I was talking to a French language school owner and she was a bit surprised that I never heard of AIM.
Accelerative Integrated Methodology (AIM) is being used in 4,000 schools across Canada, and is rapidly being implemented in schools worldwide.
Does anyone know anything about it and its effectiveness?
Apparently, the French teachers like it: http://www.thestar.com/article/522792#comments
One academic showed AIM students reaching levels of fluency comparable to French immersion students.
These are undoubtedly good techniques for keeping the class amused, active and hopefully learning. I am sure than many teachers today use song, dance, and various forms of role playing. I would imagine that these things work better with young kids, and might be a little more difficult to implement in high school.
The assumption here is that learning takes place in a classroom, and something needs to be done to make the classroom more active. Since I am not a fan of classroom learning, I prefer to read and listen. I just believe that the key task is learning words, and dancing and singing are not going to teach many words. In the end we need reading and listening for that. But then I am 65 years old, and not a school child.
Looking at the videos, it seems like most of the students are at most in the 8th grade. (14 years old). It is also obviously a promotional exercise. It is intriguing though. I will look into it.
Anyway, it seems better than the useless and boring grammar classes.
I’d agree with Oscar, it does seem a lot better. Also (only watched the first two videos) they’re using much more French in the class (is it all in French now?), unlike James123’s French school.
If the classroom is very active, like they’re showing in their promo video, then I think it’s a valuable addition. Using dance, song, acting and the arts, I’d imagine makes the language come alive and could be used for all age groups. I think learning can and should take place in and out of the classroom (dance studio, art room, concert hall etc). The role of the classroom is wrong in most ‘schools’, it shouldn’t be a sit down and listen about ‘French’ thing, it should be a social focus for language learning, after all, languages have a social and cultural function.
de AIM me llama bastante la atencion el uso de gestos como herramientas para anclar informacion en la memoria ( Learn English Vocabulary - YouTube )… hasta donde he visto pareciera ser una version “light” de suggestopedia (Georgi Lozanov)
tiene muy buena propaganda. tiene que tenerla para justificar esos precios (me recuerda un poco a la campaña de mercadeo del rosetta stone -o del mismo Obama xD)
estuve dandole un vistazo a http://aimlanguagelearning.com/forum/index.php y preguntas como “Is AIM program is becoming boring after Gr.5?” son bastante frecuentes… al parecer el enfoque primordial de este programa son los niños. adaptarlo a adolescentes y adultos parece ser tarea netamente del educador
pd: Speaking French with their bare hands; Award-winning teacher Wendy Maxwell has found that simple gestures help students learn; Susanne Hiller, National Post. Saturday, August 31, 2002 http://gened.mr-brox.com/news/post_part6.htm
pd2: and what about “crazy english”??? Crazy English - YouTube xD
pd4: AIM’s Wendy Maxwell explaining roots of Gesture in language learning - YouTube
The bulk of my Russian learning has consisted of listening to audio books and radio interviews, and then reading them and LingQing them at the computer. I have done more or less the same with Portuguese and other languages that I have learned or improved my level in here at LingQ.
I am working off and on on Korean using the same approach, allowing me to listen and learn while doing other tasks. I have trouble imagining myself resorting to gestures, or joining an AIM class.
However for language classes at school, this could be a lot better than what they do now, at least in the lower grades.