The award-winning ULAT (Universal Language Acquisition Tool) is a revolutionary 3-year language program that respects the Natural Language Acquisition Sequence, first laying an extensive oral foundation before moving on to elementary reading and, much later, to the skill of writing. It trains students to think as does a native speaker of the language they are learning by having no recourse to the students’ native language nor prematurely exposing them to written text. The program is appropriate for fourth grade students to adults in a classroom setting or for homeschooled or independent study students.
As for its methods, the ULAT first makes extensive use of images, video clips, gestures and associated sound files to lay a solid oral foundation, without any recourse to the learner’s native language and prior to any exposure to the written language. It trains the student to think in the 3-step thought process one finds in a native speaker (the formulation of a message to express, verbalizing it inwardly. This natural 3-step process stands in stark opposition to the unwieldy multi-step thinking of a second language learner trained through a premature exposure to the written word and to translation. The ULAT reinforces the proper 3-step thought process by means of gradually accelerating, timed drills that do not leave the student the leisure to lapse into thought in his or her native language or in terms of printed text. The skills of reading are only developed after the student has attained a certain pre-defined rate of extemporaneous oral expression, and the first elementary written work is generally delayed until the end of the student’s first year of study.