Filling Foreign Language Gap
Written by Marty Kauchak
DOD’S TOP-NOTCH HIGH- AND LOW-END
LANGUAGE PROGRAMS LEAVES CHALLENGE
OF FILLING MID-LEVEL SKILL SETS.
Qualified soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines reporting to a duty assignment that requires high-order foreign language proficiency receive outstanding instruction at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI FLC). An increasing number of service programs provide excellent just-intime and other “101-level” instruction in language and culture for warfighters deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan or other areas around the world.
But at the end of the day, there is a gap in formal DoD programs that would provide a middle-level of language proficiency— often leaving the service man or woman to their own devices to gain this requisite education through a certificate or degree program.
ONE SERVICE’S EFFORTS
The U.S. Marine Corps Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL) http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/ caocl/ is DoD’s most successful, service-initiated effort to date to provide basic language and culture skills before servicemembers deploy into harm’s way.
“This is what we call operational culture. That is what you need to know about the people, the cultural environment and the human environment on the ground that is going to make you successful in the operation,” pointed out CAOCL Director, Jeff Bearor.
CAOCL has a four-part strategy to increase language proficiency and cultural awareness: provide pre-deployment training for Marines departing for Iraq and other locations; enable the formal service schoolhouses to provide officers and enlisted personnel with a permanent, continuous language and cultural education capability; establish Language Learning Resource Centers (LLRC) throughout the U.S. to provide basic and advanced training; and create a Career- Marine Regional Studies Program which will provide a higher level of educational programs on language and culture in a variety of regions of the world.
CAOCL-sponsored mobile training teams (MTT) supply pre-deployment training for units at their home base. The instruction is tailored to the Marines’ rank and function within the unit. “There are things the battalion commander needs to know that the lance corporals don’t need to know and, quite frankly, there are things the lance corporals ought to know that the battalion commander should not be so concerned with,” said Bearor. A junior Marine will receive about seven hours of CAOCL-provided pre-deployment training, whereas a senior Marine will receive between 10- to-15 hours of training.
In addition to learning about the daily aspects of life on the street of the operational area, a second, follow-on MTT teaches low-level training skills. “These include the ‘150 phrases that pay’ in Iraqi-dialect Arabic, broken down by functions. We may teach the junior Marines the 10 phrases in that language that are most useful when conducting a vehicle checkpoint, or a cordon-andknock operation. We may also teach the battalion commander the 12 phrases that he needs to use when he initially meets the local sheik,” explained Bearor. “We are not in this learning turning anyone into an Arab linguist, this is very basic, useful knowledge,” he emphasized.
Service schools ranging from recruit training to the Command and Staff College are also including various amounts of operational culture lessons in their curricula.
Through a fiscal years 2007-2008 program, the Marine Corps is establishing LRRCs that will provide computer-aided training in DLI-level language labs. Language instruction can be tailored to the unit’s mission.
“These will have a full suite of software that is language-learning supportive and will be backed up by curriculum and language instructors. So what we are providing is a pretty complete capability,” continued Bearor. He again emphasized, “We’re not turning anyone into a linguist. What I am really talking about is a very low level of language instruction— what can I give you in the period of time that you have that will be more than you had before.”
Learning tools which are expected to populate the LRRC’s instructional menu include the Tactical Language & Cultural Training Systems, produced by Tactical Language LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alelo, Inc.
MAE visited the Alelo booth earlier this year at 2007 ITEC and received an update on its Tactical Iraqi, Pashto and French Language and Culture courses— and learned at least one new course and updates to existing products are on the way.
The Career Marine Regional Studies Program will assign mid-level, career enlisted and officers with a responsibility to study a region of the world. “They will study these areas of the world through a computer-based learning product that we are in the midst of building now. This will encompass about 100-to-120 hours of learning—equivalent to two, three-hour college courses. There will be a language component associated with those, so that at the end of their learning process, they will have specific knowledge about countries in a region of the world and some language knowledge as well,” concluded Bearor.
A SECOND BASIC SKILL RESOURCE
A second initiative provides basic language instruction through a service e-learning portal.
In August, the U.S. Army announced it reached a major milestone in developing critical language skills using the Rosetta Stone language program. The Army e-Learning initiative and Rosetta Stone have delivered language training to over 100,000 uniformed and civilian Army personnel. More than one-third of the personnel are studying Arabic, one mission-critical language offered through Army e-Learning, a component of the U.S. Army Distributed Learning System.
At the other end of the spectrum, more in-depth, higher-order language training is provided at DLI FLC http:// www.dliflc.edu/.
DOD’S LANGUAGE SCHOOL
The DLI FLC is DoD’s only formal school that is chartered to teach foreign language. The school teaches 24 different languages at its Monterey campus. DLI FLC, through its Washington, D.C., office, contracts for language training inside the Washington, D.C., Beltway for another 55-to-65 languages that are not taught in residence in Monterey.
The enrollment at the Monterey schoolhouse averages between 3,500-to- 3,600 students. This figure reflects DoD’s recent bolstering of its foreign language education programs. “Our number has probably increased by about 50 percent since September 11, 2001. We just went through a review of the budget out years (FYs 2008-11) and we are anticipating continued growth through those years,” pointed out Army Colonel Tucker B. Mansager, DLI FLC commandant and Presidio of Monterey Installation Commander.
DLI courses are categorized by their level of difficulty for a native English speaker. Languages most familiar to English speakers, including Spanish, French and Italian are category I languages and require 26 weeks of instruction. Category II languages, German and Indonesian, require about 35 weeks of instruction. Category III languages include a swath of diverse languages, two of which are Russian and Persian Farsi. The courses for category III languages are about 52-weeks in duration. The four category IV languages (Chinese Mandarin, Modern Standard Arabic, Korean and Japanese) take about 18 months to teach.three-hour college courses. There will be a language component associated with those, so that at the end of their learning process, they will have specific knowledge about countries in a region of the world and some language knowledge as well,” concluded Bearor.
A SECOND BASIC SKILL RESOURCE
A second initiative provides basic language instruction through a service e-learning portal.
In August, the U.S. Army announced it reached a major milestone in developing critical language skills using the Rosetta Stone language program. The Army e-Learning initiative and Rosetta Stone have delivered language training to over 100,000 uniformed and civilian Army personnel. More than one-third of the personnel are studying Arabic, one mission-critical language offered through Army e-Learning, a component of the U.S. Army Distributed Learning System.
At the other end of the spectrum, more in-depth, higher-order language training is provided at DLI FLC http:// www.dliflc.edu/.
DOD’S LANGUAGE SCHOOL
The DLI FLC is DoD’s only formal school that is chartered to teach foreign language. The school teaches 24 different languages at its Monterey campus. DLI FLC, through its Washington, D.C., office, contracts for language training inside the Washington, D.C., Beltway for another 55-to-65 languages that are not taught in residence in Monterey.
The enrollment at the Monterey schoolhouse averages between 3,500-to- 3,600 students. This figure reflects DoD’s recent bolstering of its foreign language education programs. “Our number has probably increased by about 50 percent since September 11, 2001. We just went through a review of the budget out years (FYs 2008-11) and we are anticipating continued growth through those years,” pointed out Army Colonel Tucker B. Mansager, DLI FLC commandant and Presidio of Monterey Installation Commander.
DLI courses are categorized by their level of difficulty for a native English speaker. Languages most familiar to English speakers, including Spanish, French and Italian are category I languages and require 26 weeks of instruction. Category II languages, German and Indonesian, require about 35 weeks of instruction. Category III languages include a swath of diverse languages, two of which are Russian and Persian Farsi. The courses for category III languages are about 52-weeks in duration. The four category IV languages (Chinese Mandarin, Modern Standard Arabic, Korean and Japanese) take about 18 months to teach.
DLI FLC sustains and improves the DoD language speaker’s competencies through DLI FLC sustains and improves the DoD language speaker’s competencies through other formal learning strategies. These include providing in-resident intermediate- and advanced language training in Arabic, Korean and other high-demand languages, and providing on-line and exportable training.
The center’s outreach efforts include providing mobile training teams and supplying a pocket-sized Language Survival Kit for personnel deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia and other nations. The product is also available on CD.
TECHNOLOGY TO BOOST PROFICIENCY
“Technology is absolutely becoming more important to our program,” reflected Mansager. He added, “We’ve settled now on the iPod as the device of choice for both listening and recording. Currently we have what we call ‘interactive whiteboards.’ It’s a whiteboard that is sensitive and tied into a computer as well as a projector. From a computer screen, an instructor can access a Website, say Al Jazeera, call it up through the computer on the screen, and underline or write on the screen or excise a certain portion of the article he is reading and take that apart and blow it up. We also have software that can complete language analysis, similar to what you see in some of the crime movies, where you compare what a native speaker sounds like to how you are sounding with intonations and other characteristics.”
DLI FLC is also in the process of issuing laptops and then ultimately tablet personal computers to its student. The school is increasingly using technology to increase its current graduation standards, using the metrics defined by the Interagency Language Round Table (scale from 0 [no language proficiency] to 5 [proficiency of an educated, native speaker]). The center’s current standard is a level 2 in listening and reading.
MIDDLE-LEVEL EDUCATION GAP
There is a pronounced lack of opportunities to learn mid-level language skills, between the quality, Level-2 and above learning outcomes achieved at DLI FLC and the burgeoning number of basic, survival course taught through deployment cycles or over the Internet.
DoD recognized this shortfall and attempted to address it in the 2005 Defense Language Transformation Roadmap. “It set a goal of trying to get many more officers educated in language—approximately 80 percent of the officers educated in a language other than Spanish at a Level-1 or so, and another 25 percent to a Level 2,” recalled Mansager. He added, “There is no substitute for face-to-face interaction with a native instructor. And there is only so much you can do on a computer. If you really want to go for it, you need to speak with an instructor—a native instructor ideally. Over 98 percent of our instructors are natives. This is a gap that we have not completely filled in DoD.”
Other DoD-sponsored options for military members to learn languages are limited but are slowly expanding.
Enrolled midshipmen and cadets, and enlisted men and women aspiring to receive a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) commission, may be able to enroll in an expanding array of foreign language opportunities available through the program.
Four grants totaling $2 million were provided to Indiana University, San Diego State University, the University of Mississippi and the University of Texas at Austin as part of the new ROTC Language and Culture Project.
“The department’s goal is to expose ROTC cadets and midshipmen to the study of languages and cultures of the world critical to national security,” said David S.C. Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, in a May 2007 DoD press release. Servicemembers with duty assignments close to universities may be eligible to enroll in in-resident language or area studies programs.
Opportunities to earn a certificate in 25 foreign language are available through the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies. A partial list of the languages included Arabic, Mandarin and Russian. An extensive number of weekend workshops were listed for the fall 2007 semester.
Military personnel close to the Washington, D.C., Beltway may be interested in a number of area studies programs, including the Master of Arts in Middle East Studies at George Washington University. The programs require demonstrated oral and language proficiency of a language of the region.
ONE STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVES
Army Specialist Kenneth Thomas, a recent graduate of the Korean language program of instruction at DLI FLC, is reporting for duty to an Army unit in Korea. Thomas provided one perspective of what a linguistically-proficient service member offers his unit.
“The bond I’ve shared with my instructors will cross over to my fellow soldiers, and I think we linguists are in a unique position to represent the global and cooperative aspects of the military. With the knowledge of language and culture, access is gained to the people and culture that most troops stationed abroad rarely enjoy.”
Thomas also offered insights on learning a language and the quality of his education at the center.
“Learning a language six hours a day, five days a week for 63 weeks is more than digestion of vocabulary. It is the systemic analysis of your self in language, the defining of communication and the absorption of a cultural identity,” he observed. While noting the superb dedication of his instructors, he added, “There is always more material being developed—recordings, grammar lessons, cultural presentations and other products. It seems like every instructor puts forth a personal effort to expand the curriculum and keep up-to-date sources coming into the classroom. There was never a day where the opportunity for extra practice in speaking, or further explanation of complicated courses, wasn’t offered.” ♦