The largest foreign language publishing house in China prints over five thousand different texts for learning English. Add that total to the publications of other printers in China and through out the world, and one could literally fill entire libraries with distinct books written by numerous different authors and printed in a variety of different sizes and shapes. But open the covers and, with the exceptions of the graphics and the general design layout, the books are almost identical. Methodologically speaking, the books are indistinguishable: dialogs, vocabulary lists, perhaps some fill-in-the-blanks exercises and maybe a crossword puzzle in the more advanced books. The salient feature of one series of books is the students are supposed to scream the dialogs in unison. Another distinguishes itself by requiring the students to repeat a phrase as many times as possible in thirty seconds. There are some creative schemes that alter the texture of the content of the textbooks, but as an issue of material fact, the contents of almost all of them are virtually the same.

At a school in Yang Quen, China a room full of teachers gathered for some special training. Before beginning, one of the senior teachers asked me to address what she felt was the most overwhelming of all the problems the teachers face from one semester to the next: The students forget what they were taught the semester before, so they must devote considerable time to review. I asked if the students passed the tests. She said many of them passed the tests with high marks, but they forgot what they had learned by the next semester.

After hours of demonstrations, discussions and activities I again addressed the question posed by the senior teacher, however I re-targeted the focus of the question, not on the students, but on the curriculum and the methods. I asked, "How memorable are the materials you have been teaching?" There was a pause. The answer, of course, was obvious. The fact that the students consistently and predictably fail to remember what was taught is at least as much a reflection on the content or methods of the teaching as it is on the student's ability to remember. The follow-up question was, "How long will you remember the demonstrations, discussions and activities I taught you today." There were a few who spoke almost in unison. "I'll never forget these things."

The SmartNoise Methodology is based on fundamentally different beliefs about learners. SmartNoise believes that:

• every normal student has not only the capacity, but given the right environment has a propensity, even a gift for learning languages

• it is the obligation of the curriculum provider and the teacher to design and generate an environment which takes advantage of the innate abilities of the students

• a dynamic and integrated pedagogical environment involving movement, visual stimulation, music, dramatic narrative and other stimulating activities are both appropriate and necessary for drawing out the students’ learning potential

• pedagogical materials should be centered around a narrative theme which holds not only the interest of the students, but also assists in the learnability and memorability of the contents

• it is our responsibility for designing curricula which are unforgettable, exciting, challenging, and pedagogically effective. If a student fails to respond to our methods, the fault lies with us rather than the student

Finally, we believe that classroom instruction should have content which is sufficiently interesting that the students will take what they learn in the language class and extend its use in the playground, at home, at work, and among friends outside of the school, thus dramatically magnifying the exposure to the language.

It is our goal to be radically different from other language programs. We are not merely one among thousands, but one in contrast to all the other offerings.  SmartNoise is language learning that works.