MSI Press Blog

  French Although French was technically the fourth language I began to study (after English, my native tongue, Latin, and Spanish), in some ways it could also be considered my second language or even a shared first language since I was surrounded by French from birth. I was born in New Hampshire some 60+ years ago and grew up in a small village there until I was 14, at which time my parents moved across the Salmon Falls River to a farm in Maine. In the 1940s and 1950s (and even in the 1960s), Maine and New Hampshire were strongholds of French-speaking Americans, not immigrants but families who had been there for generations, often with relatives in Canada (like we Anglophones among them), and an interesting mix of languages developed. Growing up in a francophone region in a New Hampshire village and, later, on a Maine farm meant that I always had heard French around me. I did not pay much attention to it, however, my parents usually frequented Anglophone haunts. I decided to t...

   A textbook-driven curriculum promises order, predictability, and coverage. But those strengths are also its limits. When the textbook becomes the curriculum, learning collapses into a sequence of pages rather than a sequence of meaning-making experiences. Open Architecture Curriculum Design (OACD) flips that logic: instead of forcing learners to follow the book, it builds a structure that follows the learner. Here are the advantages that matter most. 1. OACD starts with learners, not chapters A textbook assumes a single path. OACD assumes variation. Learners enter with different backgrounds, motivations, and readiness levels. A fixed sequence can’t accommodate that diversity without leaving someone behind or holding someone back. OACD’s modular structure lets instructors choose the right entry point for each cohort and each individual. 2. Authentic materials replace artificial language Textbooks simplify the world to make it teachable. OACD uses the world itself. Learners e...

  People sometimes assume that cultural chameleons are born, not made — that the ability to slip into a new cultural world, feel its emotional temperature, and move within its unspoken rules is a kind of magic reserved for the few. After a lifetime of living and working across cultures, and after learning twenty languages well enough to enter the worlds behind them, I can say this: cultural chameleonism is not magic. But it is not universal either. It grows out of a particular combination of traits, habits, and ways of perceiving the world. Some of these can be learned. Some can be strengthened. And some are simply part of how a mind is built. The Role of Language: A Doorway, Not a Guarantee Language proficiency is often assumed to be the key to cultural fluency. It helps — profoundly. Language gives you access to: the emotional cadence of a culture the metaphors that shape its worldview the social registers that signal belonging the humor, the politeness strategies, the silences B...