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  excerpt from How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately by Boris Shekhtman -  TOOL #5: BREAKAWAY There is a second tool which can enable us to say what we really want to say. To understand the functioning of this tool, we have to understand the dynamics of knowing two languages. There is a very interesting relationship between these two languages, determined by the extent of the foreigner’s knowledge of the second language. In fact, if the foreigner knows the second language as well as he or she knows the first, it is possible there will not be any dependency at all between the two languages. These languages can exist independently of one another. Our foreigner can turn on the first language, or the second one, at will. But the relationship between these two languages can become complicated very quickly if our foreigner does not know second language as well as the first. In this case, the foreigner, as he or she encounters deficiencies in speaking the second language, relies o

    Today's excerpt comes from Communicative Focus  by Boris Shekhtman and Dina Kupchanka -  Communication between Native Speakers and Non-native Speakers and the Essence of Speech We are interested in communication between native and non-native speakers for one very important reason: this is the kind of communication for which all teachers are essentially preparing students. Regardless of the level of our students, whether they are beginners or already near-native speakers, if they want to use their second language, they nolens-volens enter this type of communication. We need to help them to participate in this communication with dignity and power and to close the gap between their language skills and those of native speakers. In order for us to prepare our students in this way, we must be knowledgeable about the specific nuances of verbal communication between native and non-native speakers.     The most obvious difference between the language performance of native and non-native

Summary of a review by Luca Lampariello, foreign language learning guru and tutor, of How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately by Boris Shekhtman: In a field where most books deal are colorful, well-produced, and full of information on one specific language, Boris Shekhtman’s  How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately  stands out for being almost the complete opposite—short, unassuming, and devoted to teaching the skills of language, rather than one language in itself. This unusual combination of factors leads to a book that is greater than the sum of its parts; a book that I believe every serious language learner should buy, read, and reread regularly. The book’s communicative tools shine as intuitive guidelines for improving language fluency  right now . With the advice in the book, you have everything you need to communicate your “current” level, navigate difficult conversations with natives, and  speak in a more fluid, natural way . Given the book’s short, compact f

In How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately , Shekhtman suggests 7 tools that can take your language today to a much higher level tomorrow and the day after, without learning any new words or grammar. These tools teach you to make the most of what you have -- immediately. Here are the 7 tools: Show your stuff. Build your islands. Shift gears. Simplify. Embellish.  Break awar. Say what? Thousands of students around the world have proved that these tools work. Just Google them and see where all they have been used. (And Google contains only the tip of the iceberg.) Luca Lompiero says that this is a little book with a big bang. Are you learning a language? Try this book, recommended by leaders in the field, and see your language improve overnight -- then share your experiences with us! For more posts about Boris and his books, click HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter.

  Excerpt from How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately: Foreign Language Communication Tools  Definition of Communication Rules  Yet everything discussed above—the acquisition of the language, the knowledge of the language—have nothing to do with communication tools.  Communication tools are the combination of skills which allow a speaker to use most effectively the level of foreign language in his or her command.  To make this definition more clear, let us imagine two groups of students with the same level of knowledge of foreign language. Let us imagine also that these students have come to the host country and are capable of observing the quality of their communication with native speakers. We do not have to have any great imagination to know that the members of the two groups will be quite different one from another and in striking ways. Everyone has seen representatives of each of these groups. So, let’s see what happens with these two groups when they are “i

  Today's book excerpt comes from  Working with Advanced Foreign Language Students  by Boris Shekhtman . Some Characteristics of Advanced Language Learners  SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVANCED STUDENTS   Student-Language Relations So, what does having an advanced student mean to a teacher? It means, of course, that the student already speaks the foreign language with finesse, that the student already knows the host country pretty well, along with its history and culture, that he or she has seen quite a few foreign language teachers before now. (Typically, the advanced student has studied, if not mastered, several foreign languages [Belcher and Connor, 2001; Leaver and Atwell, 2002] and has already developed his or her own ideas about how to learn a foreign language [Ehrman, 2002; Leaver and Shekhtman, 2002].)  Language Learning Motivation and Goals  The advanced student is extremely motivated; rarely do such students study a language simply, so to speak, for personal pleasure

  Boris Shekhtman has been considered a national authority on teaching students to use foreign languages effectively in communication with native speakers. He has developed a unique set of tools designed to enhance an individual’s communication in a foreign language environment, which he describes in  How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately . Boris Shekhtman presented his communication rules at numerous seminars for a number of U.S. Government agencies including the Library of Congress, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture and Air Force. His clients included correspondents of major news organizations such as ABC News, CBS News, BBC, NBC News, New York Times , Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , Chicago Tribune , Time Magazine , and Associated Press. The content of the seminars is well described in his books. The most popular of them are:  Developing

  excerpt from  How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately  by Boris Shekhtman -  Some Words about Boris Shekhtman and This Book I met the late Boris Shekhtman when I became the Russian Language Training Supervisor at the U. S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. He had been enjoying remarkable success as a Russian language instructor of diplomats—they glued themselves to him as one would to a prophet. And perhaps he was sort of a language prophet. He earned teaching awards and established and taught an immensely successful advanced language course. He did not fit into the mainstream of language teachers, though. His methods were his own—no labels for them that fit with current thought. Today, one might point them out as transformative, and the advance course structure did give rise to what today is called Open Architecture Curriculum Design. His approaches and techniques in the 1980s are only now, 40 years later, entering the consciousness of the mainstream of L2