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Welcome to Lezouneri toun

Yelena Galstyan's School

English teaching center in Yerevan, Armenia - Lezounery Toun

CENTER OF INTENSIVE METHODS OF TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES

“You talk a lot, you listen, joke, laugh and your brain at the same time stores words, learns to make sentences. You learn the language not realizing how it happens. A foreign language shouldn’t be an awkward supplement to the mother tongue; it must occupy its own sovereign territory in your mind. Then inner translation will no longer be needed”.

To be successful in business as well as in everyday life it is vital for a modern person to navigate in cross-cultural and multicultural environment. A knowledge of languages is important as never before. Founded in 1976, Centre of Intensive Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages, is a unique language school with a solid reputation for imparting high levels of language competence. This competence includes fluency in speech, listening comprehension or authentic speech, reading comprehension of unabridged texts of increased complexity.

Elena Barteneva

Centre Psychologist

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WHY CHOOSE US ?

Unique interactive method of teaching

Over 40 years experience

Total immersion in the foreign language 3 hours a day, 6 days a week

Optimum student-to-staff ratios

Specially-trained experienced instructors

The author’s technique used at the Centre belongs to the group of interactive heuristic techniques. The basis of the educational process lies in active speech, ascending to real communication. The creation of the needed speech mechanism occurs while speaking. This mechanism latently (unconsciously) controls the structural aspect of speech and its style. Memorizing lexical material and grammatical constructions is organized in active form, through the use of several psychological methods, the inclusion of which allows avoiding constant inner translation (usual with traditional techniques) and makes the speech in the target language almost as natural as that of a native speaker.

1976

History

The Centre was established in 1976 as an experimental laboratory at the department of the Russian Language of the Armenian Pedagogical Institute named after Kh.Abovyan (Yerevan, Armenia). The initial name was Armenian Republic Laboratory of Intensive Methods (ARLIM). In 1984 it received the status of faculty of the same institute. In 1995 it was separated from the institute and was registered as "Lezounery Toun" Ltd. ("Domus Linguae" – House of Languages).

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The work on designing a new technique began in 1972 at the request of the Ministry of Higher Education of Armenia. It was necessary to choose or design a course of the English language for teaching the junior research staff of scientific institutions in the shortest time possible.

The most effective and time-saving system proved to be the system of Prof. G.Losanov, which gave birth to a series of modifications (Prof. I.Y.Shekhter’s, Prof. G.A.Kitaigorodskaya’s, Prof. T.N.Ignatova’s, Prof L.T.Gegechkory’s and many others).

The practical work of teaching was started with the first cycle of the English and French languages using the model of Prof. I.Y.Shekhter. It was offered as a spoken language course for tourists.

The cycles were a success. However it was clear that the contents of the cycles (training in set phrases in standard situations, which met the purposes of teaching tourists) didn’t agree with the needs of the people who aimed at using the language for work. Further the model mentioned above became inadequate, as its purposes were different from those set in our laboratory.

The founders of the "Lezounery Toun" Centre had to work on the development of their own strategy of intensive teaching. It was necessary to understand and express what the command of a language means for an educated person. It was further necessary to help students to switch from "clichés" to really free expression of their ideas, and to achieve this quickly, before they were cut off from the language-learning environment.

The course created at the Centre is in its own way unique: it does the job and solves the problem. As a result of our training, fluent speech without internal translation and approaching the speech of an educated native speaker, is achieved. (That is, an independent unconscious speech mechanism of the target language is formed in a relatively small span of time.)

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The process of teaching an intensive course itself should be considered as technology, the possible variation of which is rather small. It is possible to control it only having good-quality training aids and creating a favorable atmosphere in class for creative work on the part of the students, since the expression of ideas is undoubtedly a kind of creative work.

To perform his/her functions effectively, without undue exertion, a teacher should have certain personal qualities. In order to feel comfortable and work effectively he/she should be daring, and frank enough to face such a competent and demanding audience as that of adults.

In our experiments having no specialists in some languages, we had to invite native speakers to work as teachers. They worked under the direct supervision of the Centre methodologists. This practice proved to be satisfactory for the initial cycles, where extensive linguistic knowledge was not required. At the same time the persons invited were highly educated. For example, Chinese was taught by the doctor of physical and mathematical sciences Prof. Yan Shi, German was taught by the psychologist Barbara Burkert from Dresden, Arabic was taught by the teacher of mathematics Arshafir Kanekanyan from Iraq.

TESTING HOURS:

10:30 | 12:00 | 13:30 | 15:00 | 16:30 | 18:00 | 19:45

The design of the course of the English language for adults is nearly complete. It represents a working sample of the interactive heuristic technique, starting from zero-level up to an advanced command of language which allows learners to successfully pass qualification examinations in English and study/work abroad.

COURSE STRUCTURE:

The English language course consists of 7 cycles. The duration of each cycle is three hours a day for 26-28 working days.

THE ZERO CYCLE – is intended for beginners. It includes preliminary information and gives a grounding in 14 major grammatical skills.

The first cycle – “Man in a City” – develops listening comprehension, everyday speech, and the ability to cope with any everyday situation (includes 1200 words of active vocabulary).

The second cycle – “Round Table Talks” – expands the vocabulary through discussions on cultural and social subjects, and develops the ability to state one’s own ideas on the offered human-interest issues (includes 3500 words of active vocabulary).

The third and fourth cycles – Per Aspera ad Astra: Through Steep Ways to the Stars – develops accuracy of speech, approximates it to the speech of a native speaker. Thereby unconscious self-correction of speech is achieved. The student’s language use at these stages corresponds to that of an educated native speaker (more than 6000 words).

The fifth cycle – Psychology of Business as a Constituent of Modern Life " – improves listening comprehension of authentic speech, introduces business vocabulary in common use, opens horizons of further self-perfection in the language, acquaints the learner with the richness of English vocabulary and phraseology, lays the foundations for qualified translation.

The sixth cycle– "Translation Practice" (the first stage is devoted to translation of business and public speech) - cultivates accuracy in reproducing in English the contents and style of the assigned texts, activates knowledge in the sphere of usage and idiomatic expressions.

Other languages

The courses of Armenian (three cycles), Russian (three cycles), German (three cycles), French (three cycles), Spanish (two cycles), and Italian (two cycles) are arranged according to a similar circuit. There are some complementary links, depending on the specific features of each of the above-mentioned languages. The Russian and Armenian courses are designed for and taught to English-speaking people. The work on these courses is not complete due temporary circumstances. Nevertheless these courses “as are” help the students to speak fluently in compliance with the vocabulary and accuracy goals set for their cycle.During the summer holidays Lezounery Toun offers an interesting and informative English course for children.

TRAINING OF TEACHERS

The terms of the training depend on the language knowledge of a teacher, his/her abilities to teach, and his/her methodical competence. Price to be agreed upon.