Word: berlitz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...things in France have changed under globalization in order to keep us competitive, but teaching people English here has remained old-fashioned and inefficient," says Julien Petitpas, one of the 10 young adults who gather for 12 hours a week to improve their English at the Berlitz language school near the Paris Opera. "In school it's all structure, grammar and getting it right on paper and in your head before you ever speak - and even then, you don't do much of that. It just doesn't work." (See pictures of Paris expanding...
...utter a word of what's often called la langue de Shakespeare until they've mastered it on paper. "I think a lot of French people are hesitant to speak another language at what could be considered the expense of French," says Karin Hull, who has taught English at Berlitz for four years. "The legacy of cultural protectionism is one factor, and the way foreign languages are taught in school is another. Students pass language exams only to discover they can't really speak [the language]." (Read "Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play...
...Shifting the focus of foreign-language study from written to oral instruction is only one way of making classes more practical. Berlitz also offers First Jobs, an increasingly popular course in which students are taught business and financial English vocabulary and are given help improving their résumés and job-interviewing skills - in English. "These are students who've wanted to improve their English as part of many things they'll need in their careers," says Alain Nothern, the polyglot director of Berlitz's Opera center. "The focus is English, but it's a wider tool...
...know it you're shaking hands, toasting - or wildly gesticulating - in your destination, wishing you had mastered just a couple of phrases of the local language. Since 2005, travelers on selected flights of Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa and half a dozen other carriers have been avoiding this problem with Berlitz World Traveler courses, available on personal video screens. Now other airlines are following suit - this year, Continental, KLM and Air France began offering the onboard language-tuition program, which teaches the basics of up to 23 languages in 21 languages. So should you be from Brazil and need to brush...
Searching for a bathroom in Tokyo but don't speak Japanese? You can stop flipping frantically through that Berlitz dictionary and fumbling with awkward pronunciations. An easier solution is now at hand, thanks to a new set of foreign-language programs for your Apple iPod available from an online service at talkingpanda.com...