Sometimes a school opens to meet purely local needs, for example, near enterprises where many foreigners work, and then gradually grows, opening ever new branches. If demand for a particular language falls, some schools disappear. Then the market revives, and new companies emerge, whose fate can be anything - from worldwide success to complete ruin. Thus, the cycle does not stop.
In recent years, there has been a growing trend toward the formation of international networks of language schools. This makes a certain amount of sense. When hard times come, such a company can close or suspend operations of its least profitable branches and continue its activities where the influx of students is still great. There is also the opportunity to buy out or absorb less fortunate competitors - purchasing a ready-made school often turns out to be less costly and troublesome than opening a new one.
For obvious reasons, the widest networks have been spread around the world by English language schools. Branches of companies such as Berlitz, International House, EF, and others can be found in every corner of the world. Others prefer to let the mountain come to Muhammad, and wait for students in their native English-speaking countries. For example, the American company Kaplan has offices in many US cities, as well as in Canada. Embassy CES, founded in 1972, is a network of year-round English language centers in a number of countries: the UK (London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Brighton, Hastings), the USA (New York, Boston, San Francisco, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale), and Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, Brisbane, Gold Coast). And Language Studies Canada (LSC), founded in 1962, owns four language schools in Canada and, according to director Gail Forler, prides itself on being "100 percent Canadian".
The beginning was so long ago...
The main boom in the creation of language schools came in the 50s and 60s of the last century. However, the beginning was laid much earlier. The founder of the entire industry of teaching languages to foreigners can rightly be considered the American Maximilian Berlitz. His first school opened in 1878 in the city of Providence. It was there that Berlitz first applied the direct teaching method he invented, which proved to be highly effective. And off it went: the second school opened in Boston, the third in Berlin. By May 1900, Berlitz schools already existed in 16 European countries, and by 1914 on four continents. Despite the emergence of many competitors, the company remains one of the most popular in the world today and has more than 500 branches in 63 countries.
It must be said that competitors of Berlitz appeared fairly quickly. One of the first British language schools - London School of English - was founded in 1912 by a teacher from the Berlitz school, Alfred Park, who was dissatisfied with the teaching methodology and learning style adopted by Berlitz. Well, his enterprise was successful: the London School of English thrives to this day, although, true to its name, it has not set a foot outside London.
After World War II, English began to rapidly acquire the status of an international language. It must be said that this was explained not only by economic but also by psychological reasons. Before the war, the main second language for Europeans was German. After the war, it turned out to be, as it were, compromised (although, of course, the language was not to blame for the temporary mass insanity of its speakers); the British and Americans were seen as liberators, saviors of the world. Few people already remember that in Soviet pre-war secondary schools, the subject "foreign language" meant exclusively German. And after that it seemed to disappear - it was everywhere replaced by English, and only after many years did it begin to be reintroduced in some schools, often as an elective. And in a number of other countries there was the same sharp rejection of the German language, while English prospered.
Ideals of International Friendship
The goal of the first British language schools was "to promote international understanding by providing quality English teaching for people from all over the world," as Frank Bell put it, who in 1955 founded the Bell International school in Cambridge, which today has branches in 25 countries and a "turnover" of 30,000 students annually.
"In the 50s it was quite easy to create a language school. You found premises, opened the doors - and students came in a stream. The demand for English was very great in all European countries, and there was nowhere to learn it except in Britain," says John Eckersley, another pioneer of teaching English to foreigners, who opened the Eckersley School of English in Oxford in 1953. By the way, John Eckersley has nothing to do with the author of the popular English textbook, except that both made a considerable contribution to the process of turning English into an international language.
Among the first schools opened in Britain, besides those already mentioned, one can name International House by John and Brita Haycraft (1953), Eurocentres by Erhard Waespi (1948), St Giles by Paul and Diana Lindsay (1955), King's by Frederick King and Robert Watts (1957), in 1964 Regent appeared, in 1965 - EF English First. Today all these are renowned chain schools with many branches and a high reputation.
In those years, knowledge of a foreign language was considered prestigious not only among people with higher education, but also among students. Therefore, in Oxford and Cambridge, several language schools quickly appeared that offered their short-term courses specifically to foreign students. Similar courses also operated at some universities in the USA and Canada.
In Australia, however, the first private language school was opened for somewhat different reasons: here they wanted to attract foreign students to Australian universities. Australians call the first such school Woods English Teaching Laboratory - a private college in Sydney, opened in 1965 for those who planned to enter Australian universities. According to unverified rumors, the initiator of the college's creation was the Australian government.
"The 1950s also saw the creation of the first language school in Malta - it was NSTS. In the following decades, network giants came to Malta - from Berlitz, Bells, Inlingua and others, which today peacefully coexist with small centers of purely Maltese scale.
The pioneer of English language teaching in Ireland is considered to be the Language Centre of Ireland (1964), in New Zealand - Dominion (1969), and quite recently - in 1990 - the first language center opened in South Africa - Cape Town School of English.
History with geography
The development trends of language schools in Britain and the USA partly serve as a model for other countries, but with adjustments for national characteristics. For example, Walter Milner, director of Milner International College of English in Australia and owner of a language school in Britain, claims that in Britain it is much easier and cheaper to open a new school than in Australia. And Damien Renault (French language school BLS) says that in France it is also not easy to do. "Network schools develop mainly in English-speaking countries, because it is much easier to profit from them. In France, on the other hand, maintaining a language school is much more difficult in terms of laws and tax policy." Until recently, BLS had a center for adults in Bordeaux and a children's summer camp in Biarritz, and in September 2003, Damien managed to open a year-round branch for adults in Biarritz as well.
Demand for English remains unchanged; as for other languages, it is not only less but can fluctuate from season to season. Moreover, fluctuations can be caused by the most unexpected reasons, such as a football championship in some country. That is why network schools in the teaching of German, French, and others are not so widespread and not so large - they conform to their market opportunities. Take Germany, for example. Here only a few can boast of "tentacles" spread all over the world - perhaps only the Goethe Institut, Carl Duisberg Centren (CDC) and DiD. Thus, the Carl Duisberg Centren language school network has been teaching German to students around the world for over 40 years and has eight branches in Germany - in Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Saarbrücken, Dortmund and Radolfzell. It was created as a subsidiary of the government fund "Carl Duisberg Society". CDC is part of the consortium for developing the exam for the PWD certificate (business German). The school also has branches outside Germany, particularly in Spain, as well as in Moscow, where one can study not only German but also English.
Florian Mayerhofer, representative of the school BWS German-lingua with centers in Berlin and Munich, claims that in Germany only a few large cities can "afford" a language school - no one will go to an unknown village to learn German. Therefore, the expansion of German schools even in the domestic market is problematic, not to mention the international one - after all, the demand for German, compared to English, is limited. The same applies to France, where the largest player is Alliance Francais (12 branches in different French cities and dozens around the world).
Among the "networkers" of Spain, the most famous are Don Quixote (branches in Salamanca, Madrid, Granada, Seville, Barcelona, Valencia, Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and in the Peruvian city of Cusco), Enforex (Madrid, Barcelona, Marbella, Salamanca, Granada and a number of Latin American countries), and Estudio Internacional Sampere (Madrid, Salamanca, El Puerto, Alicante, Quito - the capital of Ecuador).
Some Italian language schools, such as Leonardo da Vinci, can also boast branches in several cities. A striking example of an Italian network school is Linguaviva, which appeared in 1976 in Florence. Ten years later, Linguaviva opened a branch in Japan, another three years later in Israel, then in Milan. In 1994, Linguaviva appeared in Luxembourg with a rather unusual proposal for that time: to teach members of the European Parliament all the languages of the European Union (luckily there were not as many then as today). At the same time, a center opened in Switzerland, where all the official languages of the Alpine republic were taught, including Romansh. The most recent chord was the opening of a youth language center in Lugano. Today, more than eight thousand people study at Linguaviva every year. This is quite a lot for an Italian school, although not much for an international one.
All-rounders
The most famous and successful language schools are not limited to teaching one language. This allows them to expand their field of activity almost endlessly and to master more and more new territories. So, Eurocentres, which opened as one of the first in 1948 in Bournemouth as an English school, successfully crossed both the language barrier and state borders, and today teaches six languages in 11 European countries, as well as in North America, Australia and Japan.
The originally French Ceran Lingua International will offer you courses in English, French, Dutch, German, Japanese, and Spanish in countries such as Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Belgium, the USA, the Netherlands, and Japan. International House, which became famous for "bringing" English to the most remote corners of the world (the latest achievement was Ulaanbaatar), also opens courses in the local language - for foreigners - in many of the countries it has developed.
The British network OISE, which started with one school in Oxford and takes its name from there (Oxford Intensive School of English), today owns dozens of centers in Britain, the USA, Australia, Germany, Spain, and France. OISE's latest acquisition is the well-known Regent group, which has made the company perhaps the richest and most powerful on the English language teaching market in the United Kingdom.
And it seems there is no language that cannot be learned at Berlitz, Sprachcaffe, Inlingua, and you would not find branches of these major companies except perhaps in Antarctica.
Programs and courses
Language schools, starting with Berlitz, brought about a real revolution in teaching and fundamentally changed the approach to foreign languages. After all, people have learned languages throughout their history, but only in the 20th century did spoken language become the center of learning. The activity of language schools was and remains strictly pragmatic: to teach students to communicate in a foreign language as quickly as possible. Old methods and programs were not suitable for this.
A fundamentally new learning model emerged: ten to twelve students of different languages who do not understand each other or, at first, the teacher. And this teacher must teach them in a matter of weeks. Unsurprisingly, language schools became the leading edge of methodology. Most modern methods, approaches, and programs were developed in them, in particular the widespread communicative approach, which is most suitable for exactly such a situation. Methods continue to improve, and the number of programs and courses keeps growing.
The first language centers began their activity with one and the same program, now called the "general course," to which new ones were subsequently added as demand grew. This is how courses for business communication, professional purposes, pre-university and exam preparation appeared; short-term intensive programs, programs for children and youth, courses for teachers, and others were developed. As a rule, in large international chain schools the range of programs is as wide as possible, and this is one of their advantages over small centers, which often specialize in two or three types of courses.
Chain schools have other advantages, although evil tongues often call them "conveyor belts" and "factories." Yes, the number of students here is large, and of course the director does not know everyone by name, as is the case in small family schools. On the other hand, large centers, as a rule, can boast advanced teaching equipment, a language laboratory, computer classrooms, and a large library. They usually have a whole staff of methodologists developing and improving courses. The qualifications of teachers are most often high - such schools can afford the most "expensive" specialists. However, you will probably receive less attention here than in a small school - and that, in fact, is the main drawback of the "assembly-line method" of schools through which thousands of students pass per year. But there is a way out of this situation - in addition to group classes, you can order individual lessons, and then you will definitely be the center of attention.