MSI Press Blog

  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...

  The field of language acquisition has been revolutionized by transformative language learning and teaching (TLLT), a methodological approach that fundamentally reimagines how adults acquire language proficiency. Unlike traditional language teaching methods, TLLT leverages deep cognitive transformation processes to achieve remarkable results. At its foundation, transformative language learning draws heavily from Mezirow's transformative learning theory in adult education. As Davidson (2019) explains, "TLLT applies Mezirow's framework of perspective transformation to the specific domain of language acquisition, targeting not just linguistic knowledge but the fundamental frames of reference through which learners engage with the target language." This integration of adult learning principles with language pedagogy represents a significant paradigm shift. The pioneering work of Leaver and Campbell (2020) established that "transformative approaches produce proficien...

  Excerpt from review of Transformative Language Learning and Teaching in by Benjamin Rifkin (Farleigh Dickinson University) in Russian Language Journal --  The length parameters of this review prevent me from offering even the shallowest analysis of each of the chapters in this outstanding volume. Suffice it to say that the volume includes chapters on language learning as well as on east-west concepts of selfhood, community engagement, service learning, virtual immersion, dual immersion, engagement with migrants and refugees, technology, open-architecture curricular design, and testing and assessment, among others. I confess that I ordered this volume the moment I saw it appear in press and read it cover to cover with great interest as soon as I had it in my hands. Reading it again 204 Russian Language Journal, Vol. 72, Nos. 1-2, 2022 Reviews for the purposes of this review was just as powerful. The editors of the volume and all the contributing authors are to b...

  Six weeks before a short-term assignment in Indonesia, I dutifully opened Duolingo and began working through the Bahasa Indonesia course. It was slow. Painfully slow. And the sentences — “my cat drinks milk,” “I see the bread on the table” — felt like linguistic postcards from nowhere. I kept wondering when, exactly, I would need to announce the dairy preferences of a hypothetical cat. Still, I persisted. I arrived in Indonesia with a handful of phrases and a vague sense of the language’s rhythm. And then something happened that no app had prepared me for: I needed Indonesian immediately. A small complication at the airport. A hotel check‑in with no English. A first dinner out with my American colleague — at a lovely, inexpensive local restaurant where the staff spoke only Indonesian. A winding walk home through unfamiliar streets. Without Indonesian, we would not have eaten. We would not have found our way back. We would not have been able to function. The next day, as we were b...