“What’s unique about teaching for Berlitz is that it’s interactive. It’s about real communication, not abstract communication that they’re not going to use. They’re going to be able to go to work, go out on the street, communicate with their friends. So it’ll help them not only in the language, but in human relations. "
Hi. My name is Claire Allistone and I’ve taught for Berlitz for 23 years. I’m now an LIS and I’ve taught French and English.
What I enjoy most about teaching is, you know, helping people to communicate in another language, that you can see the lights go off in their mind, when they start to understand even something that is not, you know, easy to understand. It can be they may not understand it and they start getting it, everything in the target language, to communicate. You know, the joy of seeing someone actually learns something is an even greater joy for the teacher, or as great a joy for the teacher as it is for the student.
What’s unique about teaching for Berlitz is that it’s interactive. It’s not intellectual. It’s about real communication, not abstract communication that they’re not going to use. They’re going to be able to go to work, go out on the street, communicate with their friends. So it’ll help them not only in the language, but in human relations.
Had a student who after September 11th, he was a French student and he decided that he, at age 58, he wanted to move to Paris, and he told me, “I want to learn French in six months, and I am a lawyer, and I want to take the bar exam in France, in French, in a year.” And I told him, “I can teach you to communicate in French. I cannot teach you how to pass the bar exam in France. I am not a lawyer.” But he told me, “You teach me how to communicate. I will learn the legal language.”
He called me a year later. He’d passed the bar exam in French and was a lawyer in Paris at age 58. To me that was something amazing.
- Claire Allistone
English & French Language Instructor, Rockefeller Center, NY