Model for Achieving Fluency in a Foreign Language

The universal competence for language processing and production is organic in nature. It is integrated at the core of the human condition. To genuinely master a new language, then, one needs to make it his/her own, at the deepest level.

Second Language Acquisition can be tackled as the integration of a new functional and healthy organ. The OPAL model shows specifically how to do so and how to avoid the potential “rejection phenomena” which often occur when approaching a new language with conventional methods. These consistently emphasise on specific linguistic contents, yet very seldom do they provide ways for the learner to integrate them in a systemically coherent whole. This accounts for the fact that so many people are doing so poorly with second languages, even after years of guided or self study.

OPAL (Organic Patterns in Acquiring Languages) presents a set of distinctions, models, protocols and techniques which, when integrated, will allow anybody to reach genuine fluency in the foreign language they wish to learn. The workshop will give an insight of what these tools - inspired by the fields of NLP and Linguistics - are and how to combine them to aim for truly spectacular results.

Yves Thevenot, has been in the Language Training Business for 15 years. Trained in NLP since 1994 at NLPU, member of the GTC and the Dilts Academy of Authorised Trainers, he is now bringing together the NLP technology and some key distinctions in linguistics to produce a new and highly efficient tool for Second Language Acquisition.