MSI Press Blog

    Spain   (after Jordan – Arabic words – the Moors); I knew a lot more Spanish words after living in Jordan. Spain, to me, was a reward for learning Spanish though I was sent there for work and had a native speaker in our group, so it did not matter whether I could speak Spanish for the business part of the trip. Yes, of course, it did help being able to understand and communicate without interpretation. The language was not the Spanish (Spanglish) of Salinas, and certainly one could not throw in some English words and expect comprehension—although Arabic words might have done the trick. Having recently lived and worked in Jordan, I was surprised at how many of the Spanish words had arisen from the influence of Arabic, through the Moors, course. The hotel I stayed in was located across from a beautiful Catholic church that had a Mass every evening. I attended—every evening. My San Juan Bautista experience was quite helpful here: I knew the language of the Mass, the so...

  Transformative Language Learning and Teaching (TLLT) has taken root primarily in government and defense language programs, university-level language departments, and research-based adult education initiatives. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) has integrated TLLT principles into advanced proficiency training, emphasizing learner autonomy, intercultural competence, and reflective practice. The American Councils for International Education and affiliated programs have used TLLT frameworks to accelerate adult proficiency gains, particularly in critical languages. Academic institutions influenced by the Cambridge University Press volume Transformative Language Learning and Teaching (Leaver, Davidson, Campbell, 2021) have begun pilot applications in multilingual education and teacher development. These implementations show that TLLT is not theoretical—it is being practiced where high-level outcomes are required, such as government language training and a...

  Just as a sacred message does not need to be luminous to be profound, near‑native proficiency does not need to be flashy to be real. Both are: deep quiet internal transformative more about presence than performance The most advanced language users — like the most authentic spiritual experiencers — are not the ones who shine the brightest. They are the ones who listen the most deeply . post inspired by the book, Practices That Work , edited by Professor Thomas Jesús Garza, who reminds us that "fluency isn’t just about knowing the rules — it’s about knowing your patterns." Book Description: No more needs to be said about the book than a review written by Olena Chernishenko of American University for Russian Language Journal , some of her evaluations include: " Practices That Work is an excellent resource for both new and experienced foreign-language instructors, as well as for foreign-language learners. The volume is a compilation of short, thematically organized articl...