So how exactly do we help your child to enjoy and progress in English? If you are interested in our professional answer keep reading! We use an eccletic range of methodologies, in function of what we see is the most effective with children.

Game Based Learning

Because we believe it is fundamental that young learners enjoy what they do, laugh while they are doing it and want to continue doing it we use Game Based Learning. That is the children will learn as they play, the process will be largely unconscious. The games will involve them in understanding and following instructions, and as they get a little older, in producing language to participate.

Total Physical Response

Because it has been demonstrated that all learners, not just children, remember more standing up, we will frequently ask them to run, jump, touch and move as they learn. This method suits children who especially need to move! It is one of the corner stones of Total Physical Response.

Neurolinguistic Programming

A third method we employ is Neurolinguistic programming, so we will consciously be working through the same material in a series of ways to appeal to different senses and different learner types. We will use audio, visual, kinesthetic and logical stimuli to help our young learners assimilate material.

Story Based Learning

Everyone enjoys a good story. You not only need to understand them, you want to do so. You can watch them, repeat them, write them, retell them, reenact them. They are a natural medium for language learning. We use them extensivesly in courses for children. In fact we base our syllabi around stories.

What we don't do

No exams and no books!At Inishouse, while we are not following a linear curriculum, we do have our targets clear. You can read the targets, session by session, in the course guides that we hand out at the beginning of the year. So while we do use some printed material in class, doing exercises to prepare for the next test is not what we are about. We want to improve your child's listening and speaking level. So we don't have vocabulary or grammar tests, we have lots and lots of stories, plays and projects. So we will practise months and dates via a story, a game and a questionnaire about birthdays.Our syllabus is a series of stories and/or plays and projects with integrated structures and vocabulary.For us it will be important that they learn to pronounce correctly, so that people can understand them when they speak.Sometimes our methodologies can seem very removed from mainstream curricular English teaching.For children, that's exactly what we want them to be.

What we do do

We may ask your five-year-old to paint a little rock red, give it eyes and a name. He will be learning the parts of the face and probably using him as a character in a story.Your ten-year-old may find himself acting the part of a child with dyslexia or someone being bullied, in the term where the group perform a play.We are interested in helping children not only to communicate in English but to want to do so.Once he or she feels more confident about his or her ability in the language, the school tests will come easily.