DialoguE' Spa's 20th anniversary
French TV Report (with English Subtitles)
June 2011
Translation
"Everyone is a polyglot waiting to be discovered."
This is the leitmotiv that has guided the DialoguE Language Learning Centre for twenty years.
It all began on the heights of Spa in 1991, when Jean-Luc Godard and his wife decided to adopt a training method that was little known at that time. The method is based on several fundamental principles, among which ‘de-schooling’ and learning in a family atmosphere play a major part.Jean-Luc Godard, founder of DialoguE:
“The student must at no time have the impression that he or she is in a ‘school’. Therefore, we don’t have ‘teachers’, instead we have ‘trainers’. We don’t organise ‘lessons’, instead we organise ‘learning sessions’. We ask the students what their needs, their goals and their difficulties are, and we create a completely tailor-made course for them.”
Today, DialoguE offers five languages: English, Dutch, German, Spanish and French. Complete immersion is obviously essential. That is why each language is taught where it is spoken. As a result, if you want to speak English, you will learn it at the DialoguE Centre in Florida or in Rye in England.Jean-Luc Godard, founder of DialoguE:
“If you learn the language where it is not the real language of communication, you do lose a lot. Our students want to make a maximum amount of progress in the little time they have. Also, this allows them to really enter into the language by discovering the culture that surrounds it.”
Although completely different from a classic approach, the DialoguE method does not set itself up as being unique and infallible.
Jean-Luc Godard, founder of DialoguE:
“The advantage of DialoguE is that we have adopted the best of what currently exists after having studied the needs of the students. Therefore, DialoguE is never theoretical. It isn’t a theoretical approach, but a pragmatic one. This means that, based on the difficulties faced by each student, we find the shortest way for her or him to obtain the best results.
In its twenty years, DialoguE has helped more than 4000 people to learn and master a foreign language.
Report by M. Lebrun, K. Joris and R. Garcia.