MSI Press Blog

  This week's story-behind-the-book post provides a look behind the scenes for The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom by Laura Dabbs and Betty Lou Leaver. From one of the co-authors (Leaver) -  For a conference presentation, I could not find any good references that compiled all the known information about how personality differences play out in classrooms. Although my frequent co-authors. Dr. Madeline Ehrman and Dr. Rebecca Oxford, and I had written various treatises on the topic and lectured on it quite frequently, we could not find any sources beyond our own handouts that went into the level of detail needed for this conference. Further, I felt a need for a book that contained all that information in one place instead of in a dozen or more handouts. Since Rebecca was currently teaching graduate courses in learner-centered instruction, I asked if she had a capable graduate student with a strong background in interpersonal differences who could help collate all the inform...

  Excerpt from The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom by Laura Dabbs and Betty Lou Leaver. Defining and Recognizing the Invisible Classroom Artisans General Orientation The SP seeks freedom and action.  Artisans would rather not have rules to follow but go where the impulse takes them.  To them, work is essentially play.  They have no real desire for closure or completion of a task or assignment—to the Artisan, the doing is the learning independent of any conclusion.   As Learners SPs are often the most misunderstood learner in the average classroom.  The SP craves action and hands-on learning;sitting in a regimented row, day after day, can seem like the ultimate torture.  Giving the SP freedom to be creative and to experience hands-on learning can be the key to reaching the SP learner.  SPs are often misunderstood in the classroom and seen as discipline problems because they can’t sit still daily and routinely perform as does the SJ....

  Today's fortune cookie is associated with The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom by Laura Dabbs and Betty Lou Leaver.  Read more about The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom HERE . Get a copy at  MSI Press webstore . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.  Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .    

  excerpt from The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom (Dabbs & Leaver),  from Chapter 1 Defining and Recognizing the Invisible Classroom: Guardians Guardians General Orientation SJ personality types, more especially as adults, feel compelled to pass on the values of their society. As such, the Guardians in every society are essential to the continuation of that society. As Learners As learners, Guardians work to belong in the group, whether that is a social group of their place in the class. For this reason, they possess a strong work ethic. They crave rules, accept and support tradition and traditional approaches, and want to know exactly what is expected of them.   Because many teachers are themselves SJs, the SJ learner fits right in.   The student understands and feels comfortable with the teacher’s methods because that is how they learn.   The SJ likes the structure, likes knowing what is expected, and since the SJ teacher will generally la...

  Ever seen those planes in airplane magazines -- learn languages like a diplomat? The implication is that a course being sold teaches you like diplomats are taught. Misleading. I taught diplomats for six years. While the "courses" are generally ripped off, older, public-domain courses that very likely were used at the Foreign Service Institute at some point in time, they actually do not represent how diplomats are taught since diplomats learn language from interactions with skilled teachers, working in highly individualized environments and very small classes. Very little of what they do in their intensive day-long classes can be represented in a textbook, which generally is just a jumping-off point for work on language development.  That said, a few MSI Press books are written or edited by teachers who did teach or supervise teaching programs for diplomats. They wrap the theory in content meant for non-diplomats, self-learners, or specific kinds of language classes in ways ...

  Whether you slice the diversity pie into socionic types, MBTI types, or use one of the several other personality tests for your pie-cutting tool, the bottom line is that people differ from each other -- and some differ dramatically from each other -- which makes developing happy relationships complex. They also make teaching a class complex, leading a work team complex, commanding a military unit complex. Wherever there are people, complexities abound. These complexities can be managed and even used to advantage IF one understands them. There is much literature on the MBTI; I will not go into that here.  As they say, just google it. What I want to do here is put readers to some excellent but little-known works (theory, observation, research) by specialists published by MSI Press LLC and available wherever fine books are sold -- and at 25% discount at its website, with coupon code FF25. Some of these use the MBTI as a basis of discussion, but most use the socionics model deve...

  Introduction Ever wonder why you just could not get along with Sally Jo in high school?   Why you, as a teacher, cannot reach a particular student no matter how much one-on-one time you provide them?   Why two learners in your classroom squabble all the time and seem to delight in challenging you? Why some classes seem so harmonious, and others are clearly dysfunctional? The answer to these questions and many others lies in understanding intragroup dynamics.   These dynamics, exposed, show us an invisible, or hidden, classroom, that can differ quite remarkably from the classroom we think we are seeing, whether we are a student in it or a teacher of it (Ehrman & Dornyei, 1998). In this book, we will be using examples from and demonstrating the dysfunction that occurs in foreign language classrooms, including English as a Second/Foreign Language. Although we address the language classroom specifically in this book, the core causes of dysfunction can occur i...

Laura Dabbs works at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she is pursuing her MA-TESOL degree.  Laura teaches Community English Classes at UAB and formerly taught ESL and GED classes in Georgia at Dalton State College.  Working at a diverse university as afforded her the opportunity to see first-hand how personality traits, learning styles and learning strategies play a role in a variety of educational and professional situations.  Laura and her family have enjoyed a multi-cultural household by hosting foreign exchange students from various locations around the world. Her book, co-authored with Betty Lou Leaver,  The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom: Bringing Hidden Dynamics to Light for Individual and Group Harmony and Success . explains why some classrooms become dysfunctional and suggests what to do about them. The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom was released in September 2019. A sequel for teacher education is planned for this year. R...

Released today! An in-depth guide for teachers seeking to understand dysfunctional classrooms and create a mathemagenic experience. A unique resource, based on experience with thousands of language learners. Based on Jungian psychology, using MBTI categories (with a passing reference to equivalents in Socionics), this book presents an explanation behind dysfunctional language classrooms (though much could apply to any K-16 classroom) and provides a heuristic for managing the classroom successfully. For each MBTI type, there is a section posing a teacher of that type and a classroom of randomly gathered types (as in real life). A discussion follows as to the source of any dysfunction, the way to accommodate all learners, an exploration of the probable comfort level of that teacher, and a posed question as to what would be the case if the class were the same but the teacher the polar opposite. Meant for application by teachers and for use in faculty development, it is a book that t...