as well. You somehow begin to “hear” the new language.
How much should you do this?
A lot! All the time! As much as you can take! Isn’t this what would happen if you lived in the country where this language is spoken? You would hear it spoken around you constantly and try to figure out what is going on. Isn’t this how you learned English in your playpen? Plan on doing this daily for two to three months. It is the best and quickest way to “break into” a language. You can also practice with subtitled movies, but it is harder to study the vocab. with those. The trick is to keep it fun and interesting for yourself. So go on the Internet and find wonderful, fun, amazing, incredibly thrilling material to play with; and get the comprehension part done once and for all!

Developing a Good Study Focus

jpfocus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:28:03 +0000

What is a good study focus? There are several possibilities, based on your specific language goals and personality.
The Personality component
As a student, are you systematic? intuitive/spontaneous? casual? driven? solitary? social? Realize that you need to adjust any scheduling suggestions to your way of learning and doing things.
Language Goals
1. Developing a deep and thorough knowledge of the language.
You want to master the language. You are committed for the duration. To achieve this goal, you need to develop your capacity in the 5 areas of language learning systematically. Assuming a 5-day study schedule, you want to work on each of the 5 main areas three times a week.
The 5 areas are Pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, speaking and comprehension. They can often be combined. To keep improving your pronunciation at all times, make sure you always read out loud, (whatever task you are doing). Always give your best.

2. Being able to communicate while traveling or interacting with friends
Your three primary tasks are the following. You need to acquire the specific vocab. you will be using: White water rafting or classical architecture? You want to develop your comprehension in the contexts you will be using. You need to develop simple but adequate speaking skills. This means knowing enough grammar to create decent sentences.
3. Communicating for a specific work project
You also have three tasks. You need to thoroughly know your work scenarios so you understand all the questions you need to ask or answer. You want to develop your comprehension, but you can narrow it to the work context. You also need to be able to generate simple and correct language in your specific work area.
In this short article, we have seen that your study focus will greatly vary based on your specific goals.