MSI Press Blog

Excerpt from Practices That Work by Thomas Jesus Garza.  Be Sensitive to Learning Styles   Betty Lou Leaver (Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center) Madeline Ehrman (Foreign Service Institute) Teachers working with language learners at all levels have for some decades now recognized that learners have specific sensory and cognitive preferences when it comes to learning and specific ways of interacting with classmates. These individual differences can be very important both in positive and negative ways in the language process, the significance of which may change as one progresses up the ladder of proficiency. One phenomenon that has been observed by language teachers and their learners over time is the “tortoise and hare” syndrome. Learners who are painfully accurate—and therefore slow— in the beginning of language study often outdistance their faster peers who can plateau at the Advanced/Superior threshold because they have become comfortable wi...

Reissued -- two beloved oldies in the language teaching world. These books have been published continuously since we first published them years back. We transferred them shortly after publication to Villa Magna LLC. Recently, Villa Magna made the decision to focus on the works of Omar Imady (also one of our authors, whose works we will eventually be transferring to Villa Magna) and recently transferred their language books to us. Both books are unique -- and likely foretell the future of language teaching though the focus they suggest is only slowly starting to become part of the profession, on the periphery. We are confident, however, that, in time, they will represent the mainstream of teaching approaches. Communicative Focus   describes in detail the theory and nature of the principles and practices used in his approach to language teaching. He is not afraid to talk about some aspects of language learning and teaching, such as the development of lexical and grammatical accuracy,...

The new wave of neuroscience research on adult language learning has revealed something profound: when adults learn a language deeply, their brains don’t just store new words — they reorganize themselves. They grow new connections, strengthen old ones, and reshape the networks used for memory, attention, and executive function. This is exactly the kind of learning that Transformative Language Learning and Teaching (TLLT) is designed to cultivate. TLLT is not about covering content or mastering a syllabus. It is about changing the learner — cognitively, emotionally, and socially. And the neuroscience now shows why this approach works so powerfully. 1. Transformation Begins When Meaning Disrupts Habit The Lund University MRI study demonstrated that adult brains change structurally when learning is intense, meaningful, and cognitively demanding. TLLT intentionally creates these conditions. Transformative learning happens when: A familiar way of interpreting the world no longer fits A new...

  Paradigm shifts in language teaching rarely arrive with fanfare. They unfold slowly, unevenly, and often invisibly, as teachers and researchers begin to sense that the explanations they have relied on no longer account for what they see in their classrooms. The movement from communicative and transactional approaches to Transformative Language Learning and Teaching (TLLT) has followed this same long arc. In fact, the profession has passed through six distinct stages on its way to recognizing transformation as a legitimate, even necessary, framework for language education. The first stage is the stage of discomfort. Communicative Language Teaching had been enormously successful in its time, liberating classrooms from grammar‑translation and audiolingual drills and giving learners the freedom to speak, interact, and negotiate meaning. Yet over time, teachers began noticing that something was not quite right. Students plateaued at intermediate levels. They could perform tasks but no...