Daily Excerpt: How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately (Shekhtman) - Some Words about Boris Shekhtman and This Book (Foreword)
excerpt from How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately by Boris Shekhtman -
Some Words about Boris Shekhtman and This Book
I met the late Boris Shekhtman when I became the Russian
Language Training Supervisor at the U. S. Department of State’s Foreign Service
Institute. He had been enjoying remarkable success as a Russian language
instructor of diplomats—they glued themselves to him as one would to a prophet.
And perhaps he was sort of a language prophet. He earned teaching awards and
established and taught an immensely successful advanced language course. He did
not fit into the mainstream of language teachers, though. His methods were his
own—no labels for them that fit with current thought. Today, one might point
them out as transformative, and the advance course structure did give rise to
what today is called Open Architecture Curriculum Design. His approaches and
techniques in the 1980s are only now, 40 years later, entering the
consciousness of the mainstream of L2 education—and still at the cutting edge
of it. Still, back in the 1980s, they poked up through the mass of standard
approaches, his success at getting students to very high levels or proficiency
nearly without fail and the appearance of a cadre of devoted students. He
earned FSI’s highest teaching award.
After leaving FSI, he ran a private school for year.
Struggling diplomats showed up on his doorstep, hoping to be able to reach
proficiency levels that seemed out of reach—and they did. Stellar journalists
with household names from The New York Times and the Los Angeles
Times, who filled his classrooms, sang his praises—in writing in their
publications.
Other government students also blossomed under his touch. He
assisted faculty and administrators at the Defense Language Institute Foreign
Language Center, the US Institute for Peace, and other federal institutions.
He also co-founded the Coalition of Distinguished Language
Centers and developed materials for teaching learners to reach the near-native
level. His publications with MSI Press LLC and Cambridge University Press have
informed many teachers and many students.
The book in your hand has been held in some version or
another by thousands of students who swear by it. I have used it myself in
assisting ministries of education and schools in many different countries. They
have become fans.
Now, it is your turn! May you have much success in language
learning—and if you do, go out and share that information so others may also
benefit.
Betty Lou Leaver, Ph.D.
Provost, retired, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
Former Russian Language Training Supervisor, Foreign Service Institute
Former Language Program Coordinator, NASA
Read more posts about Boris and his books HERE.
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