MSI Press Blog

  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...

  Precerpt (excerpt prior to publication) from  My 20th Language  by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver --  HARES, TORTOISES, AND i You know the story: the hare dashes off and the tortoise plods along. In the classic fable, the tortoise wins. But in the world of language learning, things are more nuanced. I've met both types of learners many times over. The hares are the ones who shoot out of the gate — fast starters, quick to speak, full of confidence. They reach what I call the “awfully fluent” stage early on. You’ve probably heard it — learners who sound great at first blush, but when you listen more closely, you hear gaps, fossilized errors, awkward phrasing, or missing nuance. They’ve got the rhythm down, and even the accent, but it’s a bit like a beautifully frosted cake with a sunken middle. I say this with no judgment — because I am a hare. Then there are the tortoises. They move more slowly at the beginning. They're deliberate, careful, often hesitant to speak early on. T...

  In earlier posts, we’ve talked about hares and tortoises in language learning—those classic learner types who approach fluency either in a burst of brilliance or with deliberate, measured steps. Today, let’s revisit the hares, particularly those who have found a comfortable resting place at Level 3, or “Professional Proficiency,” and seem quite happy to stay there. Hares, often synoptic, right-brain dominant learners , shoot ahead in language acquisition. They become impressively fluent very quickly. They can talk around vocabulary gaps with creative circumlocutions. They can paraphrase on the fly, improvise idioms, and charm listeners with their expressive energy. But what happens when the hare, having outpaced the tortoise in reaching Level 3, falls asleep just shy of the finish line ? This, as Ehrman points out in Developing Professional-Level Foreign Language Proficiency (Leaver & Shekhtman), is the phenomenon of level  fossilization . (There are other forms o...

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Cognitive Styles A few cognitive styles have bee referred to and defined earlier (or footnoted). There are many kinds and systems of understanding cognition that have been proposed over the past 3-4 decades. The one I use in this book is the E&L Cognitive Style Construct (Ehrman & Leaver, 2002; Leaver, 2019). I have chosen it principally because it encompasses many other systems—the reason it was designed: to simplify the proliferating models floating around academic programs. [1] For this book, it provides an easy overview of styles because the E&L subordinates ten subscales [2] to two overarching categories, which make it easier and simpler to use as a first-step instrument. Cognition refers to the way people process information. After perceiving new information (through one or another sensory preference), a learner must process it, encoding it for memory. The effectiveness of how tha...