The idea of The Winston Method was conceived by the author around 1972, while looking for a way to learn German, during his undergraduate college years.

By 1975, when the author was teaching ESL in the New York City school system, a few years before the availability of the personal computer, The Winston Method was utilized by the author in a classroom consisting of non-English-speaking children who had recently arrived to the city.

The Winston Method was an instant success.  Just like the current program, the method consisted of a written, 5-sentence pre-test, followed by a test.  As an incentive, the student who finished first with a 100% accuracy — including capitalization and punctuation — had the privilege of checking the other students' tests.

Needless to say, the students' progress learning English as a Second Language was obvious.  In fact, their improvement was "bilingual" and some actually went to college after high school.