Bruce’s Blog
Bruce Balmer
Bruce speaks 6 languages and has been a headmaster, private tutor, provided SEN and CPD training, lectured to over 350 private schools in the UK, France & Canada including Benenden, Roedean, Gordonstoun, Cheltenham Ladies College, CharterHourse, Moreton Hall etc. and lectured to 65,000+ students world-wide. He has taught accelerated language learning in adult education where his average feedback per lesson was 9.2 / 10.
Bruce helps people feel the same excitement about learning a language that they felt when they started.
Check out Bruce’s Blog – HERE!
Playing Catch-up in Class
You probably all know someone who has had to play catch-up in a class, and how incredibly hard it is to stay motivated. This is especially true because our teachers are often the main source from which we derive our confidence, so if the teacher says I am rubbish at Spanish, it's reasonable for me to believe that I am rubbish at Spanish. But what if you are just a little behind?! It could be that you joined the class part-way through the course, or that perhaps because of covid or for some...
How to stay motivated when learning a language
The most important thing for you to stay motivated is a sense of progress, of "getting there`" where ever "there" may be for you. If you rely only on your perception, you will go through several patches that are quite demotivating when progress seems to be slowing drastically or to have come to a stop. The keys to staying motivated are: Use external tests to measure your progress accuratelyAccept there will be fluctuations in your score. Track your results and graph them so you can see your...
Just how ridiculous are exam curricula?
Don't take it from me. Here is a reddit post made recently. J’étudie le français depuis 11 ans maintenant et je le parle couramment comme un natif. Mais quand j’ai passé le test CECR, le résultat était seulement B2. Est-ce normal ? Parce que je pense que je suis excellente en français. Translation I've been studying French for 11 years and now speak fluently like a native. But when I take a CECR test, I only achieve a B2. Is it normal? I ask because I believe that I am excellent at French....
Tonal languages – and why native speakers seldom make good teachers.
I'm so happy about my Thai. It used to be that each review of a Thai word would take 2-3x longer than reviewing any other language I know. Today, I was having to slow down my reviews because I was under the minimum recommended exposure time per fluency unit (3 seconds). How's that for a turn up for the books? The most important change however, is not speed. My mind now (finally) sees the tone as integral to the word and not an addition to the word. That is what is making speaking, listening...
150 hours to learn a language from zero to B1
Our current progress in accelerating language learning stands at this. In our lates group of reddit DuoLingo users, which we asked to try our system and compare it to their experience of DL - none of those people will take longer than 75 hours to get from zero to B1 based on their current rate of progress (they are presently about one third of the way through the course, course duration is predictable at this point). Our claim to them was that we could get them from zero to B1 in 150 hours (or...