• Media Praise


  • “… There’s a world of difference between teaching young children a language with methods designed specifically and exclusively for them, such as the Thibaut Technique ….”
    read Associated Press article


    “The more children are engaged, the more likely they are to retain a language,” Thibaut says. “You engage children in different ways depending on the age. With these little ones, you can engage them with your voice, with the gestures, with the way you look at them.”
    read the NY Family Article


    “François Thibaut teaches children how to speak French. His love of the children and enthusiasm for what he is teaching is legendary among New York parents.”
    read The New York Times article


    “Thibaut uses action games so that youngsters learn to take direction in French, skits to sharpen communication skills, plus workbooks and tapes.”
    read New York Magazine article


    “Early learning is thriving in New York. It sounds like beginner’s French, the only difference is that the students have not yet learned how to speak. This is The Language Workshop for Children.”
    read BBC USA Direct News article


    [François Thibaut] “is one of a very few experts in teaching languages to small children.”
    Read More From CNN’s Parenting Today’s Coverage

    “At The Language Workshop for Children teachers speak only the target language in their immersion programs and the teacher never translates …”
    read suite101 article


    “Four year old Alexandra D. talks to her toy animals in Japanese. At snack time, she spontaneously shifts to French. Lindsay S. at age 8 shows an ability to carry on a basic conversation in French without the slightest English accent. Both have been students since the age of 2 at The Language Workshop for Children.”
    read Better Homes and Gardens article

    “Thibaut has spent his life developing his own series of children’s classes (the Language Workshop for Children), teaching methods (the Thibaut Technique) and educational materials (the Professor Toto Language Education Series).”
    read babble article


    “6 BABY CLASSES WORTH THE $$$”
    Foreign Language: The Language Workshop For Children
    Learning a second language enhances a child’s awareness of her primary one. And the similarities and differences between the languages help her understand the sounds, the words, and the rules for putting sentences together. ‘Plus, the more words a child hears by 2, the more her vocabulary will grow,’ says Cindy Kennedy Reedy, a child-development specialist at Arcadia University, in Glenside, Pennsylvania. “These classes engage babies with short, language-based activities that incorporate song.”
    read Parents Magazine article


    “Well-to-do parents line up around the block to enroll their infants and toddlers in François Thibaut’s language classes.”
    read the October 09, 1999 Wall Street Journal article

    “Once our daughter got past her initial confusion of a Spanish-only setting, she was engaged by the fast-paced, lively class.”
    read the May 06, 2010 Wall Street Journal article

    Forming Sentences in a Foreign Language:
    Learning Differences between Adults and Children


    Abstract
    Neurolinguists and language theorists agree that the first few years of life are optimal for language learning. Language learning appears to be an instinct with a biological basis. Children hear only certain sentences uttered by their parents, but quickly gain the ability to form an infinite number of sentences from a small vocabulary. This suggests that the structural rules for grammar are innate to humans. The current theory on language learning is that these rules apply to all languages and that children are born knowing them.

    In his 45 years of experience as a language educator, my mentor François Thibaut has observed that children’s brains are most malleable for language development during the first three years of life and can be imprinted with the sound of any language during that time. Thibaut likens a toddler’s brain to a computer without a printer—although the toddler is learning the language, he or she may not start speaking it right away. For adults, on the other hand, language learning is much more difficult. However, adults can form their own sentences in a foreign language after 20 hours of instruction, but children cannot.

    As an teaching assistant of preschool-age children at French language immersion summer programs, I observed that although children are able to learn some vocabulary of a foreign language as well as basic sentences that are frequently repeated, most children have difficulty forming their own sentences despite many hours of instruction. In practice, grammatical rules of a foreign language are difficult for children to learn. The purpose of this article is to further explore this issue and how it impacts the methods of teaching foreign language.

    Read the Full Article by Rebecca L. Smith Here

    American and French School Systems Compared: A Search for the Ideal Education


    Abstract
    Students know no other schooling system than the one which they attend. As a result, they conflate the concept of “education” with their own experience. They do not learn from the school systems of other countries. With only this limited understanding of what education is and can be, students cannot think critically about their own education. Educators, psychologists, and policy makers find themselves in a similar situation. Seeking to expand this restricted view of education, I compare and contrast the American and French systems of education using my own experiences in the American classroom.

    Read the Full Article by Rebecca L. Smith Here
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