MSI Press Blog

  From the editor - The story behind the Journal for Distinguished Language Studies is pretty much the story behind MSI Press. When the Coalition for Distinguished Language Centers , a nonprofit organization, began holding their first conferences in 2003, they realized that they needed a publisher to handle their conference proceedings and a planned journal dedicated to helping language learners reach near-native levels of foreign language proficiency. One of the co-founders of the CDLC was the owner of a private consulting business, Mind Solutions International and offered to establish a publishing house within that business. The publishing house took on a simplified version of the name, MSI, and became MSI Press and later MSI Press LLC. (Most MSI Press authors do not know what the initials stand for since, with the closing of both CDLC and MSI in 2010, only the press remained -- and its acronymic name.) --- We have available for individual purchase each of the feature articles from

  From the author --  The story behind Entienda el desafío del -NO- en los niños con autismo Entienda el desafío del -NO- en los ninños con autismo is the Spanish translated version of Understanding the Challenge of, “No” for Children with Autism. The author Colette McNeil was inspired to write Understanding the Challenge of, “No” for Children with Autism in the hopes of sharing information on how making purposeful choices when speaking to children with autism can improve understanding and cooperation. In her 30 years of working with autistic children, the author has noticed that the assistance provided to parents, care givers and education staff has mostly been delivered through a series of explicit strategies to address specific instances of need. The collection of a bag full of tricks or “tool bag,” is encouraged. For example, if we want a child to learn to request a snack item we teach the specific phrase “I want cookie please.” Then if we want the child to follow a direction to wa

  Blest Atheist is the perfect book story to tell on Easter. After all, it opens and ends with an Easter scene. The story behind the book is actually told within the pages of the book. Dr. Mahlou sspent her life as an atheist; Blest Atheist is the story of that life and of her conversion to Catholicism.  Here is the book description: As a young child, outraged by the hypocrisy she finds in a church that does nothing to alleviate the physical and sexual abuse she experiences on a regular basis, Beth delivers an accusatory youth sermon and gets her family expelled from the church. Having locked the door on God, Beth goes on to raise a family of seven children, learn 17 languages, and enjoy a career that takes her to NASA, Washington, and 24 countries. All the time, however, God keeps knocking at the door, protecting and blessing her, which she realizes only decades later. Ultimately, Beth finds God in a very simple yet most unusual way. A very human story, Blest Atheist encompasses the

  The following is the story behind Exercising in a Pandemic (Young) From the author: When the pandemic hit, I talked to many people who were dismayed at the temporary closing of places like the YMCA (where I used to be a volunteer and where I frequently went to exercise) and other fitness centers around town. Especially for women, ongoing exercise is important in order to retain muscles and flexibility. For everyone, no matter what age or gender, exercise is so good for keeping the brain and the body healthy. Many of us were working out at home, and that inspired my book, Exercising in a Pandemic. There are so many ways to work out at home, even while doing chores or watching television.  The idea is to just keep moving. One example from my book is to include kids or pets in the action – lift them instead of weights. They might think it is fun. The ideas are simple and imaginative. Even now that the pandemic is behind us, working out at home is easy and convenient to add to your day,

  Today's back story is about the book, It Only Hurts When I Can't Run  by Gewanda Parker. From the publisher: When Gewanda approached us with her pre-publication manuscript, it was clear that here was a person who had experienced tremendous trauma as a child. That is a story, of course. A sad story. However, what was also clear was her resilience in overcoming that trauma very, very successfully. That was a story worth publishing. An uplifting story. A story that can help others. More important for us as publisher, it fit into a line of such books, the leaders of which were Elizabeth Mahlou's Blest Atheist and Geri Henderson's and Seanne Emerton's Healing from Incest -- and ultimate prompted the commissioned book by Joanna Romer, Recovering from Domestic Abuse, Stalking, and Abuse . When it was released, Gewanda's book quickly flew to the top of Amazon's hot new releases lists: #4 Hot New Releases in the child abuse category #8 Hot New Releases in the fam

  We cannot tell the back story of 10 Quick Homework Tips without telling the story of is sister book, 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents . So, here is the link to that back story , which we shared last Sunday Back Story of  10 Quick Homework Tips by Cindy McKinley Alder & Patti Trombly [Please do read the back story for 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents to learn how Cindy and Patti met.] A few years ago, after listening to the frustrations of parents trying to find time for everything as well as struggling to work with their kids at home more during the pandemic, Patti and I decided to create a “quick tip” book to help. It seemed homework issues were especially overwhelming and challenging for busy parents.   So, we worked together again and wrote a short book on   easy ways parents could help ease the frustrations of homework battles.   10 Quick Homework Tips was not as time-consuming, but just as fun for us to write.   It feels great to share so many decades of our practical, h

  Today's book back story is about Diana Keathley's book, GodSway . From the author --  GodSway: My Anecdotes with God as a book has had its own journey. Obviously, the interactions with God were special when they happened. I treasured them in my heart even as a child. They continued to happen the more I pursued Him, and I cherished each encounter. The idea of a book didn’t cross my mind, however, until one year when I was prepping my Spanish Immersion 4 th - graders for Spring testing. They were confusing the word anecdote with antidote. To illustrate the difference I used a short true story from my own life about when my family had a house fire. [No spoiler alerts here. You’ll have to read the book to find out what happened!] At the end of the story, the children were quiet. One wide-eyed girl expressed what they were all thinking. “ Ms. Keathley, did that really happen?!” In the middle of my matter-of-fact answer that yes, it was all quite true, I felt that nudge from the S

On the Writing of This Book: An Unusual Collaboration  During the final months of therapy with Seanne, more than ten years ago, I shared the idea of this book with her. Back then, it was just a curious “what if” sort of notion. I thought, “What if someone who could write and who has thought about this recovery process were to collaborate with her therapist on a book?” My initial thought was about how helpful it would have been for me to have had the chance to read such a book. But there was no way to start anything immediately, and it was clear that the idea sounded a bit strange to Seanne though she always expressed support. After the conclusion of my therapy with her, I moved away and became very involved in my professional career as well as moving on to another therapist. I did revisit the idea of a book from time to time and three or four years later began to write. I approached Seanne again about the possibility of our collaboration. The problem was that other than collabo

  Today's back story is about the book,  Old and On Hold  by Bertha Cooper . From the publisher The story behind this book and 14 others like it share one important thing in common: they came out during the pandemic. Not only did they come out at that time, but they were planned as a set of books (by various MSI Press authors with special expertise related to various aspects of the pandemic). Bertha, who had earned the recognition as "best new voice in health and fitness" with her book, Women, We're Only Old Once , knew a lot about aging, and older folks were particularly hard hit by COVID at that time.  Many of the insights in the book are true even now. After all, many retirees get caught holding in place for many reasons, not just the pandemic. Some useful thoughts and insights shared in this book are true at any time. Book available at 25% discount with code FF25 at msipress.com/shop. Read more about Bertha and her books HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsle

  The following is the story behind Forget the Goal, the Journey Counts (Stites) From the editor: Alfred's book was one of the first we published, nearly 20 years ago, by an author we did not personally know. (Since then, we have met lots of new people and made lots of new friends.) At the time, and until recently, Alfred was living in Costa Rica. In fact, he had written a book earlier about Costa Rica. We were used to working with foreign authors. In fact, we had already published books by authors from Syria and Jordan. We found Alfred's story fascinating -- 71 different jobs, and most of them contributed to who he was as a person. Some of those jobs were downright unique, and he had met some well-known people and a lot of unknown unique words. A fun read! Alfred lived into his 90s. Near the end of his life, he moved back to the USA to be with his children in New Mexico. Alfred may not still be with us, but we still have his book. So, Alfred is still entertaining readers. For

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 administerin

  Dr. Elizabeth Mahlou, author of Blest Atheist , her conversion story (abbreviated here ), says she had two goals in the writing of this book. One, perhaps obvious, to any reader was to continue her conversion story after the immediate first weeks. The second, not obvious to any reader not in her personal circle, was the telling of a true story of evil, one that greatly disturbed her and some of her closest friends and one that was played out on a deeply spiritual level that is seldom discussed because many, if not most, people do not encounter such things, or if they do, do not recognize the spiritual warfare going on.  Elizabeth changed all the names and other details, such as location, professions, and organizations involved in this spiritual battle, which forms the hidden core and major prompt for this book--something the casual reader, or even perhaps the more intuitive reader, would notice. For those involved in the warfare, however, it did not matter that names were changed. Th