The Dialogue Approach
Dialogue and the Four Language Learning Thresholds

Dialogue Effectiveness

To allow a complete beginner, within two weeks, to communicate in a foreign language, or to inspire vast improvements in speaking levels for an advanced speaker; these are Dialogue’s achievements. Though of relatively recent origin, this method has become the reference standard for language learning. The reason: whatever the level, beginning or advanced, each student makes enormous progress in only a few days.

The Secret

While the Dialogue formula may not reveal a genuine secret, what it does do is create, without rote repetition, the conditions in which students learned their own native languages. The method recreates the natural environment in which students learned their original languages and made them their own. Nevertheless, there is a difference between a child learning his or her first language and an adult attempting another, a barrier that must be breached else the second language will remain inaccessible. We deal here with both psychological and physiological barriers.

One learns to speak a language in several steps. What are the four most important and yet daunting thresholds a students faces? Jean-Claude Narcy, in his book “Learn a Foreign Language,” suggests the four thresholds: psychological, listening, cultural and linguistic. How do each of these challenges relate to the strategy Dialogue uses?