MSI Press Blog

  Most learners at Level 3 think they know what their problems are. They’ll say, “I need more vocabulary,” or “My listening is bad,” or “I always mess up the grammar.” But here’s the truth: What you think your gaps are, and what your gaps actually are , rarely match. That’s where Diagnostic Assessment — DA — comes in. If Level 4 is the land of nuance, precision, and near‑native control, DA is the mapmaker. It shows you the terrain of your own language use: the habits, the blind spots, the micro‑skills you’ve been skipping over for years. 🔍 What DA Actually Does DA is not a test. It’s an X‑ray. Instead of ranking you on a scale, it breaks your performance into skills , subskills , and micro‑operations — the tiny things that make the difference between “advanced” and “near‑native.” Research in cognitive diagnostic assessment shows that DA can reveal fine‑grained patterns that traditional tests completely miss. Even learners with identical scores often have totally diffe...

                             Have you published a book recently (2022-2023) on a topic related to achieving near-native foreign language proficiency? Send it to the Journal for Distinguished Language Proficiency . JDLS is looking for books to review in JLDS 9 (2023-2024). --- We have available for individual purchase each of the feature articles from issue 8 of the journal at a very accessible price and will make the feature articles available from other issues as time goes on. Check our  webstore  to see what we have at any given time. We will announce and link each of these individually in upcoming blog posts. The  Journal for Distinguished Language Studies  is available by subscription. JDLS is a biennial journal, and it is easy for time to slip by and miss the next issue. Subscription will take care of that. Subscribe  HERE  and never miss a copy. (Publishes typically i...

  A great source of examples of successful teaching practices at the highest levels of proficiency from more than a dozen experienced teachers lies between the covers Tom Garza's wonderful and unique book on how to get language learners to super-high levels of proficiency,  Practices That Work .  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 articles written by numerous experts in the field of foreign-language teaching who share invaluable insights about bringing learners to high-level professional proficiency in world languages. While  Practices That Work  offers a plethora of effective techniques for instructors, it also...

  Book review from Issue 8 of the Journal for Distinguished Language Studies -- REVIEW   Dornyei, Zoltan; Mentzelopoulos, Katarina Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency: Motivation, Cognition and Identity Channel View Publications 2022   Series Editors: Sarah Mercer, Universitat Graz, Austria and Stephen Ryan, Waseda University, Japan Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching: 18 Bristol; Jackson: Multilingual Matters, (2022)   Natalia Lord, Learning Consultation Service, School of Language Studies, Foreign Service Institute (retired)   SUMMARY   This book analyzes the findings of a research project that Zoltan Dornyei, a prolific and esteemed contributor to the field of language learning, designed for his students at the University of Nottingham, when his course, the Psychology of Bilingualism and Language Learnin g , moved online. This is unfortunately a posthumous publication, for Zoltan Dornyei passed aw...