ACTIVE LISTENING requires listening attentively to a speaker, understanding what they’re saying, responding and reflecting on what’s being said, and retaining the information for later. This keeps both the listener and speaker actively engaged in the conversation, and it is an essential building block for a compassionate relationship. Active listening requires mastering skills such as reading body language and tone of voice, maintaining attention, and being aware of and controlling emotional responses. It is when you not only hear what someone is saying, but also being attune to their thoughts and feelings. It turns a conversation into an active, non-competitive, two-way interaction. It is an essential skill.

An AHA MOMENT is a moment of sudden realization, inspiration, insight, recognition, or comprehension.

Harnessing your brain’s ALPHA WAVES can help you enter a flow state, which allows you to do deep work with less effort. Alpha waves induce feelings of calm, increase creativity, and intensify your ability to absorb and maintain new information. They also enhance cognitive function and improve working memory.

We do not follow BOOKS, we follow our learners. Through coaching techniques, they discover their own way of learning. Books can be used for self-study.

 Mindful BREATHING exercises have many cognitive benefits, including increased ability to focus, decreased mind wandering, improved alertness levels, more positive emotions, and decreased emotional reactivity. They improve memory, attention, focus and concentration, making it easier for learning to take place.

Keeping CALM throughout the learning process is essential, and this often requires SELF-REGULATION, the ability to stay calmly focused and alert by means of self-control. It involves developing the ability to regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behaviour to enable you to act in positive ways toward a goal. In order to self-regulate, you must take a pause between a feeling and an action, and take the time to think things through, make a plan, and wait patiently.

CERTAINTY refers to our brain’s inherent desire to predict what will happen in the future. When learners have a sense of certainty, they feel more comfortable and secure, and are better able to focus on their learning. Certainty reduces stress and anxiety, improves decision-making, increases productivity, leads to better communication, and enhances motivation. David Rock’s SCARF® model highlights five key dimensions of social experience that can trigger either a reward or threat response in the brain. Among them, certainty is one of the most vital for maintaining a positive and productive learning experience.

CHUNKING – Chunking down is zooming in. It is focusing on the detail and getting more and more specific. Chunking up is zooming out to see the bigger picture, having an overview of the whole, and possibly beyond. Chunking is a quick and simple way to help reduce stress and overwhelm, as well as become more productive and effective. The essence is very simple: “How do I need to think about this so it works better? Do I need to zoom in or out? ”

Flowing, insight-provoking, empathetic COACHING CONVERSATIONS are used throughout the ongoing sessions, with great focus on the established goals and actions, as the coach and coachee work towards accomplishing desired outcomes. The non-directive, brain-friendly coaching conversations ensure that the brain is in a very calm state which in turn creates an efficient learning process.

Showing COMPASSION involves making someone feel valued and cared for. In the brain it activates the pleasure circuits and strengthens the reward circuits, making us feel happy. When cultivated with learners, they become more resilient, interested, and motivated to learn, which leads to higher achievement in the learning process.

CONFIDENTIALITY is keeping sensitive information private and respecting someone’s wishes. It means that professionals should not share personal details about someone with others. It is the state of being secret.

EMPATHY is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, to see things from their point of view, and to imagine yourself in their place. Essentially, it is putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they are feeling.

Neuroscience suggests that people respond more favorably to positive FEEDBACK than negative threats. Positive feedback activates the brain´s reward circuit. The brain is then encouraged to repeat the same task to be able to feel the rewarding dopamine “high” again and again, so learners become more willing to complete a hard or stressful task than they otherwise would without the positive feedback recognition.

A GLIMMER is the opposite of a trigger. Glimmers are tiny moments of awe that spark joy and evoke inner clam. They are micro moments that bring feelings of ease, contentment, and hope.

GOALS are important because they provide clarity, motivation, measurement, accountability, and a sense of achievement. They provide a clear road map for where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Setting goals is an effective way to increase motivation and focus, and create new behaviors, which lead to greater success and performance.

The GOLDEN NUGGETS are pieces of information from neuroscience that are used to enhance healthy brain activity and maintain the brain in a state of calmness, promoting the ability to self-regulate through emotional triggers.

HONESTY is righteousness, integrity, and truthfulness. It is important to be truthful about your thoughts, feelings, and actions in order to create a foundation of trust, and essential for building healthy relationships.

Making LANGUAGE CONNECTIONS is essential to learning a language and can be done by provoking and connecting the learner to associate across languages.

METACOGNITION is being aware of and in control of one’s own mental processes.

MINDFULNESS is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we are doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what is going on around us. When we are mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and awareness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’ well-being. The mindfulness symbol is used as a reminder to be present in the moment and to be aware of your thoughts and feelings. In the mind map it is the big background symbol.

MOTIVATION describes why a person does something. It is the internal driving force behind human actions. Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors.

NEUROGENESIS (the birth of new neurons) and NEUROPLASTICITY (the flexibility of neural circuits) work together to reshape how we think, remember, and behave.

A NON-DIRECTIVE coaching approach emphasizes active listening, summarizing, and guiding the coachees towards solving problems for themselves. It involves recognizing and valuing the coachee, and encouraging self-expression, self-awareness, self-development, and a greater understanding of self.

The POWERFUL QUESTIONS used in the coaching conversations, especially in teaching grammar, help facilitate neural connections. One way of doing this is by using powerful coaching questions, and the other is by asking how the learner’s native language is or is not linked to the target language in order to trigger associations and patterning.

A ROAD MAP is a plan or strategy intended to achieve a particular goal or set of goals and includes the major steps or milestones needed to reach it/them.

SIGNPOSTING is announcing what is coming. It is a powerful tool that helps engage learners and keep them focused on a topic. It is also important in that it provides safety and certainty in knowing what will come next which in turn creates calmness in the brain.

TROUBLESHOOTING is to locate the cause of a problem and remove or treat it (for example – with learning).

YIN YANG is the symbol of balanced energy, with no single element dominating over or being superior to the other. It reminds us that there is harmony through balance. Such is it with the coach and coachee – equal status.