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...

    Today's tip for parents from two talented teachers comes from  365 Teacher Secrets for Parents  by Cindy McKinley Alder and Patti Trombly. #49 Learning Styles   Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process ~ Euripides If you are like most parents, you have repeated yourself many, many times to your children. You may have even uttered the words, “How many times have I told you...” If this sounds familiar to you, perhaps you need to think about how your child learns and learn to work with that style. How does your child learn? Consider the three types of learning styles: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Most children learn best through a combination of the three types of learning styles, but many children favor one over the others. Auditory Learners: Hear Auditory learners would rather listen to things being explained than read about them. These children can benefit from reciting information out loud or retelling it to someo...

  Most of us know the classic fable of the tortoise and the hare: the quick and confident hare bursts ahead, only to tire out, while the slow but steady tortoise trudges forward and eventually wins the race. What if I told you this same dynamic plays out in language learning? According to research by Leaver (1986) with diplomat students at the Foreign Service Institute, learners tended to follow one of these two paths based on their learning styles, as measured by the Torrance Test of Hemisphericity (left-brain learners and right-brain learners). The left-brain learners, referred to by Leaver as tortoises, started slowly, and plodded along with multiple short-term plateaus. These were the same types of learners who tested as ectenic on the later-developed, more sophisticated E&L Cognitive Styles Construct tool. The right-brain learners, referred to as hares, skipped merrily off, without plateauing, until reaching the pre-professional level, and then they reached a very long pla...

  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. Contrary to popular belief, far from all the interviewees, including the polyglots, were good classroom language students. One remembers receiving a D in a college Japanese course and being told to give up on languages and take an easier course. In a bygone day (clearly), a French professor threw a book at a current Level-4 speaker of French in exasperation at her then very strongly non-Parisian accent. A near-native speaker of Russian got C after C in college Russian courses and was gently encouraged to consider other languages. Many of the interviewees reported frustration with their early language-learning e...