I had a friend tell me how impressed she was with AIM Language Learning. She had never pursued it due to its cost, but perhaps if a few people got together, once person could take the training and the others could pay for the resulting classes? I decided to check it out.

The company offers a free trial of the teacher training and free introductory webinars. I signed up for both, and proceeded to watch a few of the videos. The “Pared-Down Language” video had some great thoughts on how kids learn and the importance of high frequency words. You can check it out here (it’s 20 minutes long, but worth it): http://aimlanguagelearning.com/training-and-development/e-learning/online-teacher-training.html (Scroll down a bit – should be the video being loaded by default).

The basic premise of the program is to use gestures to reinforce vocabulary. This seems like it would be fantastic, particularly for kinesthetic learners. Based on the company’s research, it seems to be working. That being said, I still decided against it for my kids. The price really is crazy – $475 just for the first module. This module does include 50 hours of instruction, but I still thought the price was too high. The program starts at the beginning with greetings etc. and my kids already have a reasonable vocabulary base. I couldn’t risk spending that kind of money on stuff they already know. The last problem for me was that I wasn’t willing to invest all that time in learning gestures to go with the words myself, since I already know how to speak the language.

I can see this program being a great fit for a French educator in a school environment, or for a parent who is willing to invest the time and money to perhaps even learn the language themselves at the same time. Unfortunately, that parent isn’t me!

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