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Old 07-14-2004, 07:31   #17
QRQ 30
Quiet Professional
 
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Williamston, SC
Posts: 2,018
language

Everything Hog said is true, however his dream list is just that -- dreams. Who is left to beautify the Post. They may not have pine cones at all posts but there is always something. At Flinht Kaserne a rotary snow plow blew all of the snow into a huge mountain in the center of the quad. In preparation for a visit from the USAREUR CG we had to go out and break up and melt the mountain. I do, however agree with his priorities.

My wife has been in the States for thirty years. She seldom has the opportunity to speak Thai, but you should hear her when she meets another Thai. Some of us haven't been on a bike for years, maybe decades, but we can still get on one and ride without dieing.

I believe that thirty days of intense, full immersion language training will indeed bring one back up to speed. You say that there is no time for that but it could be incorporated into normal mission prep. Very seldom are SF deployed on the spur of the moment.

The goal of language is to communicate not to learn words and grammar. DLI frequently rotates instructors because there is the danger of graduating and being able to only understand the instructor. Teams speak a language in their team rooms and end up only understanding and being understood by their teammates. You need exposure to others. Bringing in people from the target area would help. This was an advantage to Groups residing in Germany, Panama, Okinawa and other places. One could speak the native language with natives as much as he desired.

I'm not familiar with the present system of training and testing used in SF today. While in Germany, our team attended Czech training. Although we had to take and were rated by the ALPT the real final test was more realistic. They brought in Czechs whom we had never met before. One at a time we were placed in front of a complete stranger. We were given a scenario to communicate to the Czech who in turn asked us questions. We could do anything in the book communicate our scenario, as long as it was Czech . It wasn't a test of vocabulary. We do the same in english, if we can't think of a particular word we talk around it. The Czech person then related our scenario to the head of the language department. I still remember my test. I had just infiltrated into the area and was to introduce myself to the G-chief. He had several questions about our capabilities and how we were to benefit him. I thought it was realistic. One man in the class, Jim Sweeney, had a low ALPT but scored very high on the final test which I felt was much more realistic than vocab and grammar.

BTW Hognose, did you receive my P/M?
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Last edited by QRQ 30; 07-14-2004 at 09:26.
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