I/O IDIOMAS. What could that possibly mean?

I found it very hard to find a name for my business. I love being technical, but that doesn’t always sell well. I love being a bit silly, but again, that doesn’t exactly sell

While teaching classes, I tend to use a variety of techniques from a range of teaching methods and methodologies – but at the end of the day, I noticed one thing about all of my clasess, about all of the techniques that I draw from: it’s all about INPUT and OUTPUT.

At all levels, all skills, speaking, reading, writing, listening, mediation … all of it is INPUT or OUTPUT.

How does this come into teaching? Each activity, each drill, can be broken down simply into one of the two broader categories and the student can know what it is they’re practicing at any given moment and why. The variables can be controlled a bit more, which brings me to the next point of how I settled on a name.

I love using statistics driven learning. It’s terribly nerdy, I know, but it does mean that I can use methods of generative class planning – there is a set course that the student will go down, but – given that each studend is different, the path they take my take 10 days or ten weeks. I have carefully broken down the “input” section of language learning to discreet, countable and trackable variables, which at the very least gives the student confidence to tackle any challenges that come their way regarding the language.

OUTPUT is a little bit trickier to develop – it’s creativity. It’s even more difficult to track, but it is definitely a vital part of the language learning process.