Beverly Hills Lingual Institute
Beverly Hills Lingual Institute
Beverly Hills Lingual Institute
Beverly Hills Lingual Institute

Blog      Language, Learning and Culture

Classes in More than 35 Languages return to blog index

Truth in Advertising

There are old adages that state, "you get what you pay for," "nothing comes free," and "if it is too good to be true, it probably is." Advertising is a great form of art and everyone realizes that everything promised in an advertisement may slightly be exaggerated or even misleading. Have you ever compared those cheeseburger photos in the ads – that they spend hours primping on to make them look just perfect – to the cheeseburger that get placed on the tray just before they call your number? Not even close. At what point of exaggeration do you begin to question whether the company behind the misleading ads are shady or untrustworthy.

In the language of business it seems that much of the advertising focuses on how a certain program of language learning is so easy that it borders to being unbelievable or it crosses the line. Learning a new language without even trying seems to be the gist of many ads. The secret of the brain is revealed and this program or that program allows the language to just magically evolve from a few exercises with no memorization of pesky verbs and nouns and sentence structure, or any rules or exceptions to the rules, it will just... happen. If you send us your money we will send you the knowledge. In a few short hours, shazaam... you can begin to negotiate international trade agreements without the use of an interpreter.

The truth is that language learning does take time and effort. While shortcuts would be nice, the brain can only develop the skills by learning when to say what and how to make the sentence structure align, so that it resembles a language and not a series of pre-learned phrases that work only as lines in some pre-staged play. You are not learning lines for a movie; you are learning to speak and understand a dynamic language that works in the fluid situations which make up life.

So, next time you are listening to an ad that promises amazing things and kicking yourself for not having spent 10 hours to become fluent in French years ago think the product they are selling is snake-oil and it does not work. If you want to learn French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, etc., it will take time but it can be a great enjoyable journey that introduces you to great classmates and other individuals that are also on the road to self-improvement (rather than quick gratification).

  • Cars
  • Communication
  • Culture
  • Fashion
  • Food
  • Language
  • Travel
Contracts and Cultures

2022-11-27

ABBA are back

2021-09-03

Happy Dragon Boat Festival

2020-06-25

I Look Up As I Walk

2020-01-31

The Values of Volvo

2020-01-27

German on Both Sides of The Wall

2020-01-24

Today is Macaron Day

2019-03-20

What Can Language Not Do?

2018-12-10

A Star is Born

2018-11-06

Time for a Saab Story

2018-10-23

Andalucia, en Ocho Joyas

2018-08-22

Idioms from Around the World

2018-01-23

Who Misses Skeuomorphism?

2018-01-22

The Wrong Way to Learn a Language

2017-12-05

The Hungarian Language

2017-12-01

Uh-Oh The Glottal Stop

2017-11-16

The Languages of Doctors

2017-10-23

How to Establish a Brand

2017-10-11

The Luxury Experience

2017-09-27

Learning Language is Child's Play

2017-09-20

Language as Jazz

2017-08-25

It's All Polish To Me

2017-08-24

Farsi is Sugar

2017-08-18

76 Common Verbs for Dutch Learners

2017-08-10

So You Want to Learn Hindi?

2017-08-08

Ingrid Bergman on Language

2017-08-07

The Secret to Reading Japanese

2017-08-03

Losing the War One Slide at a Time

2017-08-02

Blowin' in the Wind

2017-07-31

Getting Around

2017-07-28

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie

2017-07-27

Choosing a Language to Learn

2017-07-26

The First Volvo

2017-07-24

Improve Your Public Speaking

2017-07-21

Where Did I Come From?

2017-07-20

Happy Emoji Day

2017-07-17

Czech Out the First Robots

2017-07-14

Mind Your Grammar

2017-07-12

Is this a BMW?

2017-07-10

How Many German Words Do You Know?

2017-06-23

Como agua para chocolate

2017-06-21

Traveling Tips

2017-06-20

I Love Daddy

2017-06-15

We'll Bring the Coffee

2017-06-08

The Challenges of Learning Arabic

2017-06-01

Tulipmania

2017-05-30

Saving Hebrew

2017-05-29

Keeper of the Bridge

2017-05-25

Bewitchingly Flawed

2017-05-18

Japan's Caprice

2017-05-16

The First Martians

2017-05-15

Dolma or Tolma?

2017-05-12

Dutch in Paradise

2017-05-08

How Does the Bilingual Brain Work?

2015-08-19

Reasons to Learn Italian

2015-03-24

Reasons to Learn French

2015-02-27

Truth in Advertising

2014-07-10

Top Quality Spanish Teachers

2013-12-23

A Better Way to Learn Italian

2013-12-23

High Quality Spanish Courses

2013-12-23

Italian School

2013-12-23

Top Quality French Teachers

2013-12-23

Finding the Best Language School

2013-12-23

Italian Tutors

2013-12-23

New Year's Resolution

2012-12-12