MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star! by Betty Lou Leaver, PhD.  INTRODUCTION This is not your typical tip book on how to learn foreign languages. It does not tell you to do a list of 15 things and assure you that you will become the language classroom star because typical lists of tips do not work for all leaners. Sometimes, almost none of the traditional tips and tricks work for some people. This book does not offer you learning strategies for reading, listening, writing, speaking, memorizing for vocabulary, and getting good with grammar. There is no need for yet another book on the topic of learning strategies. Good books exist. The best on, in opinion, is Teaching and researching language learning strategies: Self-regulation in context (Oxford, 2017). You should get it, use it, and keep it handy. You will not need a better guide for learning strategies than that. Oxford (1986) has also produced a well-vetted instrument: Strategy Inventory f

  Recently released - the audiobook for Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star! by Betty Lou Leaver. This book encompasses traditional tips that have worked for most people and then goes way beyond them. adjusting them to individual learners and teaching the learners to develop their own heuristics for rapid and successful language learning. Within these pages, the reader can find a trove of treasure, such as strategies and tactics reading, listening, writing, and speaking mental management ways to manage cognitive dissonance ways to control emotional reasoning the connection between health and language learning understanding and improving memory knowing how personality type and cognitive style affect learning successfully preparing for tests Read less For more posts about Betty Lou Leaver and her books, click HERE . Purchase this book at discount from the MSI Press webstore . Use Coupon Code FF25 for 25% off. Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Pr

  From  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star At the Defense Language Institute (DLI) where I served as a provost for five years, I became known as the “banana provost” because I would encourage students to eat a banana daily and, for certain, to eat one on the morning of important tests. Why would I do that? Because of the role that bananas play in memory. Bananas contain potassium, which facilitates the movement of glucose through the brain. Glucose is important because it carries memory Ingram’s.   Eat a banana = remember more words   That formula may seem simplistic, but overall it works.  (Note: Other foods with high levels of potassium will do as well, e.g., potatoes. Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Sta r contains a full chapter on various foods and how they can make you a more effective language learner.) See more posts on  this book . See more posts about   language learning.                                         Sign up fo

Exercise When one is studying intensively, it might seem an unnecessarily waste of time to get up and exercise. In fact, in the act of perseverance (the internal push to keep going), much time can pass unnoticed. All work and no play, however, is…well, you know. Exercise advantages the language learner in a number of ways: ·        releases feel-good endorphins ·        boosts brain activity ·        retention of new skills in memory The question, then, is not if you should exercise but rather when, how long, and how. Therein lie a number of options that you can choose from, depending upon your personal schedule, needs, and interests. Exercise to improve mood and energy Any exercise prompts the release of endorphins will improve mood and energy. Both will serve you will in the classroom as you work with others, and you may also gain additional energy for homework and self-study, active learner = happy learner Exercise to boost brain activity A

Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Memory, Forgetting, and Lapses   Just to reinforce the matter—or in case you are skipping around in this book and did not see the earlier memory discussion; there are three stages to memory: awareness/attention, encoding/storing, and recall/retrieval. In this section, we are focused on what happens after you have learned something and need to use it. When you want to remember, you will need to recall the information you have learned. One of three things he can happen, and we have all experienced all three: we remember it perfectly (yippee—hope that happens always, but it does not), we remember it imperfectly (oh, too typical), or do not remember it all (even if we remember having spent time studying it). Knowing what has happened in each case, brings us to a point of orienting our study and actions for better recall, as well as teaching us not to beat ourselves up when we have a glitch or lapse. Remembering p

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Affective Dissonance: Anxiety   Everyone experiences anxiety, no matter how capable or how easy a life any person seems to have. [1] Everyone has problems; just scratch the surface. And problems create anxiety. Generally, the greatest source of anxiety comes from not having the means to resolve a problem even if you know how to resolve it. If you cannot pay rent because your income is too low, of course, you will feel some anxiety. Classroom anxiety comes from a similar source—except often the lack of means of resolving a problem is a perceived lack, not a real lack. You are nervous about a test because you don’t have enough time to study, but you have waited until the last minute so you need to cram. Of course, you feel anxiety. You probably also realize that you did not have to wait until the last minute, and next time you can rectify it. Some students experience severe test anxiety. That is covered

One of the fun things that a publisher (or at least, an acquisitions editor) gets to experience is meeting more than one member of a family -- as authors whose work we publish. In this series of presenting family authors, we take note of the Leaver writers, who have written books in various combinations and solo. Above pictured is Betty Lou Leaver and Shenan (CB) Leaver, who collaborated on Mommy Our House Guest , a fun book that has gained a number of afficionados and been serialized in a magazine.  Betty Lou, who has written dozens of books, including, for MSI Press, Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star and The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom (with Laura Dabbs) and Carl, who typeset and designed the covers of many MSI Press publications and edited Overcoming the Odds , collaborated on the book,  Intrepid.  who unfortunately passed away in 2021 from Cancer of Unknown Primary, Carl, unfortunately, passed away suddenly in 2021 from Cancer of Unknown Primar