WE WELCOME YOU 

      TO OUR QUINTESSENTIAL LANGUAGE WEB SITE. 

Because you have entered ABOUT US, you obviously want to learn something about us.  You see above what we look like----a loving couple of many years.  But pictures do not do  justice.  Maria is far more beautiful than a picture can show, and I am not as nice a guy as I appear to be.    If I were visiting this site, which is devoted to presenting a language acquisition system,  I would want to know something of the qualifications of the people who have created it.

Briefly it is the quintessence of a life time experience of two language enthusiasts,  but we were not always so.  In my case,  I started out as a falling-through-the-cracks pupil in high school, eighteen lessons behind in my Spanish Three class.  Learning a foreign language left me completely confused until my teacher of Spanish Four turned everything around.  She deserves all the credit for my transition from a failing student to a straight A.  Not only did her teaching change my grades, but also turned me into an ardent language enthusiast where learning foreign languages became a most enjoyable hobby.

What was it that fascinated me about learning a foreign language?  I was a psychological basket case at the time and I found that I could escape from myself when I learned to speak another language.  The new language did not carry with it the emotional garbage which my native language did.    I possessed little self esteem which the new language seemed to bring with it.  The personality of my native language seemed to disappear as it was replaced by a new personality in the foreign language.   The truth is, of course, that genuine self esteem is the result of a spiritual orientation, the lack of which no artificial emotional deception can supply.

What I had learned from my teacher in Spanish Four led me to taking other language classes in high school and university.  I enrolled in French, German, Portuguese and later Russian and Chinese.    As for Hindi, Japanese and Arabic these were the result of self study with audio tapes.   For Hindi, however,  the necessary materials were not available to me at that time so I had to create what I needed with the help of a Hindi speaking friend.   You can click here to read about my first steps in Hindi.   Don't get the idea that I know all these languages equally well.  I am not a genius, just an ordinary guy with above average intelligence.  Since learning a foreign language is not an intellectual pursuit, the lack of intellectual ability could not act as a hindrance.  Even dolts speak their native language to some extent.  

How well I could function in a language depended upon the time I had available to pursue it.  The more time devoted to its practice, the better I could function in it.   The important point is that I know how to study a foreign language in the most efficient way so that I can extract the maximum benefit from the minimum time spent.    When I was working on my Master's Degree in Spanish, I had to put all work on other languages aside and could not develop them as I would have liked.  I relished the fact that with each language I seemed to  assume different personality.   Learning to understand a different language from one's own can be a real turn-on.   

Keep in mind that I started out as a failing student.  I only became highly successful  because of a high school teacher, Miss Arbour by name.   I had friends who had similar language problems, and when I learned of their difficulties, offered to work with them.  I simply passed on my experience with Miss Arbour.   

My wife, Maria, is the finest example of the efficacy of the simplest of practices.    Not only did she have no talent for learning a foreign language, she also had no interest whatsoever.  During our bicycle trip through Europe  and a long stay in Germany, she never got beyond "Guten Tag" and "Was kostet?"   What's more, she didn't want to.

One Summer we went to Guadalajara, Mexico so that I could take some Spanish courses at the University of Guadalajara to meet the requirements for a California Teaching Credential.    We spent six weeks at the University.  Maria didn't want to take any classes, but I said that she could not just hang around and do nothing.   She enrolled in elementary Spanish.  It was a forty minute walk from our residence to the university.  During this walk,   I worked with her.  The result was she got an A in her class and was inspired to continue her studies.  When we got home, she enrolled at the Community College in Joshua Tree taking a night class in English and Spanish.  We moved to Northridge.  I entered CSUN to pursue a Master's Degree in Spanish literature and she enrolled at Pierce College to pursue a Bachelor's Degree in something undecided at the time.   Being undecided she opted to carry classes in three languages simultaneously;  Spanish, French and German .  She did straight A work in all of them.  She then transferred  from Pierce College to CSUN where she continued her language studies.  Again, she carried all three languages at the same time.   She amazed her French professors with her ability to write in French, especially so because her pronunciation was so bad.   I had to ask her to spell everything so that I could understand what she was trying to say,   She continued her studies by obtaining a Bachelor's Degree with a major in French literature.  She followed this by getting a Master's Degree in French Literature.  Since she was on a roll, she transferred to UCLA, to work for a Ph.D.  Her grades continued to be A all the time.  She also improved her pronunciation to the extent that she became able to teach elementary French at UCLA.

She now knows how to tackle any language and is able to develop an almost native pronunciation.  She now helps me with my work of creating stories for students to learn Chinese.  We call our program Learning Chinese Through Story Telling and our mottos are Follow the Tao of Language Acquisition and There is Beauty in Simplicity.

And you may ask, why am I concentrating on Chinese?  Because when I got my first Bachelor's Degree in Asiatic Studies with a major in Chinese language at USC, we did not have the facilities which modern technology now makes available.  This means that the only time I could hear Chinese spoken was during class, and the only way open to improve my Chinese was to go to the country itself.  But this was not possible in the Forties.  That is why my focus passed on to Spanish and French and why I did graduate work in those languages.

Now because of computer technology I can create a program for myself that embodies everything that I want for myself in a language program.  Chinese, because of its writing system, presents a unique problem but with the help of computer software, this problem can now be overcome.

Enlisting the help of a Chinese friend, Tao Qiu, Quintessential Language Learning System was born.

My wife, Maria, by a natural process of osmosis is also learning Chinese.  And her pronunciation is excellent.  Tones and all.  She has her own business whose focus is wellness.  If you want to know more about what she does, you can visit her web sites www.organicbluegreenalgae.com and www.dogstomachproblems.info

                                                                            Tom Curtis, November 11, 2006