Impulsive Language Training

It has been called the art of controlled spontaneity, high-voltage histrionics, a non-stop frenzy of group activity. But Professor John Rassias, who invented it, has a different view.

"This is not acting," he says.

"It is acting oneself. It is the willingness to take risks." In its essence the Rassias Method is proof that language learning need not be boring. Today, thanks to the Rassias Foundation and its outreach programs, the method is used in more than 600 universities and colleges, high schools, and elementary schools throughout the country and abroad. Rassias has taught Irish-American cops to communicate with New York City's Hispanics. He has taught language professors in Beijing to lighten up. And he'll even teach you, dear reader, if you sign up for one of the College's ten-day summer All Language Programs (ALPS).

Qu'est-c que c'est, cettemethode? It starts with the attitude that rote learning is a bore and that barriers between teachers and students must be trashed. Next you take your newly liberated master teacher (who has mastered a given language and the method). Then you add assistant teachers who conduct rapid-fire language exercises that reinforce the master's instruction. Finally, you keep classes relatively small, perhaps a dozen students, so that each student is called on up to 60 times an hour.

These finger-snapping drills are choreographed in a way that replicates the rhythm of the language being taught. Somewhere along the line, to emphasize a point (and loosen up his audience), the professor may tear off his shirt, or break an egg on a student's forehead.

Okay, there is a bit of madness in the method. But thousands of multi-lingual former Dartmouth students can testify that it works.

The Rassias Method: controlled madness.