I am a retired psychiatrist with a couple of hobbies: trains (…), travel and languages. Studying languages relaxes me, and also has encouraged me to evaluate many "methods" of teaching languages. Perhaps it is true that "facility for languages" is similar to "natural musicians" or "born painters".

However, the "method of teaching" has a lot to do with how the student will react to the language teaching. Very incidentally I was able to "discover" the "CERAN Schools" and immediately signed up for a week in CERAN Japan, near Osaka. The experience was unique and broke all barriers I may have had to learn Japanese. (…) The solution is to speak the language, to try to learn it "as a child learns it", without ever thinking about "translating"...that extra chore is absolutely not needed. The CERAN Method has really got it!

In Japan we were with the teacher from 8:15 am until about 10:30 pm, constantly, sharing meals, coffee breaks, etc. Very soon I decided to forego the afternoon "audio sessions" with fantastic cassettes and a very elaborate "audio lab", and spent time with the teacher repeating conversations, talking and "relaxing"...never trying to "translate". In the morning we would start, after breakfast, with the dates, for instance, "What day is today?" "Today is Monday", "Is today Tuesday?", "No, today is not Tuesday, today is Monday" and so forth and so on, for a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes. This is very "labor-intensive" for the teacher, but once you get used to this "system" you crave for it, because it makes the conversation so much easier.

Another thing we tried was to watch a "soap-opera like" video. That was very difficult at the beginning, but after watching and watching, then the teacher would start with the "labor-intensive" method, asking and repeating the different situations of the video, and little by little we began to "get used to the language" and find it natural to answer without having to "dig in our brain for correct words".

Of course we made mistakes, but the feedback was instantaneous and the teacher would utilize different ways to clarify a sentence: repeat it in different ways, do drawings on the blackboard (which was a very space-age board with fancy colors and pens) and even mimic until the "meaning" became clear. The CERAN method is unique in that approaches the teaching in a "natural" way, as I said above, "as a child learns at home".

Of course there were many other activities: writing every day (in romanized characters) a composition based on themes given to us by the teacher, going to the restaurant and ordering directly from the waitress, without any prompting by the teacher, going to the subway and asking for directions, etc.

The fact that one can live at the school (the rooms are on the upper floor) made things much more natural, just like the sharing of breakfast, lunch and dinners, as well as the coffee-breaks.

We did have some classes in Grammar, but they were based on practical examples, with no English translation, and mostly the concepts were explained by "comparison", repeated ad infinitum, until all became clear and easy to remember. There was no pressure to "remember or translate" but essentially using the English language was prohibited. (…)

I also found out that "one week" is too short, "three weeks" is a little bit too long, and that the best was to go for "two weeks", and then repeat the experience every 4 weeks or so. (…)

J.C. De Tata, M.D.
San Francisco, CA