MSI Press Blog

  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...

  Colette McNeil recently contributed an article, Autism Parenting Magazine :  Leading With Choice: Honoring And Empowering Autistic Children Find out how offering Structured choices to your child with autism can lead to easier and happier parent-child interactions. Check out the article  HERE . For more articles about Colette and her books, click  HERE .

Excerpt from Courageous Parenting : Rules, Routine and Structure In a household characterized by a lack of rules, binding routine, or clear assignation of responsibilities, stopping deterioration in the parent-child relationship is very difficult. Parents and children alike find nothing to hold on to. How do you start creating order and structure when you are used to everything being vague and fluid? Many parents who followed our program were surprised to discover that order is a process that expands and spreads the moment you create a clear core that allows it to grow. It is like the formation of crystals in a liquid solution; sometimes, it suffices to introduce an initial crystallizing element for the liquid matter to start arranging itself, attaching, and forming a structure. Sometimes, the initial spark that sets the whole process in motion is the parents drawing a red line concerning one unacceptable behavior. The parents decide and announce the unacceptable behavior they ...