MSI Press Blog

  The consensus across ILR documentation, second‑language acquisition research, and government training notes is that between ILR 3 (“Professional Working Proficiency”) and ILR 4 (“Full Professional Proficiency”), interlanguage doesn’t disappear, but it changes character: errors become rarer, more subtle, more stylistic , and increasingly tied to register, discourse norms, and sociolinguistic expectations, not grammar or vocabulary gaps. 🌱 What Happens to Interlanguage Between ILR 3 and ILR 4? 1. The Big Picture: The Interlanguage Shift At ILR 3, learners still have a stable interlanguage system with: Residual grammatical errors Occasional lexical gaps Register mismatches Non‑native discourse structuring Pronunciation that is intelligible but not native‑like At ILR 4, the learner’s interlanguage becomes: Highly stable, highly automatized Error‑rare, but not error‑free Native‑norm–oriented, especially in formal registers Sensitive to genre, audience, and pragmatic exp...

  🎯 The Plateau Problem Many language learners hit a frustrating wall around the intermediate stage—often called Level 3 . At this point, you can hold conversations, understand everyday topics, and even impress people with your vocabulary lists. But something feels off. You’re not advancing toward near-native fluency, no matter how many new words you cram into your memory. 📚 Why Memorization Alone Fails It’s tempting to believe that stuffing more vocabulary into your brain will unlock fluency. But language isn’t just a collection of words—it’s a living system of meaning, nuance, and rhythm. Memorized vocabulary without context is like collecting puzzle pieces without knowing the picture they’re meant to form. You may know the words, but you don’t know how they live in real conversations. ✨ Context Is King At higher levels, language learning shifts from memorization to contextual mastery . This means: Understanding how words change meaning depending on tone, situation, or c...

  Research confirms what many polyglots intuitively know: there is no single path to near-native fluency. Even for the same learner, the journey can vary dramatically depending on the language, the context, and the resources available. My own experience with French and Russian illustrates this vividly. French: A Community-Fueled Glide I learned French in school, but the real advantage was my bilingual environment. Though my family remained firmly rooted in the anglophone community, I was surrounded by French-speaking stores, schools, and workplaces. That ambient exposure made supplemental study effortless—I could walk into a local shop and buy French books, which I devoured. French felt intuitive. Despite its Romance roots and English’s Germanic lineage, the historical influence of French on English created unexpected bridges. Cognates, syntax echoes, and shared idioms made the language feel familiar. My formal education reinforced this ease: a review of French grammar as the...

  Many language learners plateau at Level 3—Professional Proficiency—not because they lack motivation or exposure, but because they’ve unknowingly become trapped in a phenomenon known as linguistic fossilization. Fossilization refers to deeply ingrained errors in grammar (morphology and syntax), vocabulary, intonation, and pronunciation. These errors persist despite continued use of the language, often because they’ve been repeated so frequently that they become automatic. And here’s the catch: Level 4 proficiency demands not just fluency, but accuracy—a level of precision that fossilized habits simply can’t support. The late Boris Shekhtman, a revered Foreign Service Institute instructor and author of How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately , was a master at helping learners break free from this linguistic quicksand. He coined the term “self-drilling” to describe how learners inadvertently reinforce errors through repetition. His solution? Drill correct forms two to thr...