This document summarizes John Beary's English as a Second Language course called "The Silent Way". It discusses two key aspects of the course: 1) students were only given the language they needed and were encouraged to produce truthful utterances, and 2) clear situations were provided so students could focus on the language without confusion. Students had to carefully observe situations and describe what they saw accurately. The course challenged both advanced and beginning English speakers to use even common words correctly in different contexts. It aimed to develop students' presence and ability to focus on the current moment through disciplined, truthful speech.

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ESL (English as a Second Language) the
Silent Way - Fusako Allard
What I liked the most about John Beary’s course was the following two points:
▪ what we uttered was always true;
▪ we were given only what we needed.
These two points in particular kept me feeling throughout the course that we were being
treated with due respect for what we were.
We were constantly encouraged to produce utterances which were true to the language and in
accordance to our sense of truth. For this, clear and unambiguous situations were always set
in front of our eyes so that we could devote all our powers, energy, and time to producing the
language that matched our perception. Whenever we said something untrue, it was made
known to us, at times by being given time to compare what we said with what we saw, and, at
another, being shown the part we had to change.
If we said is instead of are, for instance, John gestured that we would have to get rid of the is,
but what to choose to replace it was again our job. This we were able to do on our own most
of the time.
If we demonstrated that we had no access to what we needed, John might point it on one of
the charts or have one of our peers do it. In such a case, even if his pointer was almost
reaching the word when the student finally came up with it, he may quickly withdraw his
pointer pressing it hard to shorten it to be hidden in his hand, or motioned the helper to stop at
that point.
We had to be observant to talk truthfully about a situation created by rods or a scene in a
picture. John’s consistency in demanding the truth at any time eliminated confusion
preventing us from wasting time and energy. For instance, when a student sitting in front of
the table said, “The red rod is behind the blue one,” those who sat on the left side of the table
from him said, “The red rod is to the left of the blue one,” while those who sat on the right
reversed the words blue and red in their sentences. If we tried to transfer a piece of language
to describe another situation, John would either encourage us to create the new situation in
front of us or quickly do it himself. Sometimes, we would create a matching situation after we
listened to the utterance.
Describing a man in a picture, we were led to say, “We can see only one button on his shirt,”
instead of “His shirt has a button.”; or “The other one is either hidden or missing,” instead

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of, “The other one is lost.” On another occasion, when a student said, “I’m going to take the
red rods one by one with my right hand,” she was asked to wait until the class learned to say,
“All right, go ahead.” And if another student said, “I’m taking the green rods two by two
with my left hand,” he was not allowed to stop saying the sentence until all the green rods
were taken. If either his hand or mouth stopped, he was immediately reminded of it and was
encouraged to continue the utterance. Thus, without any explanation, we learned that, in this
particular case, unless our hands continued the activity, what our mouths were uttering could
not have been true.
John didn’t take anything for granted. Even words such as come and go, which we all knew,
or thought we knew, were carefully presented. And the usual outcome was that those who
considered themselves as advanced speakers of English still had to struggle in order to
correctly use such words as come, come back, go, go back, take, take back, bring and bring
back in various combinations.
To always utter something which harmonized with our sense of truth demanded such a degree
of presence that all of us were being challenged each moment in one way or another. The
language that we worked on was to such a point of accuracy that the participants who were
quite advanced in English, including native speakers who participated as observers, worked
just as hard as those who were near-beginners. We were given enough freedom so that each
one of us could set his/her own challenge. Each one of us, therefore, worked on different
skills and discipline even when the class as a whole were working on the same subject matter.
The challenge kept us to be highly motivated. And yet what we were asked moment to
moment was nothing extraordinary: just our presence - just to be there. In other words,
everything was fine if we looked at and listened to what was with us at each moment. Only,
this was not as easy a discipline as most of us thought.
There were 15 students who were all native speakers of Japanese. Among those 15, there was
an English teacher, a flight attendant, a French teacher, a high school student, four Japanese
teachers, five office workers, and two free-lancers. All of the five observers were native
English speakers who taught English. At the end of the 30 hours of work, all were struggling
with sentences such as, “Mary’s shoes are the same as Kazuko’s except that where Mary’s
have buttons Kazuko’s have buckles.”
The few words John uttered during those four days, besides a few directions for activities,
were “Point it on the chart,” (only at the beginning when the students didn’t know the
significance of being given a pointer), and occasionally “... of what?” or “... to what?” and
“It’s better,” which were most effectively said sometimes in English and sometimes in
Japanese.
© Fusako Allard Osaka, Japan The Science of Education in Questions - N° 7 - June 1992
"ESL (English as a Second Language) the Silent Way" by Fusako Allard is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.