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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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 Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:02 pm Post subject: If Rosetta Stone worked.... |
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According to its incessant television advertisements, it's the way the US military learns languages 
Looks like there is still a future in teaching foreign languages live and face to face, though English isn't necessarily the only target language. Fair enough!
Anyway, yet more reasons why the US military isn't winning hearts and midns, with their 4 hour immersion courses into a culture and memorised elementary level language skills 
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The Pentagon's Foreign-Language Frustrations
As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told 2,500 troops Tuesday about the foreign-language skills he championed as a congressman, an active-duty Army officer was complaining about the paucity of military personnel who can speak anything other than English.
The current push to train soldiers to speak the local languages in Afghanistan and Iraq was "haphazardly thrown together," Morgan Smiley, an active-duty Army officer, posted on Small Wars Journal, an independent website, Tuesday morning. A recent government report makes clear that � a decade into the war in Afghanistan � the Pentagon continues to bumble teaching its troops the local languages, a skill that ground commanders say is as valuable as a soldier's skill with a rifle. Several hours later, defense chief Panetta praised the Pentagon's efforts to improve the language skills in its arsenal, but conceded "frankly, more needs to be done."
"Learning the language will not only help one learn about that culture but be able to operate more effectively once immersed in it," writes Smiley, who now serves in Saudi Arabia, and has been a military adviser to both Afghan and Saudi security forces. "Improving our language skills may lead to more effective and efficient techniques for building the capacity of our current and future partners and reduce the need for deployments of robust US forces."
That may be doubtful: generals always want more. But there is no doubting the lack of language and cultural awareness among the troops we send to win the hearts and minds of Afghans (most of whom speak Dari and Pashto) and Iraqis (Arabic), usually through interpreters. If that weren't bad enough � we can't be bothered, basically, to learn the tongue of the societies we are trying to remake � the U.S. military and its leaders remain culturally tone deaf. It happened in Vietnam then, and it's happening in Afghanistan now.
Smiley detailed ways he believes the language skills of U.S. troops could be improved to help ease such problems. They range from temporarily stationing troops in ethnic enclaves inside the U.S. � among the Arabs of Dearborn, Mich., and the Somalis of Minnesota's Twin Cities, for example � to having the Pentagon foot the bill for increased training at universities with good foreign-language departments. "In order to ameliorate any ill-will among certain faculty members, we would have to emphasize the (generally) non-combat purpose behind such instruction," he said. "�i.e. learning the local language will help reduce misunderstanding, generate a positive relationship, and help us assist in reducing or extinguishing violence and conflict in those areas."
Back in his old congressional district in Monterey, Calif., Panetta spoke at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center before troops massed on Soldier Field overlooking Monterey Bay. The language and cultural training they are receiving there, he told them, is key to U.S. global economic and security interests. "Languages are the key to understanding that world," Panetta said. "If we are going to advance stability in some of the countries we are fighting in today, we have to be able to understand what motivates those countries, what motivates their people, and to understand their culture, beliefs, faiths, ideologies, hatreds and loves," he said. "A strong language ability" is necessary to do that.
While a member of Congress, Panetta served on a panel during the Carter Administration that concluded the dearth of language training was what he termed a "national scandal" that led to the creation of the school at Monterey.
But despite the school, more needs to be done. "DOD does not have the tools it needs to set strategic direction for language and culture training efforts," the Government Accountability Office said in a May report. The Army currently orders all troops headed to Afghanistan and Iraq to take "a 4-to-6-hour online training program for language and culture," while Marines conduct two-day courses for their forces headed to Afghanistan. "Army and Marine Corps officials noted that training requirements changed constantly and this led to some confusion in developing training programs as well as considerable time and resources that were spent adjusting training," the GAO said.
The Army's modest standard is for one leader per platoon (a unit of two to three dozen troops) to have "memorized proficiency" in the local language, with a goal of "elementary proficiency," the agency found. That's just not adequate, according to the GAO: "On the basis of their operational experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, ground commanders have expressed the importance of language and culture skills for general purpose forces in counterinsurgency and stability operations, stressing, for example, that language training is as important as marksmanship."
Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/08/24/the-pentagons-foreign-language-frustrations/#ixzz1VyxkSl2K |
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ancient_dweller
Joined: 12 Aug 2010
Posts: 415
Location: Woodland Bench
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| Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 6:33 am Post subject: |
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Rosetta is incredibly sterile and boring! In saying that, if someone forced me to sit on it for 4 hours a week I'm sure i would learn something! (i tried using it (and did for a few weeks) but there is limited variation and it's... well, just depressing. When doing it alone...
I am sure in a computer room filled with your army mates you could have a good joke about it all and learn something that way... |
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kazpat
Joined: 04 Jul 2010
Posts: 140
Location: Kazakhstan
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| Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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The article generalizes the military.
An 18 series MOS (Army Special Forces soldier) will have 6 months plus of language training depending their groups area of responsibility. Often they can communicate without the use of a "terp". I know they are taught in the SFQC by native speakers of the target language and this is supplemented by further face to face classes once assigned to group. They may even spend a year at DLI. A 12 man detachment could have 6 or more different languages spoken by its members. I have had the opportunity to speak to a few 18 series guys and they don't rely on Rosetta Stone. So at least a small percentage of our military is serious about language learning.
If anything this article demonstrates why conventional forces are not always best suited for counter insurgency operations. It is often beneficial to sit for days with the village elder on the ground drinking tea and talking to him instead of shooting at him, a nuanced skill the conventional infantryman may not always have nor should he with his length of training.
Rosetta Stone helped me with Russian prepositions of space and that is about it, like another poster said on here, I have not had the opportunity to say "the young boy is under the airplane" in KZ yet.  |
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MotherF
Joined: 07 Jun 2010
Posts: 1450
Location: 17�48'N 97�46'W
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| Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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| I used to work with a guy who had previously been a foriegn language officer or what ever they call them in the army. While he had a very good command of Spanish grammar. His pronunciation made me cringe (He was from the South East and spoke Spanish just like he spoke English.) He would have been through his training in the late 80s, so maybe they've improved it since then? |
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