Every year we have students that begin to slack off on their writing practice. However, even in mainland China, there are some of the opinion that humans will no longer be writing in a few years. We'll all be typing away on a computer or using speech recognition to get the job done. It's going to be a whole lot more interesting for sneaky teens trying to use secret codes in messages while parents are unaware. But seriously, do you really have to learn to write?

You might be surprised to hear this but... once you've gotten the hang of it, you'll write in Chinese character just as fast as you would in the English alphabet.

Every year we have students that begin to slack off on their writing practice. However, even in mainland China, there are some of the opinion that humans will no longer be writing in a few years. We'll all be typing away on a computer or using speech recognition to get the job done. It's going to be a whole lot more interesting for sneaky teens trying to use secret codes in messages while parents are unaware. But seriously, do you really have to learn to write?

Every year we have students that begin to slack off on their writing practice. However, even in mainland China, there are some of the opinion that humans will no longer be writing in a few years. We'll all be typing away on a computer or using speech recognition to get the job done. It's going to be a whole lot more interesting for sneaky teens trying to use secret codes in messages while parents are unaware. But seriously, do you really have to learn to write?

Around the globe, people celebrate international Women's Day every March 8th. It's supposed to be a day in which we celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women globally. According to the International Women's Day website, the first official #IWD gathering was in 1911 and was supported by over a million attendees. However, the very first instance of what led up to a Women's Day was more of a grand protest in 1857, on March 8th, by a group of working women in New York that had had enough of their less than ideal work conditions such as 12-hour work shifts on top of low pay. Not only was a protest organized but a women's coalition wasalsoestablished.

After considering some of the struggles that come with learning a foreign language through immersion in the US, our team has come up with a few ideas to keep students in the swing of things both in and out of class sessions. Homework is seen as busy work by so many people that sometimes, especially our adult students, they start to lose momentum. Our children love doing their worksheets and projects for homework, and they don't mind getting a little bit more "busywork" to keep from being bored. (Can you believe that? Children say they get bored sometimes... as in having nothing to do!)

We've decided to offer planners, games, puzzles and more! Sure adults might already have a planner or their own little journal, but do you have a journal that helps push you along in your language journey? Some will be available for download as soon as March! Hard-backed shippable copies will become available at a later date.

We hope you enjoy our foreign language immersion shop and stick around for our various classes and events.

Make 2021 count when it comes to your fluency goals! 

Thanks for reading!

How about shopping?

Though it pains us to be apart, the Christmas season is upon us again and we won't be in touch until January. Some good news is you students get to spend a whole two weeks with your family and friends! You can show off some of those language skills while decorating around the house, helping with the big dinner or even just playing a few games.

This year Key Babel Institute had its first run of group classes alongside tailored private language classes. The team is also going to spend time with family and friends for the holidays. We also will be using a few staff days to improve our services. We hope to offer better quality classes and materials for the upcoming 2021!

In the meantime, students are able to use the resources given to them and access the online services we use during the course of the year. Just a few minutes each day will keep your multilingual skills in tip-top shape. We also encourage you to keep a journal of what you do during your time off and share it with us when we get back to class on January 4th, 2021.

Many parents these days are quite worried about having their child take classes in a foreign language. They have a belief that there's an underlying burden in a full immersion environment. However, research shows that there are plenty of benefits and an overall success rate in learning a language through an immersion program. Schools have been teaching in this style since 1965 in Canada, and surely back when in something thousand BC where much migration took place. Today, let's look at some of the things we can generally expect to go through a language learners mind.

We begin much like babies. We sit back and listen in silence, watching various facial contortions and actions take place in front of our curious eyes. Depending on how receptive we are to experiencing new things on an individual level, this period can last a few weeks or a few months. This doesn't seem to change much when we look at classes done in-person or virtually. Willingness to engage is either already present or emerges here. 

It's important to note that the learner is not completely silent during this period. There is actually quite a bit of repeating that goes on. As the language learner continues with class they are bound to find that the teacher is using either characters they are familiar with, songs that they recognize the melody of, or objects that they genuinely have an interest in. This prompts them to repeat whatever it is that the teacher has just said in connection with the character, song or object in immediate view.

Personally, I've seen students go from just staring to "I like tomatoes!" in their very first immersion class. They fully understand that whatever they are saying, it's positive about the tomatoes that they like. I've also had students get to their 6th month of classes and suddenly burst out with "If you don't want a tomato, just say 'no'" in the target language. At that point, they could still be mimicking a phrase they've heard in class, but this time they fully understand its implications.

After all of that mimicking and hearing the same certain words over and over and over again in different forms, language learners realize they should either be saying 'yes' or 'no'. They also realize they should be sharing their own feelings about what they do and don't like, where they do and don't want to go.

My favorite in-person experience is with a child that suddenly gathered that he could not just repeat 'do you want one or two?' inquiries at lunch-time. One day his eyes got wide and he took a deep breath and said 'you want two'. 

To which I replied, "I only want one, but I see that you want two." He was so pleased with himself that he almost skipped back to his table. After that, he ended up using numbers for just about everything we did. Throughout classes he'd say 'I want four papers!', 'I want 27 pencils' 'do you like eating 100 burgers?' and so on.

Just like that, he was able to connect what was expected of him by using the basic numerical vocabulary that we went over occasionally and the themes of the stories we'd read, songs we'd sing and discussions we'd have off-hand. The brain is able to take this repetitive information and store it in different files of experiences. It learns that 100 is not just about the pencils from the May 27, 2016 class. 100 can also apply to the June 2, 2016 hamburger class, even though we didn't see or eat 100 burgers for real.