Language Spa.
COMMUNICATE.
Communicating occurs in context, concrete and intentionally initiated. Yours is to choose, describe and document the occurrence. Ours is to construe for you a Language BUBBLE™ in which to faithfully introduce our instructors, experienced educators all, to your competences, performance goals and program timing. Is not all language capability primarily acquired through imitation (mimicry)? It is therefore eminently personalized by face-to-face instruction, in a BUBBLE™.
Language Spa proposes its EcoHome: 10 convivial lodgings in a little campus propitious for studying located as it is in the woods of Hainaut province (Belgium) between Mons and Beloeil. Your instructor becomes you host, while the school becomes your home. IMMERSION minimally takes 5 days, spread or consecutive. From the MENU you select à la carte a daily minimum of 4 contact-hours of learning. Apprenticeship is practice oriented through participation day in, day out, during meals, in local activities such as golf, horse-back riding, water-skiing, guided excursions, or hiking trips. Individual instruction occurs face to face in your personal BUBBLE framed by educational professionals.
“One week at Language Spa is worth more than one year of traditional teaching” declare our alumni, even the not so young. It is up to us to prove them right.
Price.
THE PRICE OF YOUR MENU.
Each course costs € 35/hour. Room and board cost €125/day. A language bath of 5 days therefore starts at €1325/week. A second person joining a single program receives a 50% reduction (€663).
WARNING
Dales and VAT taxes are not included in these prices, nor are registrations in the optional activities. Payment is in advance at registration time, and is refundable until 4 days before the beginning of the session. Registrations without room entitle to a reduction of €250/week.
Bubble.™
THE LANGUAGE SPA.
how to think in the target language in order to (better) communicate
A Language Spa ™ immersion Bubble™ is formed once the target language is used within a particular space and keeps its form as long as the dominant language is not spoken, no matter how much silence of research or reflection might take place in between what’s spoken in the target language. In today’s society of instant gratification, many are all too accustomed with “knowing now.” In the language learning environment, this often means asking the speaker to directly translate various terms and phrases so that we can feel some, albeit false, sense of accomplishment, further contributing to the practice of learning lots of isolated terms without any real skill for being able to utilize them once in contact with fluent speakers. With the Language Spa Bubble™ Method, we only speak in full sentences and never use the dominant language to translate (that’s possible as a check out of the Bubble). Sounds somewhat challenging, right? Well, it is. But! it’s also VERY fulfilling and provides for a much better understanding of the grammar structure of the target language, one that hoarding isolated words and phrases obtained through direct translation lacks.
But while being in an immersion Bubble can be fun all on its own for some, for others, it can put them in an uncomfortable position, one in which insecurity and uncertainty can overpower their ability to see the larger picture of language revitalization and the purpose of the bubble. Fortunately, our Language Spa ™ techniques (all of which help in maintaining the immersion Bubble formed) can help with this. One such technique is called ‘Stopwatch.’ The way it works is that a stopwatch is started at the time an immersion Bubble is formed and only stops at those moments when the bubble is popped by the use of the dominant language or direct translation (“Horas non numero sine serenas”). But once the language is spoken again, the bubble ™ has been reformed and the time on the watch can run again. Using a stopwatch to track a group’s overall time in immersion helps them to maintain the Bubble by making its members feel accountable to the watch and the time it is accumulating for the overall group (the more time on the clock, the better!). One thing to note is that it’s not about the complexity of the language you’re using, but about how long you’re using it continuously. In a group setting, everyone is sharing the same goal and so there is less pressure on any one member of the group to keep the Bubble from popping.
Who We Are?
TEAM LANGUAGE SPA.
Two “alumni” share with you their teaching experience
Jean-Marie DEMULIER
Director and instructor, obtained a Licentiate in the Arts of Translating and Interpreting (ISTI). He studied classical humanities at St Barbara College (Ghent)and St Jan Berchmans College (Brussels). During his career he fulfilled functions including:
- Founding Director Bureau Logos & Partners
- Founding Director Director EcoHome® (1996)
- Over thirty years of educational methodologist and instructor of languages:
- Dutch for banking, stock trading, and financing
- Business French (Chambre de Commerce de Paris)
- Italian and English at various language institutes such as CERAN (Spa) and CLL (Brussels, Louvain)
Passionated by suggestopedia, he was adept to the advanced methods of professor Georgi LOZANOV and to the principles of learning foreign languages applied by professor Alfred TOMATIS. At present retired from an international career that brought him even to teach French in India, today he delights in sharing his didactic know-how with those, male or female, young or not so young, who reach out to him.
Stefaan DE SCHRIJVER
Stefaan De Schrijver, instructor, obtained a doctorate in particle physics from the Universita degli Studi “La Sapienza” (Rome), a Master in Divinity from Weston Jesuit School of Theology (Cambridge, MA), a Licenciate in Theology from the Pontifica Universita Gregoriana (Rome), a doctoral certificate from the KULeuven. He studied mathematics and humanities at St Barbara College (Ghent).
His IT career gave him the opportunity to investigate technology and human science topics including:
- Language as frame for structural schemas in transpersonal dynamics
- Transformational educational methodologies such as dynamics of encounter, cognitive development, conscientious conceptualization, bubble/milieu immersion
- Artificial Intelligence and interpretative analysis in distant learning
Intrigued by interpersonal phenomena in personal identity development, he became adept in the advanced analytics necessary for the neuro-psychology and spirituality of the in-between of professors Beatrice Beebe, Paulo Freyre, Carl Jung, Jacques Schotte, Antoine Vergote, and Jeffrey Young. For their work on human factors in computer interfaces his research team received the Technology Prize of the European Union (1997).
At present retired from the international career that kept him based in the United States, he currently lectures in spiritual counseling at the International Institute Canon Triest of the Pontifica Universita Lateranensis.