Students of a foreign language need the rigorous discipline of formal paradigmatic training but they also need motivation.

Language learning in youth or adulthood often feels unnatural, or infantilizing,either because it is not learned in the same way as in infancy, or because a student is put in the dependent ignorant role of a baby. These reactions are inevitable but may be ameliorated by texts and processes that bring episodes and vocabulary of ordinary life, and language of the less formal,"off-duty" lives of young people into the curriculum.

This program promises to do just that, to complement other more formal learning of English with the conversational, interactive, contemporary learning that gives confidence to young people wanting to speak, and interact in a relaxed and colloquial fashion. I wish I could have learned Japanese inthe same way!