MSI Press Blog

  Peek into the future! Wait just a bit. Coming up some time this year is the publication of Diagnostic Assessment at the Superior/Distinguished Threshold , the second edition of a unique book by Bella Cohen, with an introduction by Steve Koppany Description: Diagnostic Assessment provides teachers of foreign-language students working at high levels of language proficiency with tools and techniques for determining gaps in students' knowledge and skills and with suggestions for tasks that can help students. The book is written by an experienced teacher, diagnostic assessor, proficiency tester, and tester trainer. The suggestions are based on work with literally hundreds of students in government language programs. Check out excerpts from the current edition. For more posts about Bella and her book, click HERE . Book is available at discount from the MSI Press webstore . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow  MSI Press  on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interest

  excerpt from Individualized Study Plans for Very Advanced Students of Foreign Languages by Betty Lou Leaver Preface Individualized Study Plans (ISPs) have been used in a number of venues for at least two decades, if not more, particularly in US government foreign-language training institutions. Sometimes these instruments have been called ISPs; other times they have been called learning plans. Whatever they have been called, the purpose has generally been the same: to assist students in organizing their short-term and long-term learning goals and activities. (In this volume, examples of ISPs and the concepts associated with them refer, for the most part, to the planning of long-term, even lifelong, foreign-language learning activities). The Foreign Service Institute has long used ISPs for its diplomats and attaches in foreign-language training during the training period itself, which could be considered an intermediate-term type of plan since the amount of time spent in languag