One day, while working in my office, I got a call from                      

                a       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 Russia to work at an American exhibition as a guide. 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 not achievable to improve her language knowledge in four days, but that it was feasible to organize the knowledge 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. First, I devised several exercises to teach her our first tool, Show Your Stuff. This tool so amazed Sandy that she wanted to do only such kinds of exercises, and she even decided that she was already prepared to go pass the examination again. Then I introduced her to the concept of Islands. We created several islands which we thought would be important for the examination. 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 saw 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 one can guess, we were approaching the Simplify tool. At the beginning 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 – simplify. Then we began to work with Stick to the Known. I showed Sandy how many grammar structures she knew automatically, how many she knew semi-automatically, and how many she knew only theoretically.After that hard work, tool number 6, Embellish, was a vacation or rest for Sandy. The fourth day that I worked with Sandy, we concentrated on tool number 7, Clarify. And Sandy quickly got command 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. (B.Shekhtman. (2003).How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately. MSI Press. p.95)