The Paul Noble Language Institute

Wednesday 4 June 2014

The Paul Noble Language Institute London: Testimonials, Feedback and Reviews

The Paul Noble Language Institute has received a great many positive reviews over the years. Here are just a few of of them:

"These courses are simply fantastic!"

BBC Radio London

"More than I ever managed in five years of French at school."

The Guardian

"Paul Noble has developed a system that allows students to learn foreign languages in a revolutionary way."

MENSA Magazine

"Formidable!"

The Daily Telegraph

"Minimal effort buy guaranteed results."

City Life Magazine

"Fantástico!"

The Daily Mail

Why not try out a Paul Noble Language Course today, either at our language centre or with one of our CD courses published by Collins.

Or, if you've already learnt a language with one of our courses, leave us some feedback below!

Monday 3 June 2013

Foreign Terms of Endearment

How would you like it if someone called you “my little lump of sugar”? And what would you think if, in a romantic voice, someone said to you: “diving fish, swooping geese”?

Well, depending on where you were in the world, you might just hear some of these very things! Terms of endearment vary hugely from country to country – so, whereas in one place you might be compared to a type of vegetable, in another you’ll probably be compared to a type of bird. And though in some instances romantic expressions come from ancient stories, in others they’re used simply because a certain something tastes nice! So, here are just some of the things you can expect to hear if you fall in love with someone whilst abroad:

In France, if someone falls in love with you they might choose to call you "mon petit chou”, “my little cabbage” or, alternatively, they could refer to you as “ma puce”, meaning “my flea”.

The Spanish, by contrast, display a sweeter tooth and will sometimes call the one they love their “terrón de azúcar”, their “lump of sugar”.

In Portugal, however, they’ll refer to their beloved as something that they absolutely cannot not live without - “meu coração”, “my heart”. Whilst in their former colony of Brazil, people will use “chuchuzinho” to express affection, which means something like “my little pumpkin”.

In Germany it’s quite different again. There, they’ll choose to elevate you to the heavens and call you their “Englein”, or “little angel”.

Italians, on the other hand, will demonstrate how truly rich they are to have you, naming you “tesoro mio”, “my treasure”.

In Russia though they will once more look up to the heavens for inspiration, calling you “golubchik" (голубчик) if you are a man, or “golubushka” (голубушка) if you are a woman, both meaning “little dove”.

Of course, you could end up falling in love with someone from a far more distant foreign land and, in that case, you should be prepared for everything to get significantly more exotic! For instance:

In Japan, a man will tell a woman he is in love with that she has “tamago gata no kao” (卵形の顔): “a face shaped like an egg”. This is a great compliment in Japan, where having an oval (egg-shaped) face is considered very attractive.

In Arabic, on the other hand, a beloved and beautiful woman can be described as “yoon al ghrazaali” (لك عيون الغزال), “having eyes like a gazelle”.

By contrast, the people of Thailand prefer to choose a quite different animal with which to compare their sweethearts, calling them “cháang nóoy” (ช้างน้อย) or “little elephant” – suggesting perhaps that they prefer their partners with a bit of meat on them.

And whilst in India people will describe the woman they love as being “mere dil ki rani” (मेरे दिल की रानी), “the queen of my heart”, Indonesians will choose something a touch juicer, naming their beloveds “buah hatiku”, “the fruit of my heart”.

But it is undoubtedly the Chinese who must take the prize for the most dramatic and interesting of romantic endearments. They win first place based on the story surrounding the greatest beauty in Chinese history, a woman named Xi Shi. It’s said that Xi Shi was so profoundly beautiful that when she looked at fish in a pond, the fish were so dazzled by her beauty that they forgot to swim and gradually sank deeper and deeper down, until eventually they had dived all the way to the bottom. Likewise, it was said that when geese flew overhead, they were so struck by her beauty that they would forget to flap their wings and so would end up swooping to the ground. Because of this, to this day, when a young Chinese man is in love with a Chinese woman, he may wish to tell her that, to him, she is as beautiful as Xi Shi. To do this, he will use just four words: “chén yú luò yàn” (沈魚落雁), which simply mean “diving fish, swooping geese.”

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Germanic Language Speakers Needed!

The Germanic Language Project

The Paul Noble Language Institute is planning to launch a project to create a range of courses that will teach some of the more neglected Germanic languages.

To this end, we are looking for speakers of these languages who would be interested in creating published courses together with us.

The courses will essentially be audio-based, although a supporting booklet will also be included with them.

Languages currently penned for inclusion within the first wave of the project include: Afrikaans, Icelandic and Yiddish. A second wave is also provisionally planned, with details to follow later.

For each language, we aim to produce a 13-hour course that will cover cover key grammar and a functional vocabulary for each language.

All distribution costs for the project will be borne by The Paul Noble Language Institute. Any net profits for each course produced will go to the course author.

This is a long-term project

This announcement on our Blog is the first step of several that are intended to lead to the creation of these new courses. We are currently looking essentially for an expression of interest on the part of those who may wish to author one of these Germanic language courses. This is a long-term project and anyone interested in participating will need to have this in mind from the outset.

Requirements

To author one of these courses, you will need to be either a native speaker of one of these languages or at approximately Level C2 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Please note that we will not favour native speakers over non-native proficient speakers of the language when selecting our authors, as non-native speakers will use native speaker co-teachers during the recordings.

What concerns us far more is that the author should:

- have a general interest in learning languages.

- have studied more than one foreign language - and ideally more than three (if only to a moderate level).

- be interested in innovative styles of teaching.

- have some teaching, tuition or training experience (this need not be extensive and does not necessarily need to have involved teaching languages as such - we are not looking for a standard language teacher - in fact, if you taught somewhere only briefly but felt dissatisfied with the results, you may be just who we are looking for!)

Working with us

Should you fit this criteria and come to author a course with us, you will be given guidance on how to put your course together. How you apply this guidance will be your decision to make but the course will have to pass our strict quality control guidelines. This process may take as much as a year to complete and will include a significant number of test run sessions, for which you will require students. Our standards are extremely high and we will work with you to make sure that each course works precisely as it is intended to.

Finally, having written the course, you will be required to carry out the teaching on the audio-course itself.

Expressing an interest

If you feel that you meet the requirements laid out above, please email us an expression of interest at germaniclanguageproject@paulnoblelanguages.com, making sure to include in the email:

- Which language it is you wish to teach.

- Which other languages you speak or are studying.

- A paragraph describing what it is that you feel makes a good self-study language course.

Please note: All details relating to the project are subject to change or cancellation, without notice or liability. Being short-listed as a candidate, or invited for interview, does not guarantee you will be accepted as a course author or Paul Noble Language Institute employee.

Celtic Language Speakers Needed!

The Celtic Language Project

The Paul Noble Language Institute is planning to launch a project to help increase the number of speakers of Celtic languages within the UK, Ireland and the wider world.

To this end, we are looking for speakers of Celtic languages who would be interested in creating published courses for Celtic languages together with us, with the intention being that these courses will be available not only for commercial sale but that they will also be gradually adopted by schools within the UK and Ireland.

The courses will essentially be audio-based, although a supporting booklet will also be included with them.

Languages currently penned for inclusion within the intended first wave of the project include: Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh. A second wave is also intended, which will include Manx and Cornish.

For each language, we aim to produce a 13-hour course that will cover key grammar and a functional vocabulary for each language.

All distribution costs for the project will be borne by The Paul Noble Language Institute. Any net profits for each course produced will go to the course author.

This is a long-term project

This announcement on our Blog is the first step of several that are intended to lead to the creation of these new courses. We are currently looking essentially for an expression of interest on the part of those who may wish to author one of these Celtic language courses. This is a long-term project and anyone interested in participating will need to have this in mind from the outset.

Requirements

What concerns us far more is that the author should:

- have a general interest in learning languages.

- have studied more than one foreign language - and ideally more than three (if only to a moderate level).

- be interested in innovative styles of teaching.

Working with us

Finally, having written the course, you will be required to carry out the teaching on the audio-course itself.

Expressing an interest

If you feel that you meet the requirements laid out above, please email us an expression of interest at celticlanguageproject@paulnoblelanguages.com, making sure to include in the email:

- Which language it is you wish to teach.
- Which other languages you speak or are studying.
- A paragraph describing what it is that you feel makes a good self-study language course.

Please note: All details relating to the project are subject to change or cancellation, without notice or liability. Being short-listed as a candidate, or invited for interview, does not guarantee you will be accepted as a course author or Paul Noble Language Institute employee.

Friday 24 June 2011

Try Our Language Aptitude Test!

Never learned a language before? Wondered if you would be any good at it?

Then why not try our language aptitude test below!

It consists of ten questions and should take you around ten minutes to complete. It is designed for anyone who does not yet speak a foreign language fluently and will help give you an idea of just how naturally you may take to learning your first foreign language. (Make sure to note down your answers - the answer key and scoring are at the bottom of the test).

Our Language Aptitude Test

Question One. How often will you get the chance to use the language you are hoping to learn?

a) Almost never.
b) Perhaps once a year, when I'm on holiday / vacation.
c) All the time (My partner speaks the language / I need it for business / I own a second home in that country etc).

Question Two. How many of the following English words do you know the meaning of?

a) tardy b) altruistic c) egregious d) perfidy e) squaliform

Question Three. How many of these foreign words can you guess the meaning of?

a) patriótico b) Intelligenz c) précieux d) enthusiastisch e) gestikulieren

Question Four. Take a look at the following foreign language sentence and its translation:

Foreign language sentence: Ho preparato il caffè per Lei.
Translation: I have prepared the coffee for you.

Use this sentence now as a guide to work out how to place the words below in the correct order to create a new sentence.

a) per Lei b) una c) torta d) decorato e) Ho

Question Five. Can you work out what the new sentence you have just created (using the words above) means?

a) He has bought a new pair of shoes for you.
b) I have two brothers and sisters.
c) I have decorated a cake for you.

Question Six. Translate the names of the following works, written by a famous playwright, into English.

a) Hamlet, Prinz von Denmark.
b) König Lear.
c) Ende gut, alles gut.
d) Ein Mittsommernachtstraum.
e) Die Komödie der Irrungen.

Question Seven. For each of the five English words given below, select one French and one German word with the same meaning.

English cat ox pig swan sheep

French porc chat boeuf mouton cygne

German Schaf Schwan Schwein Katze Ochse

Question Eight. Take a look at these five Dutch proverbs. What would the equivalent for each proverb be in English?

a) Bloed is dicker dan water.
b) De pen is machtiger dan het zwaard.
c) Geen nieuws is goed nieuws.
d) De pot verwijt de ketel dat hij zwart ziet.

e) Goed begonnen is half gewonnen.

Question Nine. For each of the five English words below, select the Chinese character with the same meaning.

a) mouth b) child c) horse d) mountain e) paddy field

Question Ten. Using the Alphabet Key below, try to work out what the following Russian words mean in English.

метро сестра* ресторан телефон Толстой

Alphabet Key

A Russian "p" = an English "r"

A Russian "c" = an English "s"

A Russian "н" = an English "n"

A Russian "л" = an English "L"

A Russian "ф" = an English "f"

A Russian "й" = an English "y"

* a female relative

Now For The Answers!

Question One - there was no "right" answer for this question but the points, according to how you answered, are...

a) 0 points

b) 3 points

c) 9 points

Question Two - give yourself 1 point for each word you knew the meaning of:

a) tardy = late

b) altruistic = unselfish / charitable

c) egregious = outstandingly bad

d) perfidy = treachery

e) squaliform = shaped like a shark

Question Three - give yourself 1 point for each word you were successfully able to guess the meaning of:

a) patriótico = patriotic

b) Intelligenz = intelligence

c) précieux = precious

d) enthusiastisch = enthusiastic

e) gestikulieren = to gesticulate

Question Four - give yourself 1 point for each word placed in the correct position, as set out below:

e) Ho d) decorato b) una c) torta a) per Lei

Question Five - give yourself 1 point if you chose the correct answer, which is...

c) I have decorated a cake for you.

Question Six - give yourself 1 point for each of Shakespeare's plays that you correctly translated:

a) Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
b) King Lear.
c) All's Well That Ends Well.
d) A Midsummer Night's Dream.
e) The Comedy of Errors.

Question Seven - give yourself 1 point for each pair you correctly matched with the English equivalent - only a complete pair gets you a point!

cat = chat & Katze
ox = boeuf & Ochse
pig = porc & Schwein

swan = cygne & Schwan

sheep = mouton & Schaf

Question Eight - give yourself 1 point for each Dutch proverb you worked out the English equivalent for:

a) Blood is thicker than water.
b) The pen is mightier than the sword.
c) No news is good news.
d) The pot calling the kettle black.
e) A job well begun is a job half done.

Question Nine - give yourself 1 point for each word you were successfully able to guess the meaning of:

a) mouth b) child c) horse d) mountain e) paddy field

Question Ten - give yourself 1 point for each Russian word you were able to work out:

a) Metro / Underground / Subway.
b) Sister.
c) Restaurant.
d) Telephone.
e) Tolstoy.

Your Score!
(Out of 50 - and what it means...)

1-22 Points

To succeed with learning a foreign language you are going to need to find a course that opens your way of thinking to help you see the connections between different languages and that shows you how to structure sentences in the language you are planning to study.

You are definitely capable of learning a foreign language but in your case it is especially important that you find the right course!

23-39 Points

Very good. Your current level of aptitude is typical for someone setting out to learn their first foreign language. Take a look at where you did less well on the test; this will show you what you need to work on to make learning your first foreign language that much easier. It will also help you decide what sort of language course will help you most with your studies.

40-49 Points

Excellent. You have an extensive English vocabulary, plus an ability to see links between English and other languages when they exist. These factors will make language learning far easier, so long as you find a course that utilises these abilities. If you are motivated and did well on question one to boot, you are likely to go far. Well done!

50 Points

You are a linguistic savant. You will power your way through language learning and may well succeed at learning multiple foreign languages. Sir / Madam, we salute you!

How did you do?

Please, please use the comments box below to tell us what score you got, where you struggled, what you found easy and what your plans are for future language study. We always want to know! And do remember, choosing the right course to learn with will ultimately be the most significant factor in how much progress you make!

What the questions tested

For those of you who are interested in what each of the individual questions tested, here is a quick summary:

Question one was designed to test your level of motivation and likelihood of ongoing motivation. Having plenty of opportunities and the need to use a foreign language regularly can really help language learners stay motivated.

Question two was designed to test your word knowledge in English, which is an indicator of general verbal ability.

Questions three, six, seven, eight, nine and ten were designed to test your ability to reason logically in terms of analysing foreign language, foreign language symbols and foreign language vocabulary; in doing so it measured another aspect of verbal ability.

Questions four and five were designed to test your ability to infer a set of rules from a given extract of a foreign language and then to apply these in a different context.

Thursday 23 June 2011

Collins Courses with Paul Noble

The Paul Noble Language Institute, in conjunction with publisher Collins, has produced two ranges of CD courses that allow you to learn French, Spanish, Italian and German using the Paul Noble Method but without ever needing to attend a language class!

Destination French, Spanish and Italian

Our "Destination" foreign language courses are designed to help get you ready for a trip abroad in just 150 minutes! They focus on teaching you how to express yourself with regard to your typical travel needs, so that you no longer need to always be carrying a phrasebook around with you when you're on holiday.

Learn French, Spanish, Italian and German with Paul Noble

Our "Learn ... with Paul Noble" courses are your chance to have a one-to-one lesson from Paul and his native-speaking, co-teacher expert. Each course is 13 hours long and will lead you through the language you're studying so that you learn to manipulate the language and create sentences by yourself, rather than just memorise words and phrases!

Welcome to The Paul Noble Language Institute Blog!