LTC is the company I started 22 years ago because I knew that there was a better way for people to learn a new language.
For too long I had witnessed students and business people grappling with the daunting task of memorizing words and grammar constructs. After mastering those constructs they were supposed to be able to hang with native speakers, since they had the building blocks of a new language. Really? Well, when my daughter came to me and said, “I goed to the park yesterday, Daddy; it were very fun.” I didn’t launch into a diatribe about the need to use irregular past tense and to get it right, kid. I simply said, “you went to the park yesterday and it was fun. Wow! Let’s do it again today.”
That is what language learning should be – fun, meaningful and contextual. To do that you have to allow students to take chances just like we allow kids to take chances. In both cases we learn the proper conventions and, when the topics are of high interest and meaningful, we even study and have fun. We want to talk about our pet in our new language. We are motivated to explain and describe what our pet can do and why we like them and what we feed them and on and on – all in a new language, with new vocabulary and grammar. You can do it! You can learn a new language and have fun while doing it! We are the classic case of an entrepreneur who loves what he does and makes it work as a business. Here’s to four more years on the Inc. 5000 list and to four hundred more proficient language users of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Farsi and so on. Thank you Inc. 5000 for allowing us to be recognized!
