SLTC is a private language school that has developed a unique and extraordinarily effective approach to language teaching, that compared with other existing methods, enables students to attain the same level of spoken fluency, and comprehension in considerably less time.

SLTC offers flexible programs that provide organizations with a cost-effective way to offer larger groups the benefits of SLTC's training techniques. Our special programs are designed for students and teachers of any language. We offer seminars ranging from a few hours to a few months, for groups of any size, and to fit any schedule.

These seminars cover the "rules of communication" used in language training at SLTC. This powerful set of tools allows non-native speakers of any language to immediately and dramatically improve their ability to communicate with native speakers. It also helps language instructors to improve their teaching.

About the Founder
Boris Shekhtman, founder and President of SLTC, has taught Russian for more than 40 years. He was a member of the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute for 10 years. In 1988 he received the Una Chapman Cox Award for Excellence in Teaching from then-Secretary of State George Shultz.

In 1984 Shekhtman founded the Specialized Language Training Center to offer innovative and highly effective foreign language training for professionals and others in the Washington, D.C. area. Boris Shekhtman is the author of How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately, in which he describes the teaching techniques he developed over many years of professional language training. He is co-author of Mark Smith's Diary, a comprehensive set of course materials for American/Russian cross-cultural training. He is also a co-editor of the book "Developing Professional-level Language Proficiency" published by Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Consultants on Methodology
Our methods developers are highly trained and experienced linguists. Among them:

Natalia Lord (M.A., Fordham University) is Senior Coordinating Instructor of Russian at the Foreign Service Institute. She has also taught at Howard University. One of the two developers of the first advanced course to be taught at the FSI, she has worked with Superior-level students for nearly twenty years. Her publications include Mark Smith's Diary (a cross-culture textbook, 1985). Her e-mail address is lordcn@bellatlantic.net.

Elena Ovtcharenko (Ph.D., Leningrad State University) is Assistant Professor of Russian at George Washington University and Senior Instructor of Russian at the World Bank. Her e-mail address is ovtcharenko@mail.msn.com.

Ekaterina Kuznetsova is a Senior Instructor at the Specialized Language Training Center. Prior to that, she served as Instructor of Russian as a Foreign Language at Saratov State University (Russia), Senior Instructor of EFL at Saratov Law College, and Instructor of EFL at Saratov State University, and as a translator for several organizations in Russian and the US. Her e-mail address is evpk@prodigy.net.