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Michalis Eleftheriou

Milate Kypriaka? Turche Bilirmisiniz? Hablas Ingles?

If your response to these is something along the lines of: “eh what?” Then fear not, you are in the right place. 

Those who could reply with a “nai” or an “evet”, but could probably do with brushing up on dialects, might also be interested to read on.

Enter the “Language Transfer” project: an innovative scheme that is underway in Cyprus offering free downloadable Greek lessons for English speakers, and English for Spanish speakers. Turkish, Greek Cypriot dialect and Turkish Cypriot dialect lessons are also in the pipeline.

The project is the brainchild of Cypriot linguist and social activist, Michalis Eleftheriou, and is an attempt to tackle what he refers to as the “magnificent problem” of rote memorisation in learning.

According to Eleftheriou, this outdated method does little more than exercise our short term memory and nothing to make us really think about the language.

“How do we learn? In the majority of traditional or state education systems, however disguised, it is by rote,” Eleftheriou says. “How many of us have revised intensively for an exam, obtained a grade much better than we expected, and weeks later forgotten nearly everything?”

The problem is not just that it doesn’t work very well, but that the experience of rote learning can even leave students feeling they are not very smart, and giving up learning altogether.

To overcome this problem, Eleftheriou has put together a series of interactive recordings that allow students to study without homework, grades or timeframes.

From the outset the course takes an approachable, friendly and refreshingly painless approach to language tuition. In fact, it doesn’t feel anything like the tortuous repetition of Latin declensions I remember in school.

Working through the tapes feels more like having a friendly chat than learning, and what is more, it’s actually useful. For example, the first word learned is “Thelo” (I want) and the second “Frappe” and it goes from there.

Eleftheriou calls it “The thinking method”, which he has refined over the past seven years spent as a language teacher, in Cyprus and abroad.

Unlike the major commercial language learning programs, the thinking method actually seeks to empower students to teach themselves: “The difference is that I put more emphasis on students becoming their own teacher – there is so much empowerment in that method.”

Eleftheriou is unimpressed by the commercial enterprises, which he likens to a mafia - albeit a lazy one, and he laments their “copy and paste” approach to offering a language course to people from different nationalities. 

Instead, the thinking method tailors the course to the original speaker’s language. For example, an English speaker learning Greek would, at some point, need to tackle the minefield issue of noun genders - this is deftly presented in the form of a discussion on the gender-neutral status of ‘to peidi’ or child in Greek.

With these digressions, the course also manages to weave in cultural details. “It includes studies of the little things that really help you to understand a culture,” says Eleftheriou.

With Turkish and Turkish Cypriot to Greek and Greek Cypriot courses in the pipeline, Eleftheriou hopes the courses can therefore make a valuable contribution to peace-building and reconciliation between the island’s communities, and address “the ridiculous situation of foreign nationalism”.

Yet without recognition from the major funding bodies, he can only conduct the research and production of new lessons in new languages between private tuition classes.

“Everything is going ahead without funding - I keep being told that there is no funding for anything innovative,” he says, estimating that all of the courses could be produced for €5,000. “This is really nothing for something so important.”

Language Transfer and the thinking method’s end goals in fact go beyond languages. It hopes highlight the inherent problems in traditional educational systems, and enable people to experience the world in a new way, “with all the challenges to ones’ own ‘truths’”.

For Eleftheriou, it is therefore a mode of social activism. “My hope is that the experience of learning with The Thinking Method will make many people reconsider the nature of their relationship with learning and at the same time underline the failings of state or traditional education systems,” he says.

He will shortly begin recording the second set of Greek lessons for English speakers, and is currently working on Turkish and Turkish Cypriot dialects, which he hopes to upload in six weeks. 

“I am researching the grammar, and basically dissecting and rebuilding the language.”

In the meantime, you can download the first set of Greek audio files – and find out more about the project at http://www.languagetransfer.org