Educational Solutions

Experiments conducted over 35 years led to the development of materials and techniques which made it possible for the teacher to say less and less, while students, using their own criteria, were saying more and more.

The teacher already speaks the language and doesn’t need the practice - the students are the ones who need practice speaking. The teacher speaks when necessary, but students don't need continuous modeling from the teacher in order to learn the language.

This leaves the class time open for the students to learn to speak, and for the teacher to listen and give feedback.

Students learn to speak with proper pronunciation first, then they learn to read and write what they can say.

The Sound-Color Chart is used for work on pronunciation of sounds and words. Each color represents a sound, so rectangles with two colors are a blend of two sounds. This chart helps with pronunciation because students are not distracted by the shape of a letter, and perhaps how that letter is read in their own language.

The Fidel is used for spelling and pronouncing words and groups of words. Just like the Sound-Color Chart, each sound has a color, but this time every spelling for that sound is listed.

The Word Charts are used for the construction of sentences.

In addition to charts, Algebricks colored rods are used to construct linguistic situations that students can converse about.

The students are corrected systematically, as needed, to avoid fossilizing bad habits. Rather than telling the answer, clues are given so the students can resolve the problem logically. This helps the language make sense in their minds, and leads to fluency. For example, someone –  teacher or student – can point on one of the charts to indicate the problem sound or word. Finger correction is also used extensively. Finger correction is similar to the game of Charades where the words of the sentence to be corrected are "placed" on the fingers, one word per finger. Then the teacher only has to wiggle a finger to show where the problem lies.

The Silent Way can be used with all age groups, from small children to adults.

Yes, it can. This is not a method, but an approach, so more emphasis can be placed on writing if necessary. The students learn to write immediately, and practice by writing what has just been said. They can soon move onto writing more complex texts.

Yes, it can. The students will all speak in the new language. Since all propositions are illustrated with the use of colored rods, or other props, everyone can understand the meaning of the conversation.

Yes, it can. Even classes of 40 or more work well, as long as everyone speaks and participates. The students learn from the mistakes and successes of other students as much as they learn from their own trials and errors. For adult students, teachers have told us their ideal class size is 25-30 students.

The materials exist for about 40 languages. Most of these materials are rare and out of print, so we are working diligently to make these languages available again.

Even though the teacher barely speaks, their mastery of the language is key to student success. In order to correct pronunciation, or grammar fine points, the teacher needs to be fluent in the language. You could use the color code to learn to read the Word Charts yourself, but this is not going to lead to the end goal of becoming fluent.