How to Improve Your

Foreign Language
IMMEDIATELY
Foreign Language
Communication Tools

Boris Shekhtman
 Copyright 2021 by MSI Press, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

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from the publisher.

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Fourth edition

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Printed in the United States of America
 Contents
Some Words about
Boris Shekhtman and This Book........................................... 1
To the Reader
from the Author....................................................................... 5
The Role of Communicative Rules in
Teaching and Learning Languages........................................ 9
What Are Communication Tools?.......................................... 15
Tool #1
Show Your Stuff..................................................................... 23
Tool #2
Build up Your Islands............................................................ 33
Tool #3
Shift Gears.............................................................................. 43
Tool #4
Simplify, Simplify.................................................................. 51
Tool #5
Break Away............................................................................. 59
Tool #6
Embellish It............................................................................ 69
Tool #7
Say What?............................................................................... 77
Epilogue
Sandy....................................................................................... 85
Teacher Note.......................................................................... 91
Chapter Notes........................................................................ 99
Boris Shekhtman

iv
 Some Words about
Boris Shekhtman and This Book

1
Boris Shekhtman

2
 I met the late Boris Shekhtman when I became the Rus-
sian Language Training Supervisor at the U. S. Department of
State’s Foreign Service Institute.(FSI) He had been enjoying
remarkable success as a Russian language instructor of diplo-
mats—they glued themselves to him as one would to a proph-
et. And perhaps he was sort of a language prophet. He earned
teaching awards and established and taught an immensely suc-
cessful advanced language course. He did not fit into the main-
stream of language teachers, though. His methods were his
own—no labels for them that fit with current thought. Today,
one might point them out as transformative, and the advance
course structure did give rise to what today is called Open
Architecture Curriculum Design. His approaches and tech-
niques in the 1980s are only now, 40 years later, entering the
consciousness of the mainstream of L2 education—and still at
the cutting edge of it. Still, back in the 1980s, they poked up
through the mass of standard approaches, thanks to his suc-
cess at getting students to very high levels or proficiency near-
ly without fail and the formation of a growing cadre of devoted
students. He earned FSI’s highest teaching award.
After leaving FSI, he ran a private school for year 5. Strug-
gling diplomats showed up on his doorstep, hoping to be able
to reach proficiency levels that seemed out of reach—and they
did. Stellar journalists with household names from The New
York Times and the Los Angeles Times, who filled his class-
rooms, sang his praises—in writing in their publications.
Other government students also blossomed under his
touch. He assisted faculty and administrators at the Defense

3
 Boris Shekhtman

Language Institute Foreign Language Center, the US Institute

for Peace, and other federal institutions.
He also co-founded the Coalition of Distinguished Lan-
guage Centers and developed materials for teaching learners
to reach the near-native level. His publications with MSI Press
LLC, Villa Magna, LLC, and Cambridge University Press have
informed many teachers and many students.
The book in your hand has been held in some version or
another by thousands of students who swear by it. I have used
it myself in assisting ministries of education and schools in
more than a dozen countries. They have become fans.
Now, it is your turn! May you have much success in lan-
guage learning—and if you do, go out and share that informa-
tion so others may also benefit.
Betty Lou Leaver, Ph.D.
Provost, retired, Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
Former Russian Language Training Supervisor, Forein Service Institute
Former Language Program Coordinator, NASA

4
 To the Reader
from the Author

5
Boris Shekhtman

6
 The book which you, dear reader, have picked up was writ-
ten approximately twenty years ago. However, the reasons that
brought it to the light of day then remain as important today
as ever. The first of these reasons is the survival of foreign-
ers who are living entirely surrounded by native speakers of the
foreign language. I came to the United States with a decent lev-
el of English, but, naturally, I did not feel myself to be on a par
with Americans. I am certain that a great many people are suf-
fering and have suffered from this feeling of “linguistic inferiority.”
Some people come to accept this feeling. Others try to improve
their foreign language. Still others--and I belong to this group-
-try to find a set of strategies to help them to use the language
that they have acquired more effectively. Back then I had already
begun to realize the strategic significance of simplifying thoughts in
order to be understood; after all, it is better to express a thought
simply than not to express it at all or to express something that
the native speaker either cannot understand at all or perceives
as nonsense.
The next step forward in the development of a system
of strategies for using a foreign language came at the time of my
teaching at the Foreign Service Institute of the U. S. Depart-
ment of State. Students enrolled at this institution take a test
at the end of their course of study, the results of which have
a strong impact on their career. This is when I noticed that
students who intuitively possess good strategic competence do
better on the test than those who do not even if their level of
knowledge of the language is practically the same. So, it was
then that I developed my system of commnunicative rules and
began to teach them to my students. The results were aston-

7
 Boris Shekhtman

ishing. Using military terms, the weapon of the student taking

the test with no knowledge of communicative strategies was
equivalent to a bow and arrow, whereas the weapon of the stu-
dent who had at his or her command a set of strategic rules was
a missile. The students simply went crazy over these rules, as
they understood these rules to help them in the best sense to
show what they knew of the language.
There was something else that had a strong impact on my
desire to write this book. I came to the United States from the
Soviet Union. At the time, the U.S.S.R. had a planned economy,
which completely subverted the market processes. In the country
where I lived for almost forty years, the prices of goods were
fixed by the government. So goods there, for all practical pur-
poses, were not sold but given out or distributed, but sudden-
ly, here in America, exposed to the nature of a free market, I saw
for the first time that the essence of a normal economy is that
everything is for sale, that everything can be considered a good.
I also understood what the essence of the sale of any good was.
The essence is that the seller always shows the attractive as-
pects of his goods and does not highlight the negatives. Wheth-
er one is selling an insurance policy or a book, a car or a house, a
legal ruling or a political program and whether a real estate agent
or the president of the country is doing the selling, the sales
approach is always the same: talk up the positive attributes as
much as possible and downplay the negative ones as much as
possible. Likewise, speech is your good, which you sell through the
process of communication. Sell it right. Show its positive sides,
not its negative ones. It is precisely this that the strategic rules of
communication will help you to execute.
Nonetheless, the fact that this book was written many
years ago makes it a little outdated. During this time, the sys-
tem of strategic rules for the effective use of a foreign language
that are described in this book became more developed and
solidified. The strategic rules were codified in accordance with
the type of communication; their significance was shown in re-
lation to the aggregate of forms and content; their dependen-
cy on proficiency level was examined; and, most important,
the possibility of using these rules as a teaching method was
demonstrated.1 Indeed, the rules described in this book can be
of considerable assistance both to students studying a foreign
language and to teachers teaching it.2

8
The Role of Communicative Rules in
Teaching and Learning Languages

9
Boris Shekhtman

10
 In learning and teaching second and foreign languages,
teachers and students have a number of resources at their fin-
gertips to work with both the “top-down” and “bottom-up” as-
pects of language acquisition. Textbooks and reference gram-
mars provide us with grammar rules. These are very useful
in understanding how the language works and in helping us
to make our communication literate. Some textbooks, along
with conversation guides and the like, provide us with scripts
for generating various kinds of speech acts in various topical
domains. We have the weather forecast script, the political meet-
ings-andgreetings script, the professional reception script, the
business meeting script, and so on and so forth. A very few
textbooks (and then only at high levels of proficiency and only
in some languages) provide us with the outlines for discourse
structures for various kinds of genres: chit-chat, formal presen-
tations on scientific topics, the narration of anecdotes, the prepa-
ration of a piece of literature (in one of many possible genres),
news reports (written and oral), and so on. Each of these re-
sources does one of two things: (1) it provides an overall struc-
ture (macro) level or (2) it provides the pieces that fit into the
structure (micro level).
What current resources fail to provide, however, is set of
guidelines that learners can use to control their language use.
The word, control, here is very important because, in general, cur-
rent resources control the speaker, not the other way around.
Thus, a structure at the micro level gives students a format to
use; it is, however, generally quite inflexible: students fits their
output to the structure, not to the speaking situation or envi-
ronment in which they finds themselves. Likewise, structures

11
 Boris Shekhtman

at the micro level give students forms to use; they, too, are in-
flexible: in general, they are either right or wrong, and students
piece them together syntactically either correctly and are un-
derstood or incorrectly and are not understood. Both formats
and forms are language-specific.
Communication rules, however, are quite generic by nature.
They transcend the linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of lan-
guage. They are not languagespecific. They are mechanisms
for putting students in control of information flow, of idea ex-
change, of negotiation, and of any other communicative func-
tion, regardless of the language being spoken. They subordinate
linguistic performance to social performance and sociolinguistic
knowledge to psycholinguistic legerdemain.
Legerdemain, indeed, is an appropriate word because to
many these rules of communication seem like magic. And, if it is
magic to control one’s environment, then it would be hard to ar-
gue otherwise.
In essence, though, these rules of communication are just
what they are labeled. Analysis of social performance through
speech reveals the keys (rules) to being in control of a conver-
sation.
There are many positive aspects to having such tools at
one’s ready and being able to use them well. First, they allow one
to enter into a conversation with a native speaker and successfully
stay in that conversation by regulating the conversation in such a
way that it remains on a proficiency level that is both manageable
by the student and comfortable for the native speaker. Second, it
allows a student to accomplish his or her goal in entering into
the communication, whether that be to impart information, ne-
gotiate a deal, or impress an audience with a brilliant presenta-
tion. Third, they allow speakers of a foreign language to use
that language to their advantage, not disadvantage. These, of
course, are only some of the positive aspects of learning to use
communication tools. Other advantages are identified within
the various chapters of this book.
It is very popular nowadays to talk about learning strate-
gies. It is only slightly less common to teach learning strategies.
Rules of communication are strategies, and they form an import-
ant part of a student’s strategic competence. Individual learn-
ing strategies, however, are generally limited, and it is the choice of
the right strategy or combination of strategies at a particular mo-

12
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

ment that predicates whether or not a student will be successful

in learning or using a bit of language. Communication tools go
beyond learning strategies; they are not strategies for learning
but for organizing, fostering, controlling, and learning from whole
communications. While they can be taught and practiced in the
classroom, they go far beyond it and allow the student to live,
work, and play successfully in the foreign-language environment.
The question, then, is for whom are such tools intend-
ed? The answer is very simple: for everyone. Teachers success-
fully taught these tools to students at every level of foreign-lan-
guage proficiency from raw beginner to near-native speaker. They
have seen students change from being tongue-tied and incoher-
ent to impressive language users without an additional day of for-
eign language study. As Natalia Lord (see Chapter Notes at the
end of this volume) points out, these rules make any communi-
cation more effective, even in one’s native language, although,
of course, they were intended for the foreign-language student
trying not only to survive but also to accomplish a variety of
goals in communications with native speakers.
The toolbox presented here and the instructions for the use
of each tool have no parallel in the second language literature.
Whether you are a teacher or a student, take time to learn how
to use each of these tools. You will not regret it; it will be some
of the best-spent time you will ever have in teaching and learning
a foreign language.

13
Boris Shekhtman

14
WhatAre Communication Tools?

15
Boris Shekhtman

16
 For any person who comes to a foreign country, the chal-
lenge of communicating with the inhabitants of that country
is of the utmost importance. Without any doubt, the effective-
ness of this communication depends first and foremost on the
level of the arrivee’s language. The better the command of the
foreign language, the more fluid the speech will be; the greater
the knowledge of grammar, the richer the vocabulary will be;
the more fluid the speech and the richer the vocabulary, the
easier the process of communication with the native speaker
will be. In other words, the degree of the foreigner’s knowl-
edge of the language determines the nature and success of the
communication process between the foreigner and the native
speaker. The knowledge of the language of the host country
is the primary foundation upon which the quality of language
communication depends.

Essentials for Knowing a Foreign Language

What is necessary for an individual to know a foreign lan-
guage? Naturally, either one must be taught this foreign lan-
guage by someone else, or one must learn it independently.
Most frequently, we see a combination of both of these pro-
cesses. A student studies at school, or at an university, or in
a special language course; the student studies a series of text-
books, memorizes many rules, completes a certain number of
exercises, participates in different colloquial situations, writes,
reads, translates, listens to foreign radio, studies independent-
ly, shows interest in the culture of the target language, and so
on—in effect, the student acquires the foreign language.

17
 Boris Shekhtman

Definition of Communication Rules

Yet everything discussed above—the acquisition of the
language, the knowledge of the language—have nothing to do
with communication tools.
Communication tools are the combination of
skills which allow a speaker to use most effec-
tively the level of foreign language in his or her
command.
To make this definition more clear, let us imagine two
groups of students with the same level of knowledge of foreign
language. Let us imagine also that these students have come
to the host country and are capable of observing the quality
of their communication with native speakers. We do not have
to have any great imagination to know that the members of
the two groups will be quite different one from another and
in striking ways. Everyone has seen representatives of each of
these groups. So, let’s see what happens with these two groups
when they are “in action.”
Group #1
These students communicate with the inhabitants of the
host country only with great difficulty. They cannot maintain
a conversation. They answer questions very abruptly. They are
afraid of making mistakes. They await the next question from
their counterpart with fear. In the process of speaking, they
think extensively in their native language. Even worse, when
they speak, they translate from their native language to the for-
eign language. They cannot find the necessary words quickly.
In brief, they create an anti-communicative atmosphere with
their counterpart and, as a result, conversation stops.
Group #2
Students in the second group have the same level of knowl-
edge as students in group #1. However, they conduct their con-
versations much better and more effectively. They are able to
maintain conversations even if they do not know all the words
or even fully understand the all the content. They answer
questions smoothly and at some length—as in a conversation
in their own language, creating comfort for their interlocu-
tor. They make mistakes, but they keep on going; they are not

18
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

afraid of “being wrong.” They look forward to the next ques-

tion from their counterpart, often setting up the conversation
so that the next question will be one that they can, for sure,
handle. In the process of speaking, they seem to think in the
foreign language; at least, language spills out of them seeming-
ly effortlessly. They clearly are not translating from their na-
tive language because they use expressions and discourse that
are particular to the foreign language. The words they need
always seem to be at their command. As a result, they create
a communicatively interesting and comfortable environment
with their counterpart, and, as a result, conversation flows un-
abated.
What is the reason for this difference? The second group
of students intentionally or intuitively use some communica-
tion tools—tools which this book describes.

What Communication Tools Do

In connection with my language school for journalists and
business executives, I have worked with adults who have been
highly motivated to succeed at learning a language for the
practical purpose of communication, rather than for the ac-
quisition of academic credit. I developed the communication
tools discussed in this book in response to the desire to help
my students succeed with whatever amount of language train-
ing their circumstances permitted. It is clear, of course, that
I could not, with sometimes only a few weeks or months of
work, improve the objective level of a student’s language. But
what I really achieved was to provide them with tools which
would enable them to exhibit their level of knowledge most ef-
fectively and noticeably. By using these tools, students could
make the most positive impression of themselves, or, as one
might say, “sell themselves” for a greater profit.
We can also explain the success of these tools by the fact
that, unlike an academic grade, which places much emphasis
on theoretical knowledge, our objective has been to give the
student the practical ability to communicate in the host coun-
try.
The communication tools presented in this book
are precisely those strategies that enable the
student to use the foreign language as an instru-
ment of communication.
19
 Boris Shekhtman

Where Communication Tools Came From

Additional enhancements to these strategies (communica-
tion tools) came from the students themselves. A number of
outstanding, journalists have completed our programs. These
include journalists from the New York Times, the Associated
Press, Time Magazine, National Public Radio, and ABC, as
well as freelancers. These journalists helped me to refine and
improve these communication tools by exposing me to their
common devices. In their daily work— conducting interviews
and writing columns and reports—journalists regularly use
techniques that give them effective results and more interest-
ing material. Therefore, I felt that, when compared to many of
my other students, the journalists quite easily learned how to
use communication tools and employed them with great suc-
cess.

Communication Tools in Action

During the meeting between President Reagan and Gen-
eral Secretary Gorbachev in Washington in December 1987,
Michael Putzel, who came back from Moscow for several days
to cover the event, called me. He spoke to me in Russian very
fluently and easily, and I told him that the level of his language
had increased significantly during the three months he had
spent in Moscow. I will never forget his reaction: “Listen, Bo-
ris, this is only because now I am using our communication
tools.” And we burst into laughter together.
At this moment, he and I recalled his first meeting with Ita
Janovna. Ita Janovna is a dear and kind old woman, my dedi-
cated friend, who immigrated from the Soviet Union ten years
ago but still knows no English. Without realizing it, she has
often helped me to teach my students to use communication
tools. I would warn a student that the next day he or she would
meet with a native Russian-speaker and that his or her assign-
ment, although his or her level of the language was still very
low, was to manage normal communication with this person at
the meeting. Michael’s meeting with Ita Janovna went terribly;
it was a complete catastrophe. He forgot all of the communi-
cative tools, uttered unintelligible phrases and sentences, and
absolutely could not understand anything Ita Janovna said. She
even questioned my judgment in arranging the meeting.
“This American cannot speak Russian at all,” she said.
20
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

I was furious. “Why didn’t you use your communication

tools?” I asked Michael.
Michael responded with the most typical argument against
communication tools, “Because I didn’t want to trick her. Why
should I make her think that I know the language better than
I really do?”
“For two reasons,” I answered. “The first one is that, if you
had used them, you could have talked with her. You could have
had a normal conversation with her, and it would have been
nice for you and for her. The second one is that only by using
our communicative tools would you have shown her your real
language level.”
The next day I asked Ita Janovna to come once again to
the class to meet with Mike. She was very surprised, but she
came. This time, Mike was simply magnificent. He used our
tools with such art that Ita Janovna was amazed.
“How could he have improved his language to such an ex-
tent in one day?” she asked me. “He speaks very well. Did he
pretend ignorance yesterday?”
Michael was very satisfied with himself, and I was once
more convinced of the tremendous role that communication
tools play in the organization of the process of communica-
tion.

21
Boris Shekhtman

22
 Tool #1
Show Your Stuff

23
Boris Shekhtman

24
 When a native speaker asks you a question, give the most
verbose answer possible. The question asked by a native speak-
er is an invitation for communication. Take advantage of this
invitation to display all of your foreign language knowledge to
its best advantage: be a “show-off.” That is what tool #1, show-
ing your stuff, is all about.
Short, simple answers hinder conversation because they
very quickly transform communication into interrogation,
making both the foreigner and native speaker feel awkward.
There are other difficulties for both the foreign student and
the native speaker that come from this unnatural type of ver-
bal exchange.
1. When the native speaker becomes an “interrogator,”
the foreigner experiences a sharply increased
“language load,” i.e. the amount of language which
the native speaker addresses to a student increases
exponentially. This is a vicious circle: The more a
student manifests passivity (keeps silence), the more
active the native speaker has to become in order
to keep up the communication and the ever more
difficult it becomes for the student to communicate
for he understands the native speaker less and less
and, therefore, becomes more and more passive.
2. When one question follows another, the native
speaker ends up being in complete control of
the conversation— and there is no longer a real
conversation because a conversation requires equal
partners.

25
 Boris Shekhtman

3. Being fully responsible for control of the conversation

makes the native speaker feel tense; he or she senses
that the communicative process is ineffective,
strained, and unnatural—and rarely knows what to do
about it.
What is the result of these difficulties?
• The native speaker feels that the foreigner does not
know enough language for normal communication;
and
• the foreigner perceives that it is very difficult to
satisfy his or her companion.
Both parties want to escape from this unpleasant predica-
ment. Therefore, either the communication quickly comes to
a stop or it reverts to the language of the foreigner. Quite fre-
quently this occurs if the language of the foreigner is English
(the most commonly studied “second language”) because it of-
fers the native speaker, who more often than not has studied
English, an opportunity to practice it.

How to Show Your Stuff

So, how can we put this tool, showing your stuff, into prac-
tice? The answer is to “link” one piece of information to an-
other, going from subject to subject, each time “hooking” onto
a new, yet related issue. For example, the sentence “I live in
Brooklyn” may be expanded by the student in three ways.
(1) First of all, the student must say a handful of
sentences about himself. “My name is Ivan. I was born
in Moscow. I am an engineer. Now I work in a large
company.”
(2) The student then can develop the next element of
the sentence “live” and speak about living in different
places, e.g. “I like to live in New York. I like the
climate here. This is a very big city and I like to live in
big cities. There is more to do in a city than in a small
town. In Russia I lived in a small town and I did not
like the life there.”
(3) Next comes “Brooklyn” itself. “I live in New York, in
Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a part of New York. I live near

26
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

the beach. There are many Jews from Russia who

live in Brooklyn. There are many good Russian and
Georgian restaurants in Brooklyn.”
In other words, the student must look at all of the compo-
nents of that first simple sentence as the start of expansions.
The expansions need to utilize the vocabulary and structural
models that the student has already mastered.As we see, the
student so far does not leave the original sentence as far as his
focus is concerned.
The student may also develop a “chain reaction” and ex-
pand away from the original topic of the sentence. This exer-
cise is similar to the previous one except that in this case, the
expansions lead the student away from the original topic sen-
tence. The student may mention another city when speaking
of Brooklyn and then mention a family member or friend who
lives there. From that sentence the student begins to describe
this friend and forgets all about Brooklyn. From the descrip-
tion of his friend, he may mention the place where the friend
works. This introduces still another topic in this chain reac-
tion.

Using Tool #1
Let me give an example of “showing your stuff ” as a com-
municative tool. (All of the examples given in this book assume
the following scenario: The foreigner is invited to the home of
a native speaker for dinner. The native speaker introduces the
foreigner to a friend, who beings to talk to him or her. The na-
tive speaker is identified in the dialogue as “N,” the foreigner
as “F.”)
N: How do you do?
F: How do you do?
N: I hear that you are an American.
F: Yes, I am an American. I live in Philadelphia. It is
a very large American city. It is located on the East
Coast of the United States between New York and
Washington. I came to Moscow only two days ago,
but I have already seen the Kremlin and Red Square.
Moscow is a beautiful city.
N: How do you know Boris Vladimirovich?
27
 Boris Shekhtman

F: Oh, I have known him for many years. I first met him
in Washington. He was studying at the University. He
was 20, and I was 21. We have been friends ever since
then. We correspond regularly. He is a very good
engineer; I am an engineer, too.
This type of “wordy” answer accomplishes a lot:
(1) it creates a communicative atmosphere;
(2) it attracts the interest of the native speaker;
(3) it reduces the amount of difficult language directed to
the foreigner;
(4) it limits the language initiative of the native speaker;
(5) it sets a natural tone for the conversation; and
(6) it makes the participants in the conversation equal.
Note that in the above example, I illustrated a foreigner
whose language was not on a very high level; his language was
simple and sometimes primitive. I did this intentionally to un-
derscore the fact that this tool can be used to enhance any lev-
el of language.

Exercises to Develop Tool #1

I’d like to share with you examples of exercises which have
been used in classes in order to improve a student’s ability to
sell himself or herself to a native speaker, i.e. to show his or
her stuff. Such exercises take place in groups of two or three
students, but it is quite possible to use them individually (i.e.,
without an instructor) or in larger groups of students.
Before describing some of these exercises, I would like to
make one further remark. When I talk about a student’s “mis-
take,” I am referring not to just any lexical, grammatical or syn-
tactic error, but to a communicative error. A communicative
mistake is an error of word choice, grammar, or syntax that
prevents the hearer from understanding what the speaker in-
tends to convey. A grammatical, syntactical, or lexical mistake
which does not interfere with what the speaker intends to con-
vey is not a communicative mistake. Of course, in all of these
exercises grammatical mistakes, rather than communicative
mistakes, can serve as targets for error correction.

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

The One-Minute Exercise

The first exercise is called “The One-Minute Exercise.” At
the beginning of the exercises, the leader defines the opening
topic of the conversation, from which the dialogue can digress
naturally into a free association discussion. All the participants
in the exercise are allowed to speak for only a limited time. The
limit can be one, two, or five minutes, depending on the profi-
ciency level of the participants. The turn, or transfer of control
of the conversation from one participant to another, is made by
the use of such questions as:
• “What is your opinion about this issue?”
• “Do you agree with me?”
• “What do you think?”
The leader carefully controls both the time allocation and
the transitional rule. If one participant speaks past the desig-
nated time, the leader signals him or her. I, for example, hold
up a small sign resembling a red stoplight. Upon receiving such
a signal from me, the participant must not simply interrupt the
conversation but rather effect a smooth transition to another
speaker, using the rule.
The One-Minute Exercise is useful for a number of rea-
sons:
• It provides the participant with the ability to survive
for a fixed period without making communicative
mistakes. (If the speaker does make such a mistake,
the leader immediately transfers control of the
conversation to another participant; this is the only
time the leader will interrupt and assume direct
control.)
• It provides a foreigner with the skills necessary to
survive in a group communication environment;
usually the foreign speakers have been trained only
to handle dialogue between two speakers but become
confused when confronted with group discussions
among native speakers.
• Group discussion in any language requires
transitional devices for getting and relinquishing
control of the speaking role.

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 Boris Shekhtman

• The ability to yield control of a conversation at will

provides the foreigner with a graceful and controlled
method of taking a break when he or she has
exhausted the available language.

The Do Not Stop Exercise

In contrast to the One Minute Exercise, the Do not Stop
Exercise creates competition among its participants to retain
control of a conversation and speak for a long time. The leader
gives a question to one of the participants, who must provide
an answer which is as long as possible. The longer the answer
a participant provides, the longer he or she can talk. If a par-
ticipant stops or makes a short pause, the leader immediate-
ly stops listening to the speaker and turns his or her attention
to another participant, asking a question to trigger that per-
son’s as-long-as-possible response. The participant who man-
ages to give the longest answer is the winner. A communica-
tive mistake in the process of an answer counts as a pause and
thus interrupts this participant’s speech. The number of paus-
es and communicative mistakes which influence the transfer of
speech can be adjusted to suit the level of the students. Anal-
ysis of communicative mistakes made can be done at the end
of the exercise.
The purpose of the Do Not Stop Exercise is to develop
strategies for taking and maintaining control of a conversa-
tion. Such strategies are useful to language learners for sever-
al reasons:
• They allow learners to prevent the situation in which
they find themselves being “interrogated” by a native
speaker.
• They allow learners to escape from “interrogations” if
they find themselves in such situations.
• Controlling a conversation allows students to talk
about what they can talk about and avoid discussions
on topics for which they have neither grammar nor
vocabulary to manage.

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

The Develop It Exercise

In the Develop It Exercise, the leader provides the speaker
with only one sentence, such as, “Yesterday I was at a restau-
rant,” which can be developed into a story that can continue
for either a limited or unlimited amount of time (as set by the
rules), depending on the number of mistakes that are allowed
by the rules in force. This exercise uses the time and error lim-
its found in the two previous exercises but adds the new di-
mension of challenging the student to develop the topic.
The purpose of the Develop It Exercises is to develop strat-
egies for controlling the length and content of a conversation.
Such strategies are useful for the following reasons:
• They allow students to hang onto the rudder of the
language, i.e. the length of the monologue depends on
the student’s will.
• They provide students with the opportunity to review
language they already know.
• They serve as an opportunity for self-drill.
The use of this tool alone—showing your stuff to its full-
est—can sharply increase the impression made by a foreigner’s
language.

An Example of Show Your Stuff in Action

The story of a student referred by a much-respected col-
league of mine provides a good example. My colleague’s eval-
uation of Amy’s Russian, acquired in college courses, was very
low, a 1+ (intermediate level, or someone who can handle some
every day language but does not have enough skill to do much
of any work that requires the use of the language). When Amy
came to me, I decided that before evaluating her level myself,
I would provide her with the show-your-stuff strategy and ask
her to use it. After being taught how to use this tool, the lan-
guage she produced for me was significantly higher. Most im-
portant, the level at which she was able to communicate, using
the show-your-stuff tool, was probably her real level. She just
hadn’t known how to show her stuff!

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Boris Shekhtman

32
 Tool #2
Build up Your Islands

33
Boris Shekhtman

34
 Native speakers speak readily, without any seeming effort.
Their speech is natural and spontaneous; it is real, not artifi-
cial. Speaking one’s native language is like walking. One does
not think about how to use gross motor muscles; one simply
walks. Speaking in a foreign language is not like this. It is, in
fact, more like swimming. Foreign-language speakers have
been thrown from their natural environemnt, pushed off their
“land,” so to speak, into an unfamiliar language environment,
as if it were a large body of water. They know very well that if
they stop swimming, they will drown immediately. Unfortu-
nately, drowning occurs all too often. After a long period of
swimming, swimmers, overcome by fatigue, lose their strength
and efficiency. Then, in panic, they waste their remaining en-
ergy. This is immediately seen in long-duration conversations
with native speakers: the foreigner, under the stress of commu-
nicating in an unnatural environment, experiences an increase
in errors and a decrease in speed and confidence in speaking.
Both the swimmer and the foreign-language speaker elic-
it sympathy. If only each could find a small island upon which
to rest and recoup before assaying forth once again! They can,
of course. In speech, such an island would be a small, but very
well memorized, much practiced, or frequently used mono-
logue. The more such monologues the speaker knows, the
more places of rest are available when the need arises and the
easier it is for the speaker to speak, or “swim.”
Such islands are not unique hide-outs, or tools, for for-
eign-language students. Most people have a number of these
kinds of memorized oral texts (or islands) at their fingertips
in their own language. When they speak about the topics of

35
 Boris Shekhtman

these texts, they sound particularly effective and articulate. In

some cases, these are stories and anecdotes that, as a result of
much re-telling, have become polished. Often, these “speech-
es” can be examined and from them can be identified formulas
for expressing a specific position or explaining a concept about
which the speaker has thought and spoken often. These can
also be formal speeches, lectures, and “opening lines.” The use
of such islands helps native speakers express themselves more
precisely and eloquently, without ever once thinking about the
forms they are using or the discourse formats that they need.
Is it possible to gain the same advantage in a foreign lan-
guage that islands give in one’s native language? The answer to
that question is that it is not only possible, it is imperative for
foreign-language speakers to develop islands. For them, islands
can be a salvation. By using islands, foreign-language speakers
can improve the quality of their communication and the kind
of contact they have with their interlocutors. By using islands,
they can give themselves a rest break any time they want with-
out breaking down the communication but rather improving
it. By using islands, they gain the attention of the native speak-
er as someone with whom they can communication. In my ex-
perience, the confidence of the foreigner in speaking situations
varies directly with the quantity of islands within his or her
control. It is impossible to overemphasize the communicative
value or siginificant role that islands play in interactive com-
munication.
There are two reasons that islands have communicative
value:
(1) They give the speaker the ability to shift quickly into
fast and confident speech.
(2) They supply a variety of grammatical patterns for
successful application to different contexts and
situations.
Let’s look at islands in practice. If, for example, an island
contains the sentence, “politics play an important role in soci-
ety,” this sentence provides the foreigner with both an example
of a basic grammatical rule and with a model that can be used
in a different situation–such as “sports play an important role
in my family.” The most powerful use of a sentence pattern is
not as a conduit for specific content, but as a “template” for use

36
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

in situations where communication is of a parallel type. For ex-

ample, a speaker can recycle the model, “this is one of my fa-
vorite books,” as “Paris is one of my favorite cities.” This use of
islands takes some refinement, typically required by classroom
exercises and repetitive practice. While this takes much work,
the investment usually pays off well.
Moreover, some islands can be used intact in comparable
but different situations. Let us look at one such island:
American-Soviet diplomatic relations were es-
tablished on October 16, 1933, during the pe-
riod of Stalin and Roosevelt. Before establish-
ing formal relations, there were unofficial trade,
economic, scientific, cultural, and athletic rela-
tionships between the two countries. From the
point of view of the Soviet Union, Franklin Roo-
sevelt established diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union for three reasons: The first reason
was the economic crisis in the United States,
which forced the United States to search for new
markets; the second reason was the stability of
the Soviet regime; and the third, the military
threat from Japan.
Note that, with minimal substitutions, this particular is-
land can be used to describe American diplomatic relations
with any number of countries.
Linking
At the same time, the literal use of an island’s well-mem-
orized text to convey its content (in contrast to using it as a
model for grammatical form) is also very important, especially
in a situation where communication has become strained and
it is necessary to provide a stimulus to restore communication.
Because the technique of using islands to re-energize a conver-
sation is not as easy as it may seem, let me recommend several
approaches to assist the speaker. The first is a device described
previously (in Show Your Stuff), called “linking,” in which
the speaker links one piece of information to another, moving
from subject to subject, each time “hooking” onto a new, yet
related issue. By combining several repetitions of this device,
linking several topics in sequence, the speaker can build a se-

37
 Boris Shekhtman

ries of “stepping stones” to serve as a bridge through the shal-

low water approaching the island. If, for example, the speaker
has a very good island on American literature and at the mo-
ment the conversation is about helicopters, about which the
speaker cannot speak comfortably in the foreign language (and
perhaps not even in his or her native language!), the speaker
can, with the help of the linking device, get to the island. The
process can follow this pattern:
N: You know, I am fond of helicopters. First of all, I read
a lot about them as a child. Then, when I served in
the Air Force, I flew them. Have you ever flown in a
helicopter?
F: Unfortunately, not. I’ve only flown in airplanes, and
only as a passenger. But I can understand how it
must feel to be involved with flying. I’ve read a lot
of books about the aviation industry, for example,
Arthur Hailey’s Airport. Many American writers now
provide background on some subject areas – hotels,
flying, and so on. I find that I can learn much about
American culture by reading American fiction. I
think that now literature plays an important role
in society. [Note that this is the beginning of the
speaker’s island, which he or she has reached by using
a series of links.]

Baiting
We might call the next device “bait” for catching the na-
tive speaker. This device is especially important when the con-
versation has come to a complete standstill. Perhaps the for-
eigner is absolutely unable to understand what has been said
or to answer the question asked, or perhaps the native speaker
simply does not know what to say next or what to do with the
foreigner. This is the moment for the “baiting” device. Baiting
consists of several elements:
(1) The foreigner gives a question to the native speaker
which corresponds to the topic of a prepared island;
(2) The native speaker, obviously, must answer the
question;

38
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

(3) After finishing the answer, the native speaker provides

the foreigner with an opportunity to use the island,
which is ready for delivery.
Here is an example:
F: [After an uncomfortably long period of silence] Do you
like music?
N: I like classical music, but have trouble understanding
some of the newer popular music. What do you think
about this loud stuff? [The foreigner has “hooked” the
native speaker with the bait. Regardless of the native
speaker’s response, the foreigner can use the island.]
F: I do not like this music, either. My favorite kind
of music is folk music. Folk music is international.
Every ethic group has its own folk music. The form
is both universal and unique to each culture. I try to
learn the folk music of each region I visit. I especially
like American country music … [And the foreigner
continues with the island.]

Control of the Island

The foreigner’s command of the island is extremely im-
portant. Lack of mastery of the island will result in an unwill-
ingness to use it. There is a direct correlation between the de-
gree of control a speaker has of an island, and his or her ability
and inclination to use it. If the speaker does not have com-
plete control of an island, the stress and pressure created by
the situation requiring the use of the island will compound the
speaker’s lack of confidence in executing the island, resulting
in communicative paralysis. There is no difference between
having a poorly-prepared island and no island at all: in each
case, the speaker will not have an island available when it is
needed. Only an absolutely automated “computerized” island
which has been drilled into the native speaker to the point of
becoming like a reflex, can get the foreigner through the pres-
sure of the communicative environment with a native speaker.
Here are some specific rules which can help the instructor
and the student in memorizing islands:
• Each island must be very small. Short, specific,
“modular” islands are easier for the student to

39
 Boris Shekhtman

memorize and can be combined flexibly with one

another as necessary.
• The student has to perceive the practical need for
each island. It is difficult for a student to memorize
something for which he or she can envision no
practical application.
• The student should participate in constructing
an island. The topics and language of islands must
reflect the student’s style and personality to assist the
student in mastering the island.
• Use a variety of techniques memorizing each
island. The student must train through different
techniques (questions/ answers, grammar pattern
drills, repetition, retelling, substitution, singing) so
that a variety of stimuli might trigger the speaker’s
memory.
• Repeat each island as many times as possible. The
process of memorization, particularly for the adult
learner, requires repetition over a period of time and
in a variety of contexts. The ability to recite an island
must become a form of reflex for the speaker.

Categories of Islands
There are two distinct categories of islands. The first deals
with an individual’s personal background and information,
while the second provides information on less personal topics.
Personal Islands
Suggested topics for “personal” islands include:
• About Myself
• My Family
• My Friend
• My Day
• My House
• At Work
• My Supervisor

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

• My Favorite Book
• My Favorite Author
• My Favorite Opera
• My Favorite Movie
• My Last Vacation
• My Hobby
• My Favorite Season

Non-Personal Islands
Topics in the second category usually relate to the country
visited or the homeland of the native speaker. For instance, if
the foreigner were visiting Russian, appropriate islands might
include:
• American-Soviet Relations;
• Geographical Situation of the U.S. and Russia;
• Political Systems of the U.S. and Russia;
• Economy of the U.S. and Russia;
• Youth of the U.S. and Russia;
• Science in the U.S. and Russia;
• Literature of the U.S. and Russia;
• Religion in the U.S. and Russia;
• Perestroika and Glasnost’; and
• Gorbachev
The use of islands is essential to the success of all of the
other tools available; this will become more and more clear
as you progress further through this book. But even now, it
should be obvious that the more islands a speaker possesses,
the more effectively he or she can “show his or her stuff.”

41
Boris Shekhtman

42
 Tool #3
Shift Gears

43
Boris Shekhtman

44
 It is quite likely that during the normal course of conver-
sation with a native speaker, the discussion will progress to a
topic which is either unfamiliar to the foreigner or for which
he or she lacks adequate vocabulary or grammar. This occur-
rence threatens the continuity of the communication. This
danger becomes particularly serious if a foreigner, despite in-
adequate knowledge or language, nevertheless tries to express
what he or she is not capable of expressing. The scenario can
become quite humorous: the foreigner does not know how
to express the desired thought while the native speaker does
not know what the foreigner wants to say and thus does not
know how to help out. The foreigner resembles a beached fish
that suddenly finds itself cast up onto dry land, out of its nat-
ural habitat. The foreigner’s mouth opens and closes, without
making any sound, or produces sounds that do not resemble
language. Sometimes, the foreigner makes rapid and wild ges-
tures, which serve not to clarify the communication but to add
significantly to the humor of the moment. The native speak-
er politely observes the foreigner and patiently waits for his
or her agony to run its course. The most interesting element
of the entire spectacle is that the foreigner could have escaped
from the situation at any point, but instead, the more he or she
struggled, the more he or she entrapped himself or herself in
this uncomfortable situation.

Escaping From an Uncomfortable Situation

“Shift gears” is a tool that is especially devised to allow a
foreign speaker to escape from those uncomfortable situations
which can result from an inability to conduct a conversation

45
 Boris Shekhtman

on a particular topic. There are two distinct variations of this

tool. The first consists of expressions and statements which
help the foreigner to escape from the situation in a frank and
direct fashion. For example, the foreigner can say: “Excuse me,
this is a difficult topic for me. Let’s talk about something else”
or “You know, my language is quite weak. I do not think I have
enough vocabulary to talk about this. Let’s discuss something
simpler.” At least, when the foreigner uses this part of the tool
he or she avoids the trap described above. The communication
will likely continue on a different topic, usually the one sug-
gested by the foreigner, thus easing the process for him or her
and allowing him or her to maintain control.
There are, however, two distinct negative aspects to this
approach. First, it places the foreigner in a subordinate, sec-
ondary, inferior role in the conversation; it changes the rela-
tionship of the conversant from two people trying to share
ideas to two people trying to find a way to communicate. Sec-
ond, from a psychological standpoint, particularly for certain
personality types, it is difficult to admit an inability to express
onself.
The second element of this tool avoids these pitfalls. It al-
lows the foreigner to escape from the situation skillfully and
inconspicuously.
Let us illustrate this second element with several examples:
Example 1
N: [After listening attentively for several minutes to the
foreigner ’s articulate description of his or her house in
America and its large surrounding yard] What kind of
trees do you have in your yard?
F: [Who does not know the name of even one tree in the
target language] Uh…what kind? Different kinds. Do
you live in a house or an apartment?
The technique used here is that the foreigner:
1. Provides the smallest possible response to the
question.
2. Poses a diversionary question.
By providing a very short response and a diversionary
question, the foreigner evades the difficult topic without any

46
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

obvious abruptness, making the evasion more comfortable for

the native speaker and less noticeable than do the direct state-
ments described above as the first element of this tool. Howev-
er, while the communication was not interrupted and the for-
eigner did not expose his or her ignorance, it was, nonetheless,
not skillful: the native speaker is aware of the foreigner’s abrupt
change in topic and avoidance of the question.
Note a variation in the next example.
Example 2
N: [As above, having listened to the description of the
foreigner’s home and yard] What kind of trees do you
have in your yard?
F: What kind? Oh, all different kinds. I really do not
remember. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not
very interested in them. I prefer to spend my time
indoors reading books. I have a lot of books in my
house. I’m quite proud of my library. It’s not a big
room, but the walls are completely lined with books. I
have many classical authors. Do you collect books?
In the above exchange, the foreigner has managed to shift
the topic with the help of five procedures:
1. First, he or she “sidesteps” the topic both by staying
with it: “What kind? Oh, all different kinds” and by
expressing indifference: “I really do not remember. To
be perfectly honest with you, I’m not very interested
in them.”
2. Next, he or she shifts from one topic to another by
use of the transitional sentence: “I prefer to spend my
time indoors reading books.”
3. He then introduces the new topic: “I have a lot of
books in my house.”
4. He proceeds to develop it: “I’m quite proud of
my library. It’s not a big room, but the walls are
completely lined with books. I have many classical
authors.”
5. Finally, he or she shifts the dialogue to the native
speaker: “Do you collect books?”

47
 Boris Shekhtman

Example 3
Let’s examine yet another example.
N: What kind of trees do you have in your yard?
F: Different kinds. And what kind of trees do you like?
N: I like fruit trees.
F: What kind of fruit trees?
N: Oh, for example, I like apple, pear, plum trees…
F: What are your favorites among non-fruit trees?
N: Magnolia, oak, maple.
F: I have two maples in my yard, and one very large oak,
and two apple trees.
In this example, the foreigner has used two separate mech-
anisms to conceal his or her lack of vocabulary and thus avoid
interrupting the communication:
1. By posing a question which relates to the topic, the
foreigner gains the terminology he or she needs:
“What kind of fruit trees?”, “What are your favorites
among nonfruit trees?”
2. After getting this information, he or she carefully
incorporates it in his or her answer. “I have two
maples in my yard, and one very large oak, and two
apple trees.”
Of course, this technique can be risky because it assumes
that the foreigner will comprehend and recognize the vocabu-
lary when the native speaker uses it. It can be used successfully
only when a foreign speaker has a moderate level of language
and has been exposed to the terminology previously so that the
use of the same words will prompt his or her recall. But even
when used by a foreigner who cannot manage the information
received from the native speaker, this technique has some val-
ue: it allows the foreigner to stay with the topic longer and to
remain in control of the conversation. In such a case, the con-
versation might have proceeded in this fashion:
N: What kind of trees do you have in your yard?
F: Different kinds. And what kind of trees do you like?

48
 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

N: I like fruit trees.

F: What kind of fruit trees?
N: Oh, for example, I like apple, pear, plum trees…
F: What are your favorites among non-fruit trees?
N: Magnolia, oak, maple.
F: To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not very
interested in trees. I prefer to spend my time indoors
reading books. I have a lot of books in my house. I’m
quite proud of my library. It’s not a big room, but the
walls are completely lined with books. I have many
classical authors. Do you collect books?
The foreigner can use Shift Gears to avoid difficult topics
and prolong the discussion of familiar topics, but this is not its
only benefit. It can also serve to lay a smooth foundation for
the use of two other tools, Show Your Stuff and Islands. This
latter benefit recommends Shift Gears as the most effective
tool that a foreigner can use in achieving an active position in
a conversation.

49
Boris Shekhtman

50
 Tool #4
Simplify, Simplify

51
Boris Shekhtman

52
 The foreigner can use Shift Gears to avoid difficult topics
and prolong the discussion of familiar topics, but this is not its
only benefit. It can also serve to lay a smooth foundation for
the use of two other tools, Show Your Stuff and Islands. This
latter benefit recommends Shift Gears as the most effective
tool for a foreigner for achieving an active position in a con-
versation.
The tools introduced to this point can greatly facilitate
communication, but are most useful in situations where the
conversation might be termed “casual,” one without serious
implications—so-called “social” exchanges, the type often en-
countered at receptions, parties, and so on. In such situations,
the foreigner’s primary concern is maintaining the flow of the
conversation and his or her counterpart’s interest, rather than
the content of the dialogue. In other words, these three tools,
Show Your Stuff, Islands, and Shift Gears, are particularly
effective in what we might describe as a “pretend” conversa-
tion, when the communication does not require serious pur-
pose and substance, but rather fulfills a somewhat “ceremoni-
al” function.
If we are talking about “real” communication, about the
need to discuss or resolve an important element in a compan-
ion’s questions, then these instruments are not enough, and we
have to find additional tools. For example, what if the foreign-
er needs to express something difficult, but important? What
should he or she do in this case? What if the foreigner must
transmit to the listener a valuable thought that must be under-
stood? Should he or she begin to show his or her stuff? to use
his or her islands? to shift gears? Not only will none of these

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 Boris Shekhtman

help, but the use of any of them will impede his or her inten-
tion. The first goal of communication is to transmit informa-
tion from one person to another. If we cannot do it successful-
ly, why do we need conversation at all? Why do we need islands
if we cannot swim? We need some tools to help us swim, to en-
able us to say what we really want to say.
What sort of tools can help a person to convey an essen-
tial thought in a foreign language, without the special vocabu-
lary and/or grammar needed to do so? We can state the first of
these in this way:
If it is difficult to express a certain thought or
idea, do not delay the communication; immedi-
ately express it as simply as possible.
Unfortunately, most foreign speakers, when they want to
express a certain idea, first think in their native language and
then try to translate into the target language. This process de-
lays communication. But the delay in communication results
not only from the foreigner’s duplicate process of formulating
the message – first in the native, then in the foreign language,
but also because of a desire to present the idea in the target
language as elegantly as he or she could in the native language.
Unfortunately, this two-step process does not always take place
quickly and successfully. And when it does not, when the for-
eigner feels that he or she cannot translate his or her thought
from one language into another quickly enough, this is when
he or she has to simplify. The goal of this tool is to substitute
for the complex, intricate concept or thought a simple one,
which conveys the same message.

Mechanisms for Simplifying

The mechanisms for simplifying actually consists of three
levels of substitution:
1. Substitution of the sophisticated or technical word
for the most simple, easy to use, and general word.
For example, instead of “endow” or “dispense,”
use “give.” For “tome” or “volume,” use “book”. For
“inconspicuous”, “not noticeable.”
2. The substitution of simple sentence structure for
compound sentence structure. “I am going to the

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

theater tonight, following dinner with old friends

whom I have known for many years.” Becomes
“tonight I am going out to dinner. I am going with
friends. I have known them a long time. After dinner,
we will go to the theatre.”
3. The substitution of complex grammatical structures
with elementary grammatical structures. “The car
was driven in a very careless manner by its angry
driver” can become “The angry driver drove the car
carelessly.”
Let us examine several examples which illustrate the appli-
cation of this tool. Try to identify how each of the three mech-
anisms is used.
Example 1.
What kind of apartment do you have?
Native Language Response:
My apartment is in a nine-story building with unique, clas-
sic architecture in the downtown area, close to the theater and
nightclub district. The architectural details include enormous
exterior columns and even gargoyles. Inside, the high ceilings,
elaborate moldings, and arched windows result in an elegance
which recalls a bygone era.
Simplified Response:
My apartment is in a building. It is in the center of the city.
It is a nine-story building. The building was built many years
ago. It is a very handsome building.
Example 2.
Is swimming popular in your country?
Native Language Response:
In our country swimming is enjoyed by a great many peo-
ple, and in contrast to many sports requiring extensive skill
and training is not limited to young or affluent people, or to
those who have access to private clubs or lessons.
Simplified Response:

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 Boris Shekhtman

Many people in our country like swimming. Everyone has

a chance to swim: old people and young people, rich and poor
ones.
Example 3.
What do you think about racism in the United States?
Native Language Response:
To answer a question such as this in a sophisticated man-
ner, one should be cautioned to take into account the histori-
cal origins of the problem, providing insight into a number of
events that are now occurring. At the same time, the examina-
tion of the more recent, contemporary evolution of the prob-
lem in the context of current social values should not be over-
looked.
Simplified Response:
To answer such a question correctly, we have to look at the
history of the problem. I think that this can help us to under-
stand the present situation. At the same time, today’s changes
influence this also.
Example 4:
Do you think that in the future it will be possible for all the
races and nationalities to become one?
Native Language response:
Oh, if only I were able to see the future. If that were pos-
sible, just think of all that we could learn about impending
events. Having encountered such predictions, we might be
able to influence our own history.
Simplified Response:
I would like to know the future. Then we could know about
coming events. In this case, we could even change the history.

Applying the Simplify, Simplify Tool

The most difficult aspect of applying this device is the im-
mediate identification of the specific vocabulary or grammar
structure to be dropped, and then the selection of a simpler
form. The problem is that our command of vocabulary and
grammar consist of three layers:
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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

The first layer is automatic, polished command; this is lan-

guage which we have practiced many times, with which we feel
secure, which is readily available to us for simplifying purpos-
es.
The third level is extremely weak command of vocabulary
and grammar; this is the language which we have heard oc-
casionally, which is in our passive recall, which has not been
drilled or repeated or used effectively; this is the language
which we have either forgotten or haven’t reinforced adequate-
ly.
And the second level falls between. Usually, we want to use
this second level which is already quite easy to use although it
is not yet automatic. We want to try it, to reinforce it, to im-
prove it, because we realize that this is the most effective way
to bring this language to the automatic command level.
On the one hand, we need to use the vocabulary and gram-
mar of the middle level, in order to practice it, to make it more
effective. On the other hand, when we use it, we have to con-
centrate on how to do it, and that is why we make mistakes and
delay communication. What should we do? It depends on the
nature of the communicative process. The more communica-
tion requires a real exchange of opinions, where we cannot af-
ford the “luxury” of making errors, the more appropriate it is
to simplify by using the automatic level, level one. When the
situation allows us to exploit the communication as an exer-
cise to test and reinforce our developing language, we can use
level two.
But this is only general advice. The ultimate decision de-
pends on the skill of the communicator and on his or her eval-
uation of each situation.

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Boris Shekhtman

58
 Tool #5
Break Away

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Boris Shekhtman

60
 There is a second tool which can enable us to say what we
really want to say. To understand the functioning of this tool,
we have to understand the dynamics of knowing two languag-
es. There is a very interesting relationship between these two
languages, determined by the extent of the foreigner’s knowl-
edge of the second language. In fact, if the foreigner knows the
second language as well as he or she knows the first, it is pos-
sible there will not be any dependency at all between the two
languages. These languages can exist independently of one an-
other. Our foreigner can turn on the first language, or the sec-
ond one, at will.
But the relationship between these two languages can be-
come complicated very quickly if our foreigner does not know
the second language as well as the first. In this case, the for-
eigner, as he or she encounters deficiencies in speaking the
second language, relies on the first language for help. The first
language begins to dominate in this relationship because the
foreigner constantly speaks the foreign language under the in-
fluence of the first. In his or her desire to speak the second lan-
guage as well as he or she does the first, the foreign speaker
tries to transfer the grammar structures of the first language
into the second one, which quite likely has absolutely different
grammar and syntax. As a result, the foreigner’s speech sounds
obviously non-Russian, non-Italian, non-English, or non-Finn-
ish.

Break Away Rules

The intent of the tool we call Break Away is to help the
foreigner ignore his or her native language while speaking the

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 Boris Shekhtman

foreign language. To develop this ability, the foreigner must

follow three rules:
1. He or she must speak the foreign language using only
the grammar structures of that language.
2. He or she must know these structures automatically
3. He or she must know as many grammar structures as
possible.
The automatic knowledge of a grammar pattern enables a
foreigner to use it immediately upon encountering a thought
that requires the pattern, without reverting to the native lan-
guage for help. Automatizing knowledge is a must because if a
foreigner has not perfected the requisite pattern for a specif-
ic speech event (i.e. for the use of language in specific circum-
stances), his or her native language will “help him or her” out
and when this happens, his or her foreign language will sound
strange to a native speaker (i.e. either marked as foreigner talk
or marginally comprehensible).

The More Automatic the Pattern,

the Better the Break Away Tool
To demonstrate this, let us consider some typical mistakes
in vocabulary or grammar which a native Russian speaker
might make in English:
She is a good man. [Instead of “She is a good
person.”] In the Russian language, the word
“man” has two meanings, a “man” and a “per-
son.” So the Russian here intends to say “She is
a good person.”
How much cars did you buy? [Instead of
“How many cars did you buy?”] In Russian,
the word “much” is used for both countable
(“many,” in English) and uncountable things.
I read the book; she is interesting. [Instead
of, “I read the book; it is interesting.”] In Rus-
sian, inanimate nouns, and pronouns referenc-
ing them, can have masculine or feminine gen-
der.

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

She is in hospital. [Instead of “She is in the

hospital.”] The Russian language has no arti-
cles, definite or indefinite.
To the grocery store I have this afternoon
to go. [Instead of “I have to go to the grocery
store this afternoon.”] Russian word order is
different from that of English.
You speak English? [Instead of “Do you speak
English?”] Russian has no auxiliary verbs in in-
terrogative sentences.
If I will see him tomorrow, I will tell him
about it. [Instead of “If I see him tomorrow,
I will tell him about it.”] Russian conditional
clauses use the future.
He said that he or she will do it. [Instead of
“He said that he would do it.”] Russian does not
have the same sequence of tenses as English.
If I was there, I do it. [Instead of “If I were
there, I would do it.”] This type of sentence is
very difficult for Russians because of the dif-
ferences between Russian and English forms of
the subjunctive mood.
These types of mistakes are the results of imperfectively
acquired grammar that results from grammatical patterns not
having been completely mastered. They can be the fault of a
student who did not work hard enough, an instructor who did
not drill the student to perfection, or even to a whole school of
linguistic theory that underestimates the importance of gram-
matical drilling.
It is also important to note that there is an inverse rela-
tionship between the number of structures a foreign speaker
knows and the influence of his or her native language on his or
her use of the second language. The fewer the foreign language
structures available, the more frequently the foreign speaker
will use grammar structures of the native language, increasing

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 Boris Shekhtman

the image of incorrect and incomprehensible language to the

native speaker.
The need for developing natural language requires the in-
structor to take a student through different exercises to help
him or her bypass the influence of the native language and
make use of only the structures of the foreign language which
he or she has learned. In a way, this ability is similar to the Sim-
plify, Simplify tool: it allows the foreign speaker to substitute
simplified language for intricate language. While the method
is the same, the content is different; in Break Away we are not
looking for simplified structure, but rather we are looking for
appropriate natural grammar patterns in the foreign language,
to help us convey our idea or thought.

Break Away Exercises

There are two groups of exercises that can help students
to learn to use the break away tool. Both groups are described
below.
Group 1 Exercises
The first group consists of a variety of student speeches,
such as monologues, dialogues, conversations, reports, writ-
ten compositions, and so on, presented while the instructor
observes. The instructor reviews the presentations and points
out unnatural elements, asking the student to substitute gram-
mar structures more appropriate to the foreign language. The
goal of this approach is to enrich students’ models.
The first group also includes translations from the native
language to the second language, in which the instructor plays
the same role. In translating someone else’s thoughts, the stu-
dent is even more likely to be under the influence of the na-
tive language, producing more unnatural structures, providing
more material for analysis.
We are in many ways discussing the difference between
translation and transmitting. When a student lacks sufficient
grammar structures to translate or convey something from
the native to the foreign language, he or she hopes to impart
adequately the main idea with the available structures of the
foreign language. For this reason, I label all of these exercises
Transmitting Exercises.

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

Let us give an example of an exercise that illustrates the

first category.
Transmitting Exercise, Category I
[The instructor asks the student to describe his or her child-
hood.]
F: I begin to remember myself, from the age of five.
I: I do not like “begin to remember myself.”
F: I remember my life from the age of five.
I: Good. Go on.
F: Then we lived in a small village.
I: I do not like the word order in this sentence.
F: We lived in a small village then.
I: Okay. Go ahead.
F: You couldn’t imagine what a funny village was it.
I: “Was it”?
F: You couldn’t imagine what a funny village it was.
I: I do not like “you couldn’t
imagine.”
F: Hmmmm.
I: You cannot imagine what a funny village it was.
F: Oh, yes. You cannot imagine what a funny village it
was.

Transmission Exercises, Category II

As stated above, the exercises of the second type usually
consist of translations from the native language to the foreign
language, in which the student tries to transmit the meaning
of what he or she hears, rather than translating literally. Illus-
trating this exercise in our book presents a challenge, since we
cannot assume a common second language among our read-
ers. Therefore, our illustration (previously printed in Shekht-
man, 1990, and Shekhtman et al., 2002) contains only the sec-
ond element of this exercise, the transmitting of the message

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 Boris Shekhtman

from the native language into English. The first paragraph be-
low represents a student’s initial attempt to transmit from a
native language into English, with unnatural grammar struc-
tures apparent; the second paragraph shows the version with
correct structures .
You are asking me what are my impressions
on United States after I came to this country.
I will say you my impressions are very strik-
ing. The first three months I was in the Unit-
ed States I felt myself as if I was in the fairy
tale. First of all, what astonished me that I saw
a lot of people of different colors and races. On
one street I saw Oriental, Black, white and they
were walking, talking to each other the same
language. The second what struck me was
the houses—neat, beautiful, small, surround-
ed with trees and flowers and without fences,
open for public to be observed.
You ask what my impressions of the United
States were when I first arrived. I can tell you
that my impressions were very striking. For the
first three months I was in the United States, I
felt as if I were in a fairy tale. First of all, I was
astonished to see many people of different rac-
es and with different skin color. On a single
street, I saw people of Chinese, AfricanAmeri-
can, and Caucasian heritage; they were walking
together and speaking the same language one
to another. The second thing that struck me
was the houses— neat, beautiful, small, sur-
rounded by trees and flowers and without fenc-
es, in full public view.
Of course, the best way to show the technique of transmit-
ting, of Break Away from the patterns of the native language,
is to take a native language statement and to demonstrate sev-
eral equivalent grammar patterns of the target foreign. The in-
structor must tailor the application of this tool to each partic-
ular student and language.

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

Group II Exercises
In the second group of exercises, the instructor helps the
student to find the model she/he knows to express her/his
ideas. We can call these exercises “You want to say that...”. For
example, the student begins speaking on a theme and pauses to
search for a word or slows down his speech, indicating that she
or she is struggling to find appropriate structures and vocabu-
lary. The instructor interrupts with the words, “you want to say
that...,” and then uses an appropriate model the student already
knows. It is imperative that the instructor knows which mod-
els the student has mastered. Throughout this exercise, the in-
structor demonstrates what the student can do or rather what
the student should do the next time. The student then repeats
his story using familiar models and avoiding the painful search
for something that is not yet under his control.

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Boris Shekhtman

68
 Tool #6
Embellish It

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Boris Shekhtman

70
 So far we have explored two categories of communicative
tools. One category consists of tools useful in so-called “social
conversations,” good for presenting one’s language in a favor-
able light; they are tools which help to “market” one’s language
ability more impressively. The second category are tools which
are workable in “real talks”, in conversations which are com-
parable to communication between two native speakers. Such
tools are not intended to “show off ” one’s command of a for-
eign language, but to help the foreign speaker articulate his or
her thoughts. As is the case with any system of classification,
the distinction between these two categories of tools is arti-
ficial. In practical application all of these tools can be “mixed
and matched”; those in the first category are for use in conver-
sations of substance, and those in the second might have ap-
propriate place in social conversations.
Embellish It is the first tool which we may classify among
the “general purpose tools.” One can use such tools in any com-
municative situation; however, while their use is desirable; it is
not mandatory. Let us use an example to illustrate the nature
of embellishment:
Monologue 1.
I get up at 7:00, but yesterday I got up later. I
forgot to set my alarm clock. Usually I get up
on time. I am not like my wife. She just does not
hear the alarm. After getting up, I dress. I do not
do morning exercises. I don’t think it’s healthy.

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 Boris Shekhtman

Monologue 2.
I usually I get up at 7:00 in the morning. Except,
that is, for yesterday when I got up a bit lat-
er because I forgot to set my alarm clock loud-
ly enough, and overslept. But, quite honestly,
that happens very rarely to me. We can’t say
the same thing about my dear wife, who, believe
me, just does not react to the sound of the alarm
clock. What did you ask me? Oh, yes, about
when I normally get up…Yes, as I said, usually
I get up about 7:00, and then, of course, I wash
my face, comb my hair, and dress. Oh – you un-
doubtedly are surprised that I haven’t said any-
thing about my morning exercises. Just imagine
– I do not like to do morning exercises. I do not
do morning exercises. I do not think it’s healthy
at all. I’ll tell you directly that I consider them
to be harmful to one’s health. Really, is it good,
right after your sweet dreams, to begin doing
such abrupt moves – running, jumping, sitting,
standing, turning, and so on and so forth? No –
think about it it’s plain dangerous. It’s better to
take a warm shower: it refreshes you, strength-
ens you, makes you feel healthy.
The contrast between these two monologues is obvious.
In the first, we have dry, primitive, unexpressive, elementary
speech. In the second, the speech is alive, normal, attractive,
and expressive. The second monologue is an example of the
implementation of our tool Embellish It. To embellish speech
is to make it more natural, by using special devices.

Special Devices
What devices are we talking about? There are many:
Exclamations and repetitions: “Oh!”, “Right
on!”, “You bet!”, “Uhhuh,” “Yes, yes,” “No, no,”
“Sure, sure.”
Parenthetical expressions: “You know,” In my
opinion,” “Of course,” “Without a doubt,” “On
the one hand/on the other hand,” “I’d say.”
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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

Parenthetical sentences: “When I went to

Paris—I was still in college then—I hardly
knew any French.”
Rhetorical questions: “But, who really cares
about that?”
Guidance questions: “I forgot—What did you
ask me?”
Adverbial modifiers of time, place, or man-
ner: “Yesterday,” “Later on,” “Nearby,” “Far, far
away,” “Perfectly,” “Loudly.”
Synonymous expressions of nouns, adjec-
tives, or verbs: “The boss, my supervisor, who
is very strict, rigid and stern, confronted me,
or more precisely approached me head-on and
said—no, no—hissed like a snake to me…”
Idiomatic expressions and cultural slang:
“Stop joshin’me,” “What’s going down?”, “Get
off my back,” “Get with it.”
By employing these devices, the foreigner can implement
even more effectively such tools as Show Your Stuff, Islands,
and Shift Gears and at the same time decorate his or her con-
versation, making it more lively and natural. Moreover, this
tool attracts the native speaker to the foreigner, intensifying
the native speaker’s feeling that the foreigner knows the lan-
guage very well, and in turn, increasing the foreigner’s desire
for communication.
We once had a student who knew almost no Russian vocab-
ulary or grammar, but she did know a few colloquial, idiomatic
expressions, which she used very skillfully. He would approach
a native Russian speaker, placing a hand on the shoulder, and
say, the Russian equivalent of, “What’s cookin’?” The usual re-
sult was that the Russian speaker, assuming that someone who
used such colloquial expression had a thorough knowledge of
the language, would begin to talk openly and naturally as if
speaking to a native speaker, to which the student could only
admit with a laugh, “I do not know Russian.” Of course, in this
case, the idiomatic expression, as an element of our tools, cre-

73
 Boris Shekhtman

ated only a humorous situation. But in most communicative

processes, when a person knows the foreign language to some
degree, it can intensify communication and arouse the native
speaker’s respect for the foreign speaker who has mastered
colloquialisms.

Using Embellish It
Embellish It is an unusual tool because it is very easy to
teach a student all of its elements in just a short time, but it
is very difficult to encourage the student to use it. This is the
result of the point made earlier, that rather than walking, the
foreigner swims in a strange environment. Since speech in a
foreign language is difficult, and the most important goal for
the foreign speaker is to take care of the main ideas of the dis-
course, attention to minor elements, such as embellishments,
is secondary. In other words, the foreigner first must concen-
trate on the main components of each sentence, rather than on
the minor ingredients; this results in dry and elementary lan-
guage.
It is very important to train students to use this tool auto-
matically. To make the student’s use of embellishment a habit,
we can use a number of exercises, three of which we illustrate
below.
Exercise 1
In the first of these exercises, one of the students has the
assignment to speak, ignoring the embellishment technique,
and the other student rephrases the sentences, embellishing
them.
A: I like pizza.
B: Oh, yeah. No doubt about it, no doubt about it…
you can sure count me in. Like most other people in
America, I like – love, enjoy, relish, adore – pizza.
I like piping hot, spicy, gooey pizza with lots of
toppings - pepperoni, extra cheese, onions, green
peppers, mushrooms, anchovies – the works. You
might say that I’m really into pizza. But, on the other
hand, do you know any people who do not like it?

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

Exercise 2
The second exercise assigns the second student to restate
what the first student says, using synonymous expressions.
A: Yesterday, having thought things over for a while,
I decided to visit my friend with whom I had an
argument a week ago.
B: Just a day ago, after considering it briefly, I made up
my mind to call on my acquaintance, with whom I
quarreled last week.

Exercise 3
The third exercise is a dialogue between two students. The
loser in the game is the student who produces the “bare,” un-
embellished, sentence.
A: For heavens’ sake – why in the world did you become
a diplomat?
B: I always wanted, even dreamed of seeing other
countries – of seeing the world.
A: What countries did you see? [STOP! STUDENT A
LOSES!!]
The tool Embellish It initially appears to contradict Sim-
plify, Simplify, but only at first glance. Each tool has a distinct
and different intent. Simplify, Simplify streamlines the main
components of the sentence and is totally unrelated to the mi-
nor ingredients. In contrast, Embellish It does not involve the
main components of the sentence; its concern is only with the
minor ingredients. It is like adding spices to the basic ingredi-
ents in cooking—a variety of more interesting dishes can result
from the same basic ingredient. And, as in cooking, Embellish
It can facilitate simplification because it masks the simplicity
of the major ingredients.
Let me emphasize that Embellish It is effective not only
with the tools of the first category (Show Your Stuff, Islands,
Shift Gears), but also with the tools of the second category
(Simplify, Simplify and Break Away). If a foreigner has a very
good command of all of these embellishing techniques, he or
she can use them to create some “breathing space,” time for

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 Boris Shekhtman

thinking about how to simplify and locate the proper grammar

pattern of the target language.
In practice, when I introduce this technique to my stu-
dents, I often run into a very interesting pattern of resistance.
Native speakers of English are taught in school to express their
thoughts in clear, succinct language; they avoid wordiness as
poor style and undesirable. To help the student overcome the
discomfort associated with this technique, we must emphasize
that embellishing differs from redundancy, which often con-
fuses communication and obscures the main message. Embel-
lishing is a specific tool to apply with only one goal: to make the
language colloquial, realistic, natural. In addition, the foreign
speaker has a choice of whether or not to embellish—but it is
helpful to know that the tool is available for use when needed.

76
 Tool #7
Say What?

77
Boris Shekhtman

78
 Understanding your counterpart is the most important
component of successful communication. All the tools de-
scribed to this point can not be effective if we do not under-
stand the person with whom we are talking. That is why the
technique which helps us to understand the other party is the
most important of our tools.
To present this technique more vividly, imagine that you
are a robot whose controls have two settings. Setting A is ca-
pable of achieving only one goal: getting the general idea (or
gist) of what the robot hears. On Setting A, the robot is capa-
ble only of screening information. On Setting B, the robot is, in
contrast, capable of understanding details, particulars, and in-
tricacies of the incoming information.
We can use each of these settings for a specific situation.
We run Setting A to understand the general topic of the con-
versation with a native speaker. We also use it when we feel
that the details of a conversation are not very important to
us. Finally, we use it when the foreign speaker talks at a very
high speed and it is difficult for us to comprehend the details,
and we need only one thing to survive: to get the main idea of
the communication. The process is the auditory equivalent to
skimming written material.
We use Setting B when the information coming at us is vi-
tally important, such as names, addresses, telephone numbers,
directions. We also use it when every element of the conversa-
tion is essential. And we use it when we feel we are losing the
main idea and we need clarification. In contrast to “skimming,”
this process is the auditory equivalent to reading meticulously
an entry from a reference book. i.e. intensive reading.

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 Boris Shekhtman

Setting A
The rules which make Setting A work successfully are:
(1) Listen for words you can recognize, such as cognates,
proper names (of people, cities, places).
(2) Listen for words which you already know very well.
(3) Ignore unfamiliar words.

Setting B
There is only one rule for Setting B: Go for it! Ask for it!
Do not listen further until you are sure that you completely un-
derstand what is happening. Do not hesitate to interrupt your
counterpart for clarification. In order to do this, you must have
automatic control of such phrases as
“Repeat that, please…”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t understand your last sentence. Can
you repeat it again?”
“Excuse me. As you know, I am a foreigner.
Can you speak more slowly?”
“Can you restate that differently?”
“Can you give me a synonym for [a specific
word]?”
“You are talking about [restate your under-
standing of the topic], aren’t you?”
“You said that [restate a fact], didn’t you?”
“Let me check what you said: [restate].”
“Let me repeat what you said, to be sure of it.”

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

Using Both Settings: an Example

Let us give an example of a foreigner who uses both set-
tings during a conversation with a native speaker. The high-
lighted text is what the foreigner does understand.
F: I hear that you like to travel.
N: You bet! I’m fresh from a jaunt to Portugal. The
populace is enticing. I’ve roamed those environs
while under the thumb of a dictator as well as with
the prevailing democracy. Democracy has spawned
a rampant reawakening. I singularly cherished the
terrain. The billows! The pastures! The mountains!
I’m unequivocally spellbound!
The foreigner used Setting A very successfully up to the
phrase “I singularly cherished the terrain.” Beginning at that
point, while he or she believes that the information which he
or she is getting from the native speaker is not of great impor-
tance, he or she feels he or she is in danger of losing the main
idea of the speech and becoming confused later. Therefore, he
or she activates Setting B. Because he or she understood one
word – “mountain” – and got the correct general impression
of the native speaker’s feelings from body language and into-
nation, he or she says:
F: So, are you saying that nature in Portugal is beautiful?
N: Oh, yes! It’s a staggering deviation from anything you
can fathom.
The foreigner, feeling that the continuation of this topic
will create more and more problems for his or her comprehen-
sion, uses our tool of “shifting gears” and says:
F: And have you been to Mexico? I want to get there
sometime soon.
N: Where’dja hatch this scheme?
The foreigner does not understand any part of this ques-
tion, and because he or she senses that this information is vi-
tal for further communication, that it is especially dangerous
not to understand the question, and that the question seems to
require an immediate answer, the foreigner again switches on
Setting B:

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 Boris Shekhtman

F: I’m sorry, but I think you’ve forgotten that I am a

foreigner. Can you repeat this question slowly, please?
N: Where did you hatch this scheme?
F: Can you say this differently for me?
N: What made you want to go to Mexico?
F: My wife loves Mexican food.
N: Do you want to go there for a respite or for
sightseeing?
F: Can you give me a synonym for the word respite?
N: Oh, sure, a respite is a break or a rest.
F: I am planning to go there for a rest.
N: In this case, I advise you to go to Acapulco, and to
stay at the Hotel Grande.
F: Can you repeat the name of the city and the hotel for
me?

The Importance Of Questions

As you can see, the ability to ask a question is an import-
ant element in this tool. In fact, this ability is important to all
of our tools. Questions are an important element of our first
tool, Show Your Stuff. There, one can use questions to inter-
rupt the expanded answer of the foreigner, forcing the native
speaker to respond, and leading to a more natural interactive
conversational pattern.
Questions are also important to our second tool, Build Up
Your Islands. As you remember, it is with the help of ques-
tions that we influence our counterpart, the native speaker, to
ask us questions which we can answer with “islands” – topics
we are prepared to talk about.
We cannot execute our third tool, Shift Gears, without
questions. Questions help us to shift away from topics with
which we are not comfortable, and move to more familiar sub-
jects.
In contrast, our fourth tool, Simplify, Simplify should in-
fluence our questions. The skill of creating a clear and simple
question is very important for effective communication with

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

native speakers. Apply the skill of simplification to any ques-

tions which you use.
And, of course, the connection between the question and
our fifth tool, Breaking Away, is evident. The quality and clar-
ity of a question requires precise use of the grammar structure
of the target language. Questions in a foreign language are par-
ticularly likely to suffer from the influence of one’s native lan-
guage patterns.
Even our tool number six, Embellish It, enriches itself by
the use of rhetorical questions.
Questions are particularly important to our current de-
vice, Say What? Because comprehension normally takes place
when we are interviewing someone, or receiving information
from them. The nature of the information received is com-
pletely dependent upon the questions we ask. Questions also
help us to specify the information we get from our counter-
part. In addition, questions can be used to clarify the elements
of the incoming information. And, as demonstrated already,
questions can help us take complete initiative in the process of
comprehension.
Thus, it is critical that a student have complete command
of asking questions. There are three categories of exercises
which can help in the mastery of this skill:
Category 1
In Category 1 are exercises that teach a student to have a
variety of types of questions in his or her possession, including
(but not limited to):
General questions:
Example: “Do you speak English?”
Specific questions:
Example: “What language do you speak?”
Alternative questions:
Example: “Do you prefer summer or winter?”
Tag questions:
Example: “This is a book, isn’t it?”

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Category 2
In Category 2 are exercises to condition the student to ex-
press automatically, at a very high speed, questions related to
any sentence he or she hears.
Category 3
In Category 3 are exercises that teach the student to trans-
mit any question from the native language to the foreign lan-
guage.

Conclusion
The skilful automatic command of the questions is very
important for both elements, because it gives a foreigner a pos-
sibility to clarify what he doesn’t comprehend without native
speaker understanding it. For example, if a foreigner doesn’t
understand the word, corpse, in the sentence, “When I came
into my room I saw a corpse lying on the sofa,” he may ask:
“What corpse?”
“Why was it on the sofa?”
“Who brought it there?”
Through the answers to these questions, the foreign speak-
er will usually be able to understand what the word, corpse,
means. In this case, communication is not interrupted by
questions that reveal the disability of a foreigner to understand
the question; rather, a “normal” set of questions directly relat-
ed to the context of the discourse lets the foreign learn what he
or she needs to know without either revealing linguistic defi-
ciencies or stalemating the conversation.
When dealing with a foreign language, there are many
times when knowing more questions than answers is a valu-
able asset!
Epilogue
Sandy
Boris Shekhtman

86
 One day, while working in my office, I got a call from a
woman named Sandy. She said that she needed some classes
in Russian.
As I do with all my students, I asked why she wanted to
study the language. She indicated that she wanted to go to the
Soviet Union to work at an American exhibition as a guide, one
of the few ways that one could get to the U.S.S.R. in the days
of the Cold War. To qualify, she had to pass an examination in
Russian; she had failed it the day before. She told me that she
was very upset, because she had studied Russian for four years
in college. She believed that some of the people who passed
the examination when she took it knew less Russian than her.
Sandy had managed to convince the examiners to give her
a second chance at the examination. She asked me if it was
possible for me – in four days – to improve her language to
the point that she could pass the examination. I answered that
it was impossible to improve her language knowledge in four
days, but that it was absolutely possible to organize the knowl-
edge of the language she already had in such a manner that she
would present this language more effectively to the examiners.
So we began to work. I met with Sandy for two hours per
day, for four consecutive days. Of course, you can guess how I
worked with Sandy. First, I devised several exercises to teach
her our first tool, Show Your Stuff. This tool so amazed San-
dy that she wanted to do only such kinds of exercises, and she
even decided that she was already prepared to go pass the ex-
amination again. Sandy’s answers became very extensive. She
so liked to consider my questions an invitation to talk, that I

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felt she became an expert on how to sell all your language, in

response to only one question from a native speaker.
What I haven’t yet told you about Sandy is that she had also
been a professional actress. Perhaps that is why she had such
immediate success with this tool: as an actress she had mas-
tered the technique of projecting an image that was different
from reality, yet based on her real experience, knowledge, and
personality. If you think about it, this tool allows you to project
an image of language mastery which might extend your real
knowledge.
As I listened attentively to Sandy’s talk, I pointed out that
some of the information she was giving to me about her fami-
ly, friends, education, career, and travels were actually islands
which were ready for use; I introduced her to the concept of Is-
lands. We also created several new islands which we thought
would be important for the examination, such as information
about the Soviet Union, stories about her acting experiences,
her understanding of art, and so on. Sandy was eager to pursue
the islands: memorizing monologues was a very familiar task
for an actress, and she did it with great enthusiasm. The result
was that within five days she had nearly 15 islands, which be-
came strategic tools in her “bag of tricks.”
But the main assignment came when I showed her how to
Shift Gears. Sandy became so skillful in escaping any difficult
topic that I tried to force upon her that even I, who had seen so
many students, was absolutely stunned. Her skill was such that
I was sure no one would suspect it was intentional.
Then the time came for hard work. I began to put Sandy
into very difficult situations, asking her a lot of questions for
which she was not linguistically prepared. As you can guess,
we were approaching our Simplify, Simplify tool. At the be-
ginning it was not easy to work on this with Sandy. Sometimes
she tried to express something which she couldn’t, which made
us laugh or sometimes even upset her. Or she tried to escape
by Shifting Gears. But I didn’t allow her to get away with this,
constantly admonishing, “Sandy, do just one thing – simpli-
fy. Do not try to say what you want to under the influence of
your native language. Look for a simple expression for what
you want to say.” And if she couldn’t find such an expression,
I immediately found one for her. Finally Sandy mastered the

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

very important ability to bring to a simple foreign structure a

very rich thought or idea.
Then we began to work with grammar. I showed Sandy
how many grammar structures she knew automatically, how
many she knew semi-automatically, and how many she knew
only theoretically. I told her that we didn’t have any time to
work with the structures which she didn’t know, or with those
she knew only theoretically. For an oral examination, all we
had to do was to teach her to use in her spoken language only
those structures, which she knew automatically.
We also took the most important structures from the
semi-automatic category, and drilled them to an automatic re-
sponse.
After that hard work, tool number 6, Embellish It, was a
vacation or rest for Sandy.
The fourth day that I worked with Sandy, we concentrat-
ed on tool number 7, Say What? And Sandy quickly got com-
mand of this technique.
On day five Sandy went to take the examination. The best
part was that before the examination, she was confident that
she would pass…and she did.

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Boris Shekhtman

90
Teacher Note

91
Boris Shekhtman

92
 Teaching communication rules visibly improves students’
language performance when interacting with foreigners, i.e.
native speakers of the language being studied. At the same
time, communication rules also significantly increase the ef-
fectiveness of teaching foreign languages. But how does one
define the effectiveness of teaching foreign languages?
I decided to go to Internet and find the answer to this ques-
tion. I found there numerous materials on the effectiveness of
teaching but no definition, no answer to my question. True, I
found some attempts to define the effectiveness of teaching,
but all of these attempts substituted the notion of effectiveness
for component factors of effectiveness, not effectiveness itself.
For example, some explain effectiveness as teachers’ per-
formance: their knowledge of a foreign language, the quality of
their lesson plans, or even their attention to students’ learning
styles. Nowhere will you find the definition of the word, effec-
tiveness, in respect to a teaching process. Very often the words,
good, excellent, and the like are used instead of the word, ef-
fectiveness, but again all these words do not give us any idea of
what effectiveness really means.
Meanwhile, in order to achieve effectiveness in teaching
foreign languages, we (I hope you will agree with me) must
deeply understand what effectiveness is. The words, good and
excellent, do not express any degree or gradation of “good” and
“excellent.” They remain merely words unless and until they
can be shown to contain measurable parameters. We never
will develop effectiveness in teaching if we equate effective-
ness to excellence in teaching.

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 Boris Shekhtman

The concept of effectiveness can be understood only

through measurable categories, specifically result and amount
of hours spent to get the result. In this manner, the definition
of effectiveness in teaching foreign languages becomes “the ca-
pability of a language instructor to achieve high levels of profi-
ciency (results) using fewer teaching hours.”
Now everything becomes clear. Now we understand why
we cannot find a definition of effectiveness in teaching: The
proposed definition is very difficult to implement. Indeed, in
order to compare the performances of language instructors,
in order to find out who is more effective and what method is
more effective, we first need to create the same conditions un-
der which they teach. We need to have the same number of stu-
dents in each group; we need to have students who are equal
to each other in aptitude, memory, motivation, and learning
styles. They need to have the same schedule, live in the same
place, and share the same psychological environment. Obvi-
ously, it is not possible to achieve a perfect level of parity, and
were it to be possible, then other factors would come into play:
individual reactions to competition, personal ambitions, inter-
ests of program administrators. Any one of these factors, as
well as others not mentioned, could influence the results and
make them less objective. In a word, though we can formulate
the definition of effectiveness in teaching foreign languages,
this definition is extremely difficult to implement in practice.
Having said that, I personally have been able to check the
effectiveness of any teaching technique. For 23 years, I owned
a small, private, language school named Specialized Language
Training Center. The main clientele of the school consisted of
journalists and writers, teachers and linguists, politicians and
diplomats, military people, businessman and attorneys, tour-
ists and traditional students. I did not collect precise data on
the number of students who studied at the school, but, for sure,
it was not less than 3000. Some of these students studied for-
eign language in groups of 4, 6, 9 and even 12, but mainly all of
them studied on a one-to-one basis. These students present an
excellent opportunity for comparing various methodologies.
One of my experiments was to check the effectiveness of
the communication rules approach. For this purpose, I taught
eight students, using a traditional teaching approach without
invoking any of the communication rules. Of these students,

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

two were beginners, two at ILR Level 2 (ACTFL “advanced”),

two at ILR Level 3 (ACTFL “superior”), and two at ILR Level 4
(ACTFL “distinguished”). I worked with them the same num-
ber of hours I worked with eight other students, approximately
equal to them in aptitude and learning styles. After 60 hours of
work, I tested both groups. The results were as follows:
1. Two “no communication” beginners did not achieve
ILR Level 1. Communication beginners did.
2. The ILR Level 2 “no communication” students did not
reach level 2+; communication students did.
3. The ILR Level 3 and 4 “no communication” students
showed no measurable progress on their tests;
communication students did although, clearly 60
hours of instruction was insufficient to expect a half-
point increase in proficiency.
Now, I understand that all these results are not official
though there is one survey made by Dr. Betty Lou Leaver, who
was the Russian Language Training Supervisor at the Foreign
Service Institute when I worked there. This what she wrote:
I learned very quickly what Boris did with students, with
any student. Given a group of students anywhere along the pa-
rabola from no proficiency (Interagency Language Roundtable
[ILR] Level 0 to professional level proficiency (IRL Level 3), Bo-
ris in as little as 2-6 weeks would improve their proficiency by
as much as a half proficiency point – a remarkable feet, con-
sidering that students of Russian typically take more than 1400
hours of in-class study accompanied by 400-500 hours of home-
work activity, to reach ILR Level 3. Moreover, Boris did not re-
quire talented students to work his magic. Students with learn-
ing difficulties and those who did not keep up with their faster
classmates also benefited from his wand.
Where did magic come from? It very quickly became clear
to me that Boris did not approach language teaching in any
kind of traditional way. Yes, he understood and knew the preva-
lent theories of second language acquisition, was familiar with
research, and had been taught principals of contemporary for-
eign-language teaching methods. All those things were in his
toolbox. However, he had a number of tools of his own, and
these came from looking at language learning and teaching in a

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 Boris Shekhtman

way very different from the way in which most practitioners and
theorists viewed it.
Unlike most language teachers, Boris does not approach a
classroom from the point of view of the nature of foreign lan-
guage or second language. He approaches it from the point of
view of native language, i.e. the language of the native speak-
er of the target language. Instead of helping students to acquire
and improve what most programs teach – student language,
he taught students to close the delta between their lack of lan-
guage (and growing proficiency) and the native speech of their
instructors and other interlocutors. This led to the development
of seven tools that Boris used successfully for years and which he
described in his book How to Improve Your Foreign Language
Immediately.
Specifically communication rules approach makes lan-
guage teaching successful for one main reason: a language
lesson does not present grammar and vocabulary, the typical
staple of traditional traditional teaching. Instead, a commu-
nicative rules lesson presents elements of the native speaker’s
speech: fluency, speech readiness, and communication con-
trol. Each of these elements is based on native speakers’ abili-
ties. Let us say that fluency is a result of expansion of speech,
simplification of speech, adherence of speech to known pat-
terns and lexica and embellishment of speech. It means that
we do not teach students grammar or vocabulary; rather, we
teach them how to expand their speech, using their grammar
and vocabulary
This approach dramatically changes everything. Now, we
do not only teach language, but we teach communication as
well. We teach communication, using language; we teach how
to communicate with native speakers, implementing their own
principals and manifestations of speech. In the communica-
tive rules approach, language is not separated from commu-
nication; rather, it accompanies communication. This is why
the effectiveness of teaching language grows, and this is why
students who are taught in communicative way demonstrate
higher levels of proficiency under test conditions, as well as
communicate more successfully with native speakers. Usually,
these students can easily “hold” speech in memory, expand any
topic until they are stopped, simplify language used to express
more complex thoughts, use only what they know, make their

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

language live and natural, be ready to talk on as many topics as

possible, have automatic control over the interrogative system
of the language, and demonstrate comprehension techniques.
(For more information, see Shekhtman and Kupchanka, Com-
municative Focus: Teaching Foreign Language on the Basis of
the Native Speaker’s Communicative Focus.)
At the same time, the communication rules approach does
not relegate language acquisition activities to second place be-
cause implementation of it cannot be successful without im-
mediate and solid internalization of grammar and vocabulary
material.
Finally, teaching foreign languages using the communica-
tion rules approach is effective because it helps us to achieve
higher levels of proficiency (i.e. better results), using fewer
hours.

97
Boris Shekhtman

98
Chapter Notes

99
Boris Shekhtman

100
1. This method has been described in three works:
Shekhtman, Boris. Working with Advanced Foreign
Language Students, 2nd Ed. Virginia Institute Press,
2013.
Shekhtman, Boris, Betty Lou Leaver, Ekaterina
Kuznetsova, Natalia Lord, and Elena Ovtcharenko.
2002. The Shekhtman Method of Communicative
Language Teaching. In Betty Lou Leaver and Boris
Shekhtman (eds.), Developing Professional-Level
Language Proficiency (pp. 119-140). Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Shekhtman, Boris and Kupchanka,Dina. Communicative
Focus. Teaching Foreign Language on the Basis of
the Native Speaker’s Communicative Focus. Virginia
Institute Press, 2013.
2. The following comment on the use of these communication
tools for teaching, student counseling, and student acquisition
of foreign language was made by Natalia Lord, who has used
them as teacher, program coordinator, and student counselor
for twenty years:
I had the privilege of teaching with Boris Shekhtman at the
Foreign Service Institute in the 1980s at the time that he
began not only improving his students language by teaching
structures, vocabulary and the like, but also by focusing their
attention on how best to use whatever level of language they
had already acquired. He would always remind students of
the technique of using their foreign language to communicate
with a native speaker. As a speaker of English as a second
language, Boris was always very conscious of just how to use

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 Boris Shekhtman

his English. I was completely blown away one day when I

overheard his telephone conversation with a real estate agent.
Boris had complete control of that conversation. He seemed
to know ahead of time just what he needed to say and how
he was going to say it. He gained and kept the upper hand
throughout that conversation. I knew very well that, although
I consider myself a native speaker of American English, I
could not have possibly handled that realtor as cleverly as
Boris had done. Language level was not an issue here, but
communicative techniques certainly were.
It was after Boris’ conversation with the realtor that I began
to pay closer attention to just what he was advising our
students to do. By focusing student attention on the “rules
of communication,” Boris was equipping our students to
make the best possible use of the language they had already
learned. This was, in effect, creative packaging for the existing
product.
“If you can give a lengthy if simple answer to a question, don’t
be satisfied with giving a one-word answer. After a few such
one-word answers, the native speaker who is trying to speak
with you will try to get away from you as fast as s/ he can,
because s/he simply won’t know what to say. Your one-word
answers are putting too much pressure on this native speaker.”
Boris was speaking from personal experience. When we did
workshops for ESL instructors on these communicative rules,
I had to play the role of the native speaker. I can attest to the
fact that one-word answers on the part of one’s interlocutor
places an inordinate communicative burden on the “native
speaker.” When our students absorbed this first lesson, they
too became much more effective in their ability to use the
language they already knew, thus keeping the communicative
channel open.
Subsequent communication rules taught our students to
handle a wide range of communicative challenges faced by
non-native speakers of a language interacting with native
speakers. Students who had difficulty expressing themselves
because they always insisted on saying things in the most
complicated and complex way possible suddenly seemed to
speak more effectively just by following the Simplify, Simplify
rule because they were making fewer mistakes. They were
focusing on what they could say, rather than on what they
wanted to say, and thus could express themselves in a way
that was more comprehensible to their interlocutor.

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

The lessons that I learned from Boris about communication

rules were ones I have continued to share with students since
then. They are as applicable today as they were when he
first began speaking of them twenty years ago. I found them
invaluable as a language instructor, and I trust that they can
continue to help language learners everywhere.

103
Boris Shekhtman

104
 What Students Who Have Used
Shekhtman’s Communication
Rules Say about Them

Tara Sonenshine
Contributing Editor for Newsweek Magazine
Former Assistant National Security Adviser in the White
House
“The list of the people who have trained at Shekhtman’s
Center reads like a “Who’s Who” of American journalism and
politics... Boris Shekhtman is a language czar.”
“To understand the “Shekhtman Methodology,” you have
to set aside traditional ideas about learning a foreign language.
Most conventional foreign language teaching is built around
rules of grammar, which are drilled into the student’s head in
a tedious and time-consuming way. In the equivalent of a Rus-
sian revolution in language approach, Shekhtman discarded
the old system of old grammar rules, replacing it with his own
new system based on “rules of communication”.
“Shekhtman’s “rules of communication” are designed to
build a relationship between a foreigner, who is learning a new
language, and the native speaker who is already in command
of that language. Recognizing the inequality in such a relation-
ship, Shekhtman works to close the gap, to level the playing
field so that communication can flow more naturally.”
Mark D’Anastasio

105
 Boris Shekhtman

Harvard Institute for International Development,

Adviser
“The strength and science of your methodology are
uniquely effective, and I plan to tell the world.”
Elizabeth D. Sherwood
US Department of Defense
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia and
Eurasia
“I have studied numerous languages (French, Spanish, and
German) and this was by far the most effective language train-
ing that I have ever undertaken.”
Francis X. Clines
The New York Times
Correspondent
“The current Moscow bureau, all taught by Boris, agree he
is a genius at plunging a student up to his soft palate in the vis-
cera of the language... [Boris and his staff are gifted, relentless
tutors].”
“When graduates of Boris’s tutorials meet - and there’s
currently a dozen or so alumni in Moscow’s diplomacy, jour-
nalism and business circles - they invariably glory in the words
and music not so much of the Russian language as of Boris and
his methodology.”
Michael R. Gordon
The New York Times
Correspondent
“The attention to grammatical models and rules of com-
munication was rigorous. The program, however, was unique
in developing communicative skills and preparing me for the
actual give and take of verbal interactions. In many teaching
programs, the teacher does most of the talking. At SLTC, the
student does the talking.”

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 How to Improve Your Language Immediately

Alessandra Stanley
The New York Times
Correspondent
“This method has helped countless foreign correspon-
dents, including many of our predecessors at the New York
Times. It proved invaluable to us.”
Ester Dyson
EDventure Holding, Inc.
President
“Boris Shekhtman is the world’s best Russian teacher.”
Russel Murray
Holy Name College
The Franciscan Order Of Friars Minor
“Through the use of this methodology, SLTC students are
able to gain proficiency at a faster rate than those who partic-
ipate in other, more traditional programs, as well as to learn
the skills which will serve their on-going education for years
to come.”
Felicity Barringer
The New York Times
Correspondent
“He analyzed my brain, made a template of the portion of
my brain that learns language, and figured out what I could
learn. And it was all custom-made to my needs.”
Michael Wines
The New York Times
Correspondent
“Pedagogical theories are wonderful things. But the bot-
tom line is: after nine months, I speak Russian far better than I
spoke Spanish after thirteen years of instruction in elementa-
ry, high school and university classes. And I wasn’t a bad Span-
ish student.”
“The genius of your method is that it teaches the art of
communication before it moves on to grammar - the exact op-
posite of many language courses.”

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 Boris Shekhtman

Peter Baker, Susan Glasser

The Washington Post
Correspondents
“Neither of us has ever had a better language teacher… Af-
ter just two months of studying with you, we found that our
Russian was already better than that of graduate students at
John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International
Studies who had studied the language for years.”
Anthony Lauder
Software Developer
“There is a fantastic book called How to Improve Your For-
eign Language Immediately, by Boris Shekhtman that provides
loads of helpful strategies for the kind of things you are talking
about, and I found it to be a tremendous help in improving
conversational ability.”

108
 Other Books
by Boris Shekhtman
Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition (Leaver, Ehrman,
& Shekhtman, Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Aimed at beginning to intermediate undergraduates and above,
this book teaches students to understand their own preferences in
learning, to develop individual learning plans and approaches, and
to select appropriate learning strategies. Equally suitable for both
individual and classroom use, this book will be invaluable for all
language learners.
Communicative Focus: Teaching Foreign Language on the Basis
of the Native Speaker’s Communicative Focus (Shekhtman &
Kupchanka, Villa Magna Press, 2013; third edition currently in
press by MSI Press LLC)
The author details the theory behind the principles and practices
used in his approach to language teaching: the development of
lexical and grammatical accuracy, the need for memorization, and
the development of memory. He also discusses the unique nature
of the connection between language and meaning experienced
by native speakers that non-native speakers must learn. Teachers
who want to see leaps in their students’ progress in developing
language proficiency can benefit from this book.
Developing Professional-Level Language Proficiency (Leaver &
Shekhtman, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2002)
This book examines approaches to teaching students who aim
to make the leap from “advanced” or “superior” proficiency in
a foreign language to “near-native” ability. Compiled by leading
practitioners experienced at teaching upper levels of foreign
language proficiency.

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 Boris Shekhtman

NEH-funded workbooks for teaching advanced levels of Russian,

edited by Shekhtman:
Workbook 1. Sociolinguistic Variables
Workbook 2. Sociocultural Variables
(available gratis upon request to info@msipress.com)
Teaching and Learning to Near-Native Levels of Language
Proficiency, Volume I (Leaver & Shekhtman, MSI Press LLC,
2003)
Proceedings of the 2003 Spring & Fall conferences of the
Coalition of Distinguished Language Centers.
What Works: Helping Students Reach Native-Like Second-Language
Competence (Coalition of Distinguished Language Centers
authorial collective including Shekhtman, Villa Magna Press,
2013)
The purpose of this book is two-fold: to make a statement that
bringing students to high levels of foreign language proficiency
can be done and to show how to do it.
Working with Advanced Foreign Language Students (Shekhtman,
Villa Magna Press, 2013; third edition in press by MSI Press
LLC)
Written by a teacher with 20 years of experience at this level
of instruction, this book is chock-full of practical advice and
sample classroom activities for highly proficient students.

110
 Foreign Language and Culture Books
from MSI Press

In print:
Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency: A
Catalogue of Critical Factors
Damascus amid the War
Diagnostic Assessment at the Superior/Distinguished
Threshold
Individualized Study Plans for Very Advanced Students of
Foreign Language
Journal for Distinguished Language Studies (7 issues)
Road to Damascus
Syrian Folktales
Teaching and Learning to Near-Native Levels of Language
Proficiency (4 volumes)
The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom
The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society
The Subversive Utopia

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 Boris Shekhtman

Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star

Thoughts without a Title
Travels with Elly (Canada)
What Works: Helping Students Reach Native-Like Second
Language Competence
When You’re Shoved from the Right, Look to Your Left:
Metaphors of Islamic Humanism

Forthcoming:
Arabic in a Hurry
English in a Hurry
Fields of the Mind
Learning Languages at Home
Managing Cognitive Distortions and Mitigating Affective
Dissonance
Practices That Work
Russian in a Hurry
The E&L Cognitive Style Construct

112