MSI Press Blog

  Today's blog post is the next in the series of book back stories and is the story behind Content-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education by Stephen Stryker and Betty Lou Leaver. This book is an affiliated (recommended) book by MSI Press and can be purchased through Georgetown University Press or Amazon. From a co-editor: This book was quite a few years in the making. First, CBI was a rare course design back in the 1980s, when Steve brought it into the Spanish classes at the Foreign Service Institute and Betty Lou introduced it into the Russian program there. Rather than write a book about CBI, we wanted to amplify the theory with practical examples of successful CBI in language classes. We never thought it would take from 1989 until 1997 for enough teachers to adopt CBI in their classrooms to have enough examples (roughly a dozen) to comprise a book, but it did.  During the eight years we worked on the book, we sought a publisher. It would be a first-time book for b...

This Sunday, we begin a new Sunday feature: the story behind our books. We will take these one at a time, on Sundays. So, if you like knowing the unknown and little known, come on by on Sundays. This Sunday the book chosen to kick off our series is Task-Based Instruction by Leaver and Willis. This book was published by Georgetown University Press and appears among the affiliated books of MSI Press by virtue of having been co-authored by an MSI Press author (me - Leaver). At the time of the writing of this book, much was available about task-based instruction (TBI) in the English as a Second Language (ESL) field, of which the greatest amount appeared to have been written by Jane Willis of the UK, often together with her husband. For Foreign Language Education/Second Language Acquisition (L2), however, only a small generically oriented spiral-bound sample of essentially one task was available, written by Michael Long, then at the University of Hawaii.  In consulting and in administ...

  Every field has its heresies. Not the dramatic kind — the quiet ones. The ideas that arrive early, before the world is ready. The approaches that don’t fit the familiar grooves. The innovations that ask people to rethink what they believe they already understand. These ideas rarely receive a warm welcome. Their fate is almost always the same: misunderstood, mistrusted, minimized, or rejected — until the day they are suddenly “obvious.” That is the fate of the new. In this case, Open Architecture Curricular Design. When a New Method Violates Old Assumptions OACD is not widely known. It challenges several deeply embedded beliefs about how languages “should” be taught: It allows learners to make meaningful choices about materials and pathways. It does not rely on a single textbook as the spine of instruction. It rejects the idea that L2 learning is linear, predictable, or identical for all learners. It treats variation as the starting point, not the problem. For many teachers, thes...

  MSI Press has added to its collection of affiliated books a book coedited by Dr. Stephen Stryker (California State University at Stanislaus) and MSI Press author, Dr. Betty Lou Leaver: Content-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education. Published by Georgetown University Press "a while back," so to speak, it was an immediate classic and remains so. To purchase this book on Amazon. click  HERE . For more posts about Betty Lou Leaver and her books, click HERE . For more posts on language learning, click  HERE . To see more affiliated books and learn about affiliated status, click  HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC b...

  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...