Welcome – let’s speak English!
Learn English and improve your language skills with our enjoyable and modern approach.
Our experienced and friendly British English teacher, Sab Will, is looking forward to helping you.
On this page you will find all the information you need to get started.
If you want specific information, just send us a message here and we’ll get right back to you!
Our English Courses ~ Our Teaching Goals
Our Innovative Method ~ Our Lively Association
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Our English Courses
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All of the following courses take place at the Maison des Associations, in Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, near the Town Hall.
➡️ Reserve Your Place Now ⬅️
➡️ Download Enrollement Form ⬅️
➡️ Enroll On-line ⬅️
NOTE: If you are an Association, School, Teacher, Organisation, Individual, Group of Friends or a Family interested in what we do and would like something in particular then please get in touch and we will see what we can do!
Contact us here!
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Our Teaching Goals
Over the years we have developed three strong pillars to our teaching activities:
1) Helping you improve your English
Of course this is our overall goal but it is rather vague!
To really help you learn we consider important personal factors such as:
- Your current level
- Why you are learning English
- What you like best about studying English
- Your favourite way of learning and practising
- Things you really want to improve or find particularly difficult
2) Showing you how to learn better and faster
We believe in using powerful and proven study techniques, such as:
- A personalised approach
- ‘Brain-friendly’ methods like mind mapping
- A comfortable physical and emotional environment
- Exploiting how we really memorise and recall information
- Seeing the ‘whole picture’ as well as the details
- Stimulating all the senses
- Collaborative learning activities
- Motivating and positively reinforcing all efforts
- Recognising every student’s progress
3) Having fun teaching and learning English!
Unfortunately the stimulating activity of learning is often harmed by the stressful context of studying for exams or having to meet some other externally imposed objective.
The good news is that fun can be highly effective if done right! Our lessons are:
- An exciting moment of guided improvement for all
- Varied, challenging, surprising and rewarding
- Happy, positive and enriching
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Our Innovative Method
It is an exciting time in education at the moment.
We are constantly learning more about learning itself; how we memorise and recall things, how uniquely individual each learner is, and how a more holistic, personalised and positive approach to learning can reap huge rewards on many levels.
Without going into details (we do that here…), we believe that the educational experience most pupils receive is less than optimal. And that’s being gentle.
We are also well aware that we live in the real world: a world of deeply entrenched educational systems designed and built on vested interests and principles of yesteryear; a world full of budgetary constraints and resistance to change and internal politics; a world, in short, which places many obstacles in the way of deploying best learning practices as we understand them today.
At Rainbow English we aim to offer a taste of what effective learning could be, based on the latest scientific research and practical studies, innovative teaching techniques and simply treating learners as they really are: gifted human beings keen to learn and excited about expressing their own creativity too.
Our approach is to take the best ideas already out there and combine them with our own to develop an exciting learning method which complements and builds on what students are already learning at school. For adults, our approach offers a powerful new perspective on learning for the modern age.
We believe that the only constant is change, and that everything can and should be improved on an on-going basis. As with any learning situation, in order to get better we need to try out new things and practise them for a while to see if they work. To this extent our classes are a kind of collaborative experiment and we believe this is an excellent thing for all concerned.
Recent serious studies in language skills offer us worrying results: France ranking 15th out of 17 European countries in terms of competence in English in an EF Education First study; France coming next-to-last in first foreign language (English) skills in a ‘rigorous and complex’ study by the European Commission. (Only the British are worse in their first foreign language – French! – well done guys!)
There is absolutely no doubt that we can do much, much better and the only way to improve and stop all too common headlines and damning articles (in the French press) like ‘Les Français sont vraiment nul en anglais‘ (The French are really crap at English!) is to try new ways of doing things. Which is exactly what we are doing at Rainbow English School.
The sad and ironic thing is, our techniques are scientifically and practically proven to work; they are both more fun and more effective – what could be better than that? The only reason they are considered ‘experimental’ or ‘alternative’ is that the ‘traditional’ educational system is so deeply entrenched in the past and so notoriously resistant to innovation.
More ‘progressive’ countries like Finland, which employ more personalised teaching methods and ‘brain-friendly’ visual tools like mind mapping are getting A+ results.
France is getting report cards like this:
“France and Italy, two large developed economies, can in particular do better. Our data indicates that the level of English teaching in France and Italy is below European standards.”
~ EF Education First study (the largest private educational establishment in the world)
and like this:
“International studies show that not only are [French pupils] far from mastering the skills expected at age 15, above all they come last in the list of European students tested in these areas.”
~ The French education minister labeling the results of French pupils in foreign languages as ‘particularly alarming’.
As a French association with a distinctly British flavour, we hope to improve the level of English wherever it’s important in a friendly and personal fashion. We hope you’ll join us in the adventure and be part of our story! You’re very welcome! 😃
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Our Lively Association
English Lessons
In and around our local town of Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, 35 kilometres to the south of Paris, we offer lively English lessons to both school children and adults. We strongly believe in the personal touch, and all of our students are highly valued members of the Rainbow English family.
We intend to contribute positively to advancing English teaching in our community so that more learners have better opportunities for personal and professional success in the future. This will lead to better international communication and understanding between open-minded, enthusiastic people everywhere.
Cultural Activities
Our association also organises regular discussions in English on a variety of topics to enable local people to practise their English in a friendly and encouraging atmosphere.
For the future we are planning English-themed visits to the UK and we are open to suggestions for interesting destinations!
Another project we have in mind is an English-French linguistic exchange where we link up with English speaking kids (and adults) somewhere in the world to share experiences and ideas with each other. Maybe one day we’ll even get to meet in person.
Training Actions
We are also active in the educational community, helping to advance teaching and improve learning where we can. We contribute to various teaching events and forums, both on and off-line, and we are happy to be part of this forward-looking global community.
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