While he was wounded, Chérel was reported to have entered a delirium where he spoke only German for a few days, which made some assume he was guilty of espionage, though he was later found to be innocent.
In 1933, Alphonse Chérel had the idea of using discs (which at that time had only recently appeared) to allow learners to listen to the voices of native speakers and naturally acquire the pronunciation of their target language.
In the early stages of the company, Alphonse Chérel made bicycle deliveries to his clients, until he got into an accident where he injured his leg.
He was then amputated below his hip, which made him unable to do deliveries; he thus dedicated his time to working on other language learning books (e.g. for Spanish, German, Russian and Italian).
[9] For Chérel, a naturalist approach to language learning was more important than that of pedantic grammarians that prioritized rote memorization of grammar rules.