In Hook (Spielberg’s Peter Pan movie), the adult Peter is unable to fly until he remembers his “happy thought”, and here I say, adults are unable to speak fluent English until they remember how to imitate. My job is to jog your memory.
Since I began teaching my first pronunciation and fluency course in Australia 7 years ago, I have had winners and losers, fighters and quitters. What is interesting is that I have always known the fighters from the quitters on the very first day of the course. When I was still working for the ESL schools in Sydney, I always got rid of the quitters right from the start despite great pressure from the schools I was teaching at to keep the classes full for financial reasons. I never made it easy for the fighters either, as, instead, I kept on turning the heat (increasing the pressure) just to see how far they could go and how much they could handle. Despite all my straightforwardness, all my bluntness, all my screaming and shouting, all my corrections of their smallest and biggest mistakes, all the pressure I placed on them emotionally and mentally to step out of their comfort zone, and use a voice and a body that were not theirs, they stood firm in their ground. They never hated me for it because they knew I cared. They knew it was not personal, they could see my passion for excellence, they trusted me, and the more they did, the harder I worked to prove I was worth it. They struggled, they suffered (emotionally), some of them wept during the course but eventually emerged victorious and tougher than ever.
Most of the teachers I worked with thought I was simply a lunatic for treating the students they way I was but were also baffled at the fact that I was admired for it and above all that it was actually working. Many of them had thought it was impossible to teach pronunciation 20 hours a week. Most of them could hardly teach it for 30 minutes. Only few finally realized that that there was actually a method to the madness.
The principles of the method are simple:
1-Sound is the most primitive form of language and therefore,
2-Language needs to be taught through sound. That is how infants acquire the language, it is essentially by
3-Imitating what they hear from their parents, family and friends to the best of their ability in order
4-To be rewarded by their parents with a hug, a kiss, milk, attention etc.
Imitation for infants is relatively easy. Unlike adults, their brains are still very flexible and most importantly have not yet been programmed to perceive and produce the human sounds in a particular way. Furthermore, their need to belong and be accepted by their entourage is far greater than that of an adult. As we grow older, we begin to form our character and identity, we begin to realize that we are part of a culture all the members of which are effortlessly communicating through a common language. Gradually, we begin to lose the need for the skill of imitation and consequently many of us forget how to use it.
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