Daily Excerpt: Think Yourself into Becoming a Language-Learning Super Star (Leaver) - Introduction

 



Excerpt from Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star! by Betty Lou Leaver, PhD. 


INTRODUCTION

This is not your typical tip book on how to learn foreign languages. It does not tell you to do a list of 15 things and assure you that you will become the language classroom star because typical lists of tips do not work for all leaners. Sometimes, almost none of the traditional tips and tricks work for some people.

This book does not offer you learning strategies for reading, listening, writing, speaking, memorizing for vocabulary, and getting good with grammar. There is no need for yet another book on the topic of learning strategies. Good books exist. The best on, in opinion, is Teaching and researching language learning strategies: Self-regulation in context (Oxford, 2017). You should get it, use it, and keep it handy. You will not need a better guide for learning strategies than that. Oxford (1986) has also produced a well-vetted instrument: Strategy Inventory for Language Learning.

What this book offers

This book is different. While it does include some traditional tips that have usually worked for most people, including some strategies, it mostly focuses on you, who you are, how you learn, and what you, personally, can do to make your learning easier, faster, and more fun. Most important, it is about you think and how changing your thinking can help you become a much better language learner overnight.

You are not some average Joe. You are a special, unique person with specific strengths and particular weaknesses. The source of your strengths can be maximized if you can identify the source and know how to maximize what is working for you and should work for you even better. Likewise, you can minimize your weaknesses if you know what is not working for you and what might work instead. That is the point of this book.


Who wrote this book

So, who am I to write this book? I have taught hundreds of students as a teacher of Russian and ESL. As an academic administrator, the focus of most of my career, I have overseen dozens of language programs, thousands of teachers (literally), and tens of thousands of students (again, literally). I have overseen US government programs for three government institutions (Foreign Service Institute, NASA, Defense Language Institute), as well as for university, for-profit institutes, and non-profit organizations.

Maybe even more important, I am and always have been a language learner. What I suggest in this book is a sharing of both what I have done as a successful language learner and also what I have seen as an administrator of language programs. As a language learner, I have been tested at near-native in French and Russian, professional level in German and Spanish, and (estimated by a proficiency tester) working level in Czech. In total, I have studied 19 languages. So, in short, I think it is safe to assume that I know whereof I speak.

This experience has provided me with shortcuts and easier ways to learn languages. I have watched many students struggle unnecessarily and hope that you will not be one of them, thanks to this book.

 

How this book is structured

It can be difficult to divide the kinds of information in this book into neat little compartments of information because whatever categories one might use, they will overlap. For example, chemicals affect health, and chemical affect. And health itself affects memory. Metacognitive strategies can help improve health but are probably more important for how they can help improve cognition and choice of cognitive strategies (for reading, listening, speaking, etc.). 


For more posts about this book, click HERE. 

For more book excerpts, click HERE.


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