Language training for youths at Regina Coeli
Regina Coeli has begun offering individual language training courses for young people aged 15 to 18. More and more secondary school students are interested in taking language lessons alongside what they get at school. This could be because they find the language difficult, are looking for an additional challenge or want to prepare for internationally orientated education, for example. Students can opt for online lessons from a native speaker and intensive individual language training at Regina Coeli in Vught during the weekend.
Regina Coeli will not be providing traditional tutoring in foreign languages, however. ‘We really teach people to use languages by speaking, listening and writing. That’s more useful for the future than when we teach you tricks to score better on an exam. We look very closely at what someone needs during their intake interview and then put together a personal training programme,’ explains Director of Studies Esther van Berkel.
Language learning for your future
‘If you learn to use the language within your own concrete context, the rules automatically fall more into place. This gives you greater self-confidence when you speak the language and usually leads to higher grades at school. This has certainly been the case for the students who’ve taken language courses with us so far! But the most important thing is that you learn something which you can use for the rest of your life. Speaking languages is and remains important,’ says Van Berkel.
Positive experiences in corona times
Regina Coeli offered compact online training courses that were also popular with and well-evaluated by young people during the corona lockdown. The language institute in Vught is normally a place for people who work in business or for the government, but, interestingly, a wider range of students showed up for online lessons. The youths who took lessons stood out as an interesting group for Regina Coeli because they can be helped to improve their skills in a targeted manner in German, English, French, Spanish or—in the case of students who were not born in the Netherlands—Dutch.
Meeting the needs of youths
‘For years, students and their parents have been asking us whether we can help them with languages,’ says Regina Coeli Managing Director Harm Jan Bouwknegt. ‘The experience we’ve gained over the past few years has taught us that it’s precisely the private lessons given by native speakers that meet young people's needs. That is, of course, our strength and why they like to come to us. With online lessons of 50 minutes each, training can also be combined with school, sports and homework.’
Back to the roots
With this offer for youths, Regina Coeli is actually going back to its roots. In 1903, the order of nuns who founded Regina Coeli settled in Vught and set up a girls’ secondary school boarding school there. In 1963, the sisters began giving language lessons to adults, and Regina Coeli language institute was born.
