Hands-on language

Elia Powers

Jacqueline Hahn takes your hand and invites you into her Newport

Beach home.

She closes the door, flashes a smile and ...

“How are you DO-ing?” she asks in a distinct French accent. “What

have you done today? How did you get here? Tell me what you saw on

your drive?”

Hahn welcomes you into her home office, offers you a drink, points

toward a chair and ...

“What do you call that?” she asks. “Tell me again, and this time

give me a full sentence. What’s this we’re reading? Do you enjoy

reading books? Why do you enjoy reading books?”

The conversation is thorough, if not mentally fatiguing. The

questions keep coming for an hour, and Hahn demands detailed answers.

In the foreign language of your choice.

Hahn’s hyper-interactive teaching style attracted adults to her UC

Irvine extension classes for more than 25 years. The school honored

her with a Best Foreign Language Instructor award in 1993.

Now the method is drawing clients to her one-woman tutoring

business, called “Modern School of Languages,” which she runs out of

her home.

Hahn teaches Italian, Spanish, French and English as a second

language to clients of all ages.

Shunning the traditional reading-and-writing-only curriculum, she

favors a rapid-fire conversational approach. Hahn calls it

“linguistic aerobics” -- a workout for the mind.

“The problem with teaching foreign language is people learn every

day but still don’t speak the language,” said Hahn, who was born in

Morocco. “You can have five years of experience but still not be able

to order a steak.”

Hahn doesn’t preach style over substance. She’s a stickler for

correct grammatical usage. But she doesn’t believe in

fill-in-the-blank exercises. Instead, Hahn emphasizes verbal

repetition through the use of common grammatical phrases.

If a student cannot remember how to say “pen,” Hahn blames herself

for not repeating the name of the object.

Hahn tapes every lesson and recommends students listen to the

conversations while driving to work. Her goal is to teach students

practical phrases and simulate everyday social situations.

Newport Coast resident Janet Kerber, who visits Hahn for lessons

at least three times a week, endorses her instructor’s style.

“I don’t want to sit down like I’m a third-grader and have the

same dynamics I had in high school,” Kerber said. “I’m very active,

and this method keeps my mind moving.”

Hahn invites students to speak their mind and rarely corrects them

in mid-sentence.

“I don’t want to inhibit them,” Hahn said.

“I want them to be like parrots, repeat everything and express

themselves.”

Using a set of 200 pictures, Hahn trains her students to describe

the details of their environment.

As another learning tool, Hahn created her own French- and

Spanish-language textbooks.

Every lesson is a set of dialogues with illustrations depicting

real-life situations.

Hahn said she wishes her language instructors would have used a

more hands-on approach.

Her distaste for the traditional language-teaching methods began

while she was a college student in London. She received her

bachelor’s degree in English but said she still couldn’t ask for

simple items at a store.

At her first teaching job in Paris, Hahn instructed her students

to throw their textbooks in the garbage.

She did the same when she arrived at St. Margaret’s Episcopal

School in San Juan Capistrano.

Hahn said UCI administrators allowed her the freedom to construct

her own curriculum.

And students say her methods are even more effective on a

one-on-one basis.

“She’s very engaging, very vivacious,” said former Spanish student

Mark MacVay.

“We just start talking, and by the end of the hour I’m charged.”