MSI Press Blog

  Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency  (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. There is a well-spread and strongly believed myth that learners beyond professional levels of proficiency do not need a teacher. On the contrary, say these 200+ near-native speakers, they did have teachers at higher levels; they strongly felt that having a native speaker-teacher at high levels pushed them further faster because there was someone to explain the unwritten, unspoken, unanticipated aspects of language that they would not have noticed and that flies over the heads of learners even as high as professional level. Learners reaching for near-native cannot know what they don't know, but a native speaker can f

  Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency  (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. The authors of the study scoured the language fields, particularly testing organizations, for learners at ILR Level 4 (near-native). None were found under the age of 30. The hypothesis of the researchers was that one has to become fully educated in one's own (as well as one's second/third, etc.) language to reach near-native levels of proficiency -- and that amount of education simply takes time and maturation. One would not expect erudition from a five-year-old. Hence, expecting the early appearance of Level 4 in young learners is probably unwarranted.  --- MSI Press publishes the only journal dedicated to the

  Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency  (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. One of those common characteristics turned out to be tenacity in study. Some of these learners struggled in the bigger, but they never gave up. This motivation was mentioned more often than instrumental and integrative motivation, the widely recognized framework posed decades ago by Gardner and Lambert and still prevalent among language educators. Instrumental motivation was a high second. Sometimes, the instrumental motivation was for reasons of a job; other times it was to be able to communicate with newly acquired relatives. Integrative motivation was not strong at Level 4 though it was reported as strong among first

    Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency  (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. One of those common characteristics turned out to be the importance of acquiring native-like pronunciation. That is not easy, especially for adult learners. It takes a lot of work in phonetics. Some have accomplished the goal with the help of a speech therapist (when they are living in the country where the "foreign" [second] is spoken). Most have accomplished it through repetitive work with a native speaker in a language lab or the equivalent, using exercises like tongue-twisters, which are remarkably effective at forcing the oral apparati into the correct positions, producing correct pronunciation. (We wil

  Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency  (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. This study showed that there are multiple paths to native-like foreign language proficiency -- and subsequent studies have confirmed this. Even the same person who is trilingual or quadrilingual takes a different path to acquiring each of those languages. Age of language learning onset, location(s) of language learning, prior language learning experience, influence of teachers and educational approaches, and opportunities (or lack of them) for cross-cultural experience, including when in a professional career those opportunities appear all shape the path followed by an individual for acquisition of a particular language

  Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. One of those common characteristics turned out to be the social environment in childhood. Nearly all survey respondents reported growing up in a bilingual or multilingual home or community. The conjecture is that having been surrounded by other languages, (1) additional sounds (not present in the native language) lodged in the brain for later use (whereas, typically, unused sounds disappear around age 15 or even earlier) and (2) the concept of another language as a form of communication facilitated the embrace of any other language later not as a system of words and grammar rules to be learned but rather as a tool for e

Reaching near-native proficiency in a foreign language is considered the grail by some and impossible by others in the foreign language education field. The bottom line is that regularly, though rarely compared with the total number of individuals studying a foreign language, language learners do reach that level. Consider presidential-level interpreters (from any country), United Nations interpreters and translators, and graduate professors (especially those known as professors of the practice) -- without near-native proficiency, these individuals could not adequately do their jobs on a regular basis. Very few books have been published on the topic of achieving near native proficiency, labeled distinguished language proficiency by the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages. The majority of them have been published by MSI Press LLC.  To see posts about these books, click HERE . The Journal for Distinguished Language Studies, shown here, accepts submissions on a rolling basis an

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 with being