An interview
Colin Rose about learning, education and results

You are a creator of Accelerated Learning, which is a method of fast learning, that assumes assimilation of language in a way as close to the natural as possible. What does it mean in practice?

I have developed 2 main projects.

One has been teaching students how to be better learners – learning how to learn effectively. When the world is changing so fast the ability to learn and re–learn throughout life is a fundamental skill. But in schools we mostly teach subjects – not skills. When the Internet is so rich with free information that seems to me to be a wrong emphasis. They need to know how to assess that information and maybe create something new from it.

The second project has been to apply what we have learned from brain research over the last 20 years to learning languages – in the case of Poland, learning English.

You learn the basics of your native language in the 24 months between about 16 months old to 40 months old. But without any formal instructions whatsoever. That astonishing success is achieved through games, stories and when your parents/an adult describe what is happening as it actually happens – i.e. so you get a physical and visual association to the words you are hearing. For example – “it’s raining, so let’s put on your coat”. Synchronizing audio, visual and physical input into the brain. That way you are more absorbing language than consciously learning it.

So our language courses reproduce these elements. There is an interesting story where every single sentence is illustrated with a photograph – in total thousands of ‘visual clues’ to help you develop or absorb vocabulary in a natural way.

We then invite you to engage in activities and games that ‘activate’ the vocabulary – and grammar points you have just seen and heard. It’s in–depth, emersion, multi–sensory learning.

We DON’T start with grammar. We point out patterns – e.g. this is how we make the future tense – after you have already seen it and used it. So a lot of the learning is unconscious.

To whom is this method addressed? Who may benefit from it – kids, adults, absolute beginners at certain language?

The language schools we have in Poland teach adults English – from absolute beginner to a high level of fluency.

But we started in England teaching French, German and Spanish to 12–16 year olds. In short, anyone can benefit.

By creating your method, you have been using Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory. How can this be helpful in learning a foreign language?

I think that Multiple Intelligence Theory is a good description of how we are all intelligent, but in different ways. There are some 8 forms of intelligence – and it makes sense of our differences. For example, a professional...