Introducing the diglot weave narratives, the key to fast foreign language learning

Do you like reading stories? Particularly stories that have a hidden meaning? If that is so, then the Diglot Weave Narratives are for you. Today’s new language technology has pictures, pop ups, gimmicks, bells and whistles. Yet the power of learning a language with the Diglot Weave Narratives has not been surpassed.

In my opinion it never will.

Language pioneer Dr Blair explains how the diglot weave narratives started like this;

The Diglot Weave Narrativesrn'The story of the Diglot Weave reader is interesting. Professor Rudy Lentulay (look his name up online) of Bryn Mawr University was invited to teach a class in Russian for 20 minutes a day.

20 minutes a day twice a week to kindergarten children.Lacking in previous experience teaching small children, he was hesitant to accept the invitation. For he doubted children could learn any significant amount of language under such a limited schedule.

By chance he had just finished reading the novel Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. In this novel teenagers use almost 200 slang words, all of them Russian words in English spelling.

The reader as well as the teenagers in the story must learn the meaning of the new words from context. From this came the inspiration to make a game out of learning Russian. A word game that small children could play. So he accepted the job.

From the first day he made story telling the focus of the course. Each week he told a story, with Russian words sprinkled here and there. At first sparingly. Then gradually more and more abundantly.

Each story used as much as possible the vocabulary employed by previous stories. Since the learners were children beginning first grade, nothing was written for them in English or Russian. They had to get the words not through translation but only through visual and verbal context.
Through pictures and verbal - nonverbal context, Professor Lentulay engaged these young children in playful, meaningful use of new expressions.

The game was this; once a new expression was started in circulation, the children were expected to use it in place of the English equivalent thereafter.The "game”; was to catch a child using an English word or phrase where the Russian equivalent was called for.

The rules of "Musical Chairs"; was sometimes used to eliminate from play those who slipped up. Central to the activity was the story.
Before the end of the term Professor Lentulay was telling complete stories, even stories from Russian literature, in Russian. And the six year old children that he was teaching understood.
So real language progress started in Russia with Professor Lentulay and his teaching to the Russian children.
Today some of the greatest language courses ever developed (Pimsleur for example) use similar methods.