Philosophy, Approach and Method

The program concentrates on listening and speaking rather than on reading and writing so as to promote the child's ease of expression and intuitive grasp of French sentence structure.  Proceeding in this manner, the carefully programmed Cummins Method mimics the natural way in which one painlessly learns his own native language. 

The Cummins Method, eclectic in approach, is active in nature.  We recognize the findings of certain psycholinguists who have exclaimed the virtues of the sensorimotor method to foreign language learning referred to as Total Physical Response.  The body, guided by the right hemisphere of the brain, responds in a stress-free manner to commands in the foreign language.  Comprehension, then, precedes speaking, just as it does in our own native language.

Traditional teaching methods are highly stressful because they rely so heavily on strictly verbal discourse, an instructional strategy geared to the left hemisphere of the brain.  The Janice Cummins Petite Ecole, unlike the pure proponents of Total physical Response, does not wait to introduce speaking.  Though we expect our students to comprehend more quickly than they speak, speaking is introduced immediately and is accompanied by a physical response. 

For example, the student jumps when given the command and simultaneously repeats, "I am jumping".  The student is involved immediately with action verbs to which he responds both physically and mentally.  With the voice, body and mind acting together, there is a heightened awareness, and the foreign language is internalized. 

Through repetition, body language, role playing, games, puppets, songs, poems, drawing exercises and aural and visual aides, the language is learned directly without boring drills and the constant use of English. 

Through our stress-free method, our objective is to have one thinking and speaking in French by eliminating as much as possible the mental barrier of translation.

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Madame Cummins  973-564-8797  janice@janicecumminspetiteecole.com

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