Our Methodology

I remember when I first came to France on a student exchange program back in 2006. I had a very strong grammar, but I could not speak at all and did not understand anything in lectures. The state of shock lasted for about 2 months. On the advice of a professor of French, I began to listen to television every day for 2-3 hours. The results were not long in coming: after 2 months, I began to speak a little and understand others quite well.

I already understood then that a good knowledge of the grammar of a foreign language is not everything. Often, a student can be strong in grammar, but experience serious difficulties in understanding colloquial speech, as well as constructing oral statements.

When studying a foreign language, the processes of listening are very important, i.e. listening to a living language, as well as speaking. Only with regular conversational practice can the skill of speaking be developed, only in this way can the tongue be “untied”.

Even in language universities we are taught not a living foreign language, but something frozen, migrating for years from one textbook to another of the Soviet period. The dominant role of the grammar-translation method in the Soviet methodology contributed to the development of reading, writing and translation skills, but not to the development of oral speech skills. But modern language does not stand still, but develops dynamically, like life itself.

A lot of slang appears: youth, scientific, professional, etc. And this once again proves that the methodology based on the priority of listening and speaking is the most effective. The smart combination of audiolingual and communicative methods contributes to the development of a language reflex (automatism) and the removal of the language barrier.

In my practice, I have noticed that often the acquisition of a foreign language by students is very closely related to their psychological characteristics. This has predetermined my further research in this area.

In linguistics, there is such a direction as psycholinguistics. This interdisciplinary scientific field studies the relationship between language and psychological processes. It combines the methods and theories of both linguistics and psychology to study how people perceive, understand, reproduce and acquire language.

Neurolinguistics is a subdivision of psycholinguistics that studies how the brain processes and stores language information. This scientific field is at the intersection of linguistics, neurology and neuropsychology.

Neurolinguists are trying to understand how language functions in the brain of an adult, how information is acquired and processed, which areas of the brain are responsible for various aspects of language activity, such as speaking, listening, reading and writing.

At the beginning of the 21st century, neurolinguists from Canada at the University of Quebec (Claude Germain, Joan Netten) developed a neurolinguistic method (hereinafter referred to as NLM) for teaching foreign languages, of which I am a staunch supporter. Initially, this method was used only in teaching intensive French, but subsequently many different programs for studying foreign languages ​​were created on its basis.

The goal of NLM is to teach students to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing.

According to NLM supporters, effective communication has 2 components: explicit and implicit language competence (Germain and Netten, 2013).

Explicit competence is acquired consciously through the study of rules, external grammar and is associated with declarative memory. Implicit competence is acquired unconsciously, through the use of language in authentic communication situations, and is associated with procedural memory. This is the so-called "internal" grammar, not rules, but frequently used language structures used spontaneously (Paradis, 2004, Ellis, 2011).

At the same time, according to Michel Paradis, on the basis of whose works NLM was developed, there is no direct connection between the implicit and explicit components (Paradis, 2009).

External grammar is taught in classes quite effectively, which cannot be said about internal grammar.

This is why traditional foreign language teaching programs cannot achieve spontaneous communication skills for most students.

This also applies to programs using the communicative approach, since, contrary to their theoretical assertions, the authors of this well-known method begin teaching in the old-fashioned way with explicit knowledge.

Thus, given that the implicit and explicit components are not related to each other in any way, focusing only on the explicit component when teaching a foreign language will obviously not lead to the formation and development of implicit, spontaneous abilities.

According to Tatyana Chernigovskaya, Russian Doctor of Philology and Biology, Professor at St. Petersburg State University and the main popularizer of psycholinguistics, the unconscious plays the most important role in a person’s life, because it accounts for about 60-70% of decisions made (Chernigovskaya, 2021).

Based on the above, the neurolinguistic approach offers its methods for the formation of implicit language competence and effective learning of a foreign language: the method of modeling, association/dissociation, metaphor, visualization, repetition priming, practice, etc.

Based on my studies of the existing teaching methodologies in linguistics for foreign languages, I have developed the COKI Curriculum which is a harmonious combination of novel and traditional teaching methods, which includes: lexical, audiovisual, audiolinguistic, communicative methods.

Our goal is to help you, our students, effectively perceive, process, remember and use effortlessly new information. To do this, it is necessary to work not only with the language, the "external" grammar, but also with the "internal" grammar, the implicit component, building new neural connections in the brain through frequent use of the same patterns, thereby developing a spontaneous language reflex.

Our intensive COKI Curriculum contains the most effective neurolinguistic methods for working with implicit or unconscious memory, as well as successful advice from leading world experts on increasing the volume of short-term memory and improving long-term memory.

Our COKI Curriculum has an emphasis on listening and speaking and is designed for those who are interested in rapid advancement.

The proposed original methodology of the intensive COKI Curriculum will teach you to successfully understand foreign colloquial speech and be confident in oral communication in a short time. How do we achieve this?

A special place in COKI Curriculum is given to the study of set expressions. The study of set expressions (also called idioms) in a foreign language is extremely important, since they are unique speech structures that are not translated literally and may be incomprehensible without context. For example, the English expression "break the ice" can't be literally translated as in fact it means the beginning of a conversation or the release of tension in a new situation.

It is the recognition and use of the most frequently used set phrases that allows you to significantly expand your vocabulary and make your speech more diverse in a relatively short period of time. In linguistics, this method is called lexical and is one of the newest methods of teaching a foreign language, often used in preparation for international exams.

Also, when building our COKI Curriculum, we sought to achieve the maximum combination between lexical and grammatical topics within one lesson in order to significantly facilitate our students' mastery of a foreign language.

 We are happy to help students from different countries, different ages and with different levels of proficiency in foreign languages.

Now that you have had the opportunity to get to know us better and hear about our teaching methods, come visit our language school COKI, take the free COKI Assessment Test. Based on this test COKI will create a customized Lesson Plan for you adapted to your current language level and your specific goals

A foreign language shouldn't seem like some big, distant mountain to climb alone, but rather an interesting and enjoyable journey. So, if you want us to be your guide on this journey, feel free to book a lesson and let's set off together to meet your goals!

Sign up for a first lesson today!

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