TRADE NAMESFrom ad hoc beginnings, the Annalivia School of Languages now has a firm structure in place and is starting to reap the benefits, writes Rose Doyle

Familiar and numerous, language schools are an everyday part of life as it's lived in Ireland today. Which wasn't at all how things were when a young Frenchman called Marc Kheffache arrived in Dublin from Paris in 1977.

Being young, French and male in 1970s Dublin had advantages but didn't pay the rent. Marc Kheffache started teaching French to Irish students, English to French groups he brought over to Ireland and, in no time at all, had the Annalivia School of Languages up and going in Exchequer Street.

At a disco - where else, it being the 1970s? - he met and fell in love with Sheila Kelly, 20 years old and from Walkinstown. The feeling being mutual they married and, that auspicious year, had Kevin, the first of their five children.

The Annalivia School of Languages is a robust feature of today's language school landscape. It's changed, along with the community and people it draws on. Kevin Kelly, that first born son, runs the business today. He's worked and charted the years since 1977, been a part of things since he was a tender-aged gofer fetching and carrying biscuits to students. He tells the story with a clarity and humour which have to be pluses in the ever-changing, multi-culture experience that is teaching languages.

"My father called it Annalivia because it came from Joyce and," Kevin Kelly (he uses his mother's family name) grins, "it began with 'A', which is good for the phone book entry. There were very few language schools around at the time. Marc used his French contacts to bring corporate groups over for English language courses especially, in the beginning, groups of engineers whose English needed upgrading. It was all pretty ad hoc, he sort of worked things out as he went along. Things are much more structured now; there's been a whole branch of the Department of Education looking after language schools since the 1980s."

But back then, in 1977, there was no model and the business grew according to need. His mother, Sheila, became involved with the administration and Kevin's siblings - Julie, Justine, Sinead and Seán - were born in the years following.

Annalivia grew all the time. "Dad began doing summer language schools, which became a very big part of the business. He rented in places from Galway to Dublin, schools usually, like Wesley in Ballinteer. He'd bring over French 16 to 17-year-olds on summer holiday to do an intense three months of English language learning.

"When I wasn't with my cousins in Donegal during the summer I'd be in the thick of it too, getting biscuits for the students in Markeys in Exchequer Street to photocopying. I was being groomed, I suppose!"

The Kelly-Kheffache family lived in Templeogue and, when Kevin was 11, moved to Sandyford.

"The business was very different then, the summer schools a huge part of things and the students all French. The staff were mostly part-timers who were thrown in at the deep end."

He shakes a bemused head. "It was crazy, crazy. My father had to be rigid in his style of running things, to keep it together. There was a lot of work involved: organising sport and cultural afternoons for the students; places for them to live; transport, all well in advance. It was very, very intense."

He's blanching a little, just remembering. "There would inevitably be huge problems with buses not turning up at the airport and such. It was madness! When I was 16 and 17 I was a group leader taking French kids around Dublin. I was teaching too - back then you could teach without a cert. It was all stress and intensity and I hated the approach to summers." He ends on a relieved note. "It's different now."

The stress and hard work had an effect. "I didn't want to do this," he grins, taking in the room and school in its present-day Dún Laoghaire location. "I studied business in DIT, travelled on a J1 to the States, worked in a bank for a while. I didn't know what I would do. Things weren't going great with the school, the numbers were down from 1,000 to 400 when my father gave me an ultimatum - if I went away he'd close down. I went anyway but then both he and my mother got sick so I came back."

The school had "taken its toll" on his father's health. Kevin says he can see, with hindsight, how all this happened. Then: "The parents went to live in France and left me looking after the school. We did a lot of corporate, year-round classes off-site and my Dad kept in touch for about a year by e-mail. During the summer of 2000, my first, it was me on my own with about 90 students. In a way this was good because I found I could handle it. I also realised the business had to be seriously looked at and built up, and that I didn't want to spend all my summers like that one - having to live outside my home for nine weeks in Wesley College."

Then he met Peter Lahiff, now academic director at Annalivia.

"He'd been in Spain, where he taught and was a director of studies. I'd a plan to open an international, small, comfortable school where people could come year round to learn English. By that stage too I'd met Jocelyn Rousseau, who is French, had been lecturing in French and was looking for work. She came on board as administrator/student officer. The three of us got together and set about reworking the school."

By now the wider world had changed and language schools needed Department of Education approval.

"Peter worked at getting that - it took two years. It was good for us to have to put everything on paper for the department. It helped clarify things. I, in the meantime, went about convincing people we had a great school. We still had the summer schools, which worked well because of the way Peter restructured things. Soon we were teaching English to French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Russian, and Japanese students.

"Peter's idea, a very good one, was that it would be all speaking-based, that we should get them to activate the English they already knew from theory. We had more than 1,000 summer students by 2006. It wasn't half as stressful as before, however, because we had full-time teachers, working year round so as there was continuity."

Annalivia moved to its more spacious premises in Clarinda Park, Dún Laoghaire. Kevin's sister Julie, home from New York, got involved, stayed on and took over the school's newly started Au Pair Study Centre with her brother.

"Since 2000 we've been growing in the right direction," says Kevin. "We've got seven classrooms here and seven teachers as well as Peter, Jocelyn and myself. Julie manages the summer schools and Au Pair Study Centre. Peter's finishing a PhD in Spanish literature. Lots of new people coming to live in Ireland attend our evening classes. They arrive able to communicate but with grammar difficulties which presents teaching problems but is a challenge. We do free afternoon classes from time-to-time on how to speak Dublin English and they love it!"

He worries about the effect of non-recognised schools on language teaching. "Some of the things which go on - it's a story for another day! There are some hilarious loopholes in the system."

There's been talk, for a long time he says, "of setting up state language schools. The Department of Education now has its own Certificate of English Language Training. Primary schools are taking on more TEFL teachers and Fáilte Ireland do a great job of promoting English teaching in Ireland."

Annalivia's fun, he says. "It would stop being fun if we became a chain of schools. The teachers are a great bunch and here long term. We'll go on doing what we're doing properly and leave it at that. Annalivia's future is in the lap of the gods!"