We all like a compliment.
I had occasion to explain in a forum something of what we do including the speed at which a Total Fluency student make progress as compared to students in more conventional study programmes (150 hours to B1 as opposed to the traditional 900 hours).
The person giving me the compliment – which actually started life as an insult – said that what I was saying was about as believable as a late night commercial. His foolishness is worthy of forgiveness because his skepticism may be very well founded in so far as traditional education has tried many, many times to produce a 10% improvement in academic performance and been largely unable to do so. So if 10% is clearly very difficult then 500% is surely – unlikely. On the other hand such thinking is simplistic. A clear example would be that people walk at about 3 miles per hour. To suggest you can “walk” at 18 miles an hour is just silly. The more you know, the more you know that statement is false. But to “go” at 18 miles per hour is quite easy on a bicycle (if you are fit), even easier in a car. People do not realise that it is possible to escape the paradigm in which they are operating usually because they don’t know they are operating in one.
Reflecting on his comment, I realised he had paid us a huge compliment. Our students do so well compared to students of more conventional methods, that he simply couldn’t believe the results – they seemed so far from his experience. That is rather lovely. Sure, he could have phrased it better but I am going to extract the compliment and throw away the rest. And since most readers of this blog are students of ours – you will know that we meet every claim we make. Indeed, you are our proof that humans are rather more brilliant that traditional education tends to demonstrate.
Congratulations to you for finding us, for being willing to suspend judgement long enough to give us a try and see the results for yourselves. And “thank you” for proving that what we say is indeed possible.