Posted on 11/21/2008 3:51:06 PM PST by SandRat
FORT HUACHUCA — The first class of a three-year pilot Arabic immersion language program at the Intelligence Center graduated Wednesday, and early Thursday morning the soldier students headed for a Middle Eastern country for an additional month-long in-depth immersion where no English is to be spoken.
“You are trailblazers,” Col. Jasey Briley told the soldiers at the graduation ceremony.
Arabic language skills will not only be important on the battlefield, but in other roles the Army may find itself in such as peacekeeping operations, the chief of staff for the Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca told the soldiers.
Noting that a course in Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in California lasts 64 weeks, the shortened 41 week-course at the Southern Arizona Army post is helping to fill the need for linguists more rapidly, Briley said.
The need for linguists in today’s military cannot be overstated, the colonel commented.
He noted that when he was the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion, , he advised a combat brigade commander to take linguists along on Operation Anaconda, one of the largest combat operations at that time in the war on terrorism, but was rebuffed.
The brigade commander said he needed more riflemen, but that individual learned that having linguists as part of the force would have been beneficial, Briley noted.
The operation not only included combat but involved refugees and Afghans friendly to the United States, he said.
The lack of linguists made it hard for the combat forces to separate the various factions that were encountered, the colonel remarked.
Now, the Army knows the importance of having linguists as part of operations, and what was done at the first Arabic immersion course on Fort Huachuca provides the Army an additional force multiplier, Briley said.
“We tried something new here,” he told the students, who all completed the human intelligence collector course and were either selected or volunteered to remain for the additional 10-month language course.
Before Briley spoke, two of the students, Amanda Hausman and Derek Wisner, both privates first class, spoke, alternating in Arabic and English, noting they and their fellow students were “pioneers” and “national assets.”
As they spoke, three of their five native language speaking instructors listened intently. The instructors included two from Sudan and one each from Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. During the course the students were specifically taught Iraqi Arabic.
The credit for the success of the program goes to both the students and the instructors, said Col. John Bird, the director of training, development and support at the Intelligence Center.
“You are about to become combat multipliers,” he told the students. “When you go to Iraq as privates first class (or higher enlisted ranks), you are going to carry the weight of a colonel.”
And, linguists of all types of languages are going to be needed for a long time as the United States continues to combat any number of counter-insurgencies in the world, Bird said.
Saying the Army has made a huge investment in their training, the colonel challenged the soldiers to not only be proficient linguists but to be knowledgeable about the cultures they will be part of while performing their duties.
“Fall in love with the cultures. Understand the cultures for what they mean,” Bird said.
As for the instructors, he said the success of the shorter version of Arabic language training is because of their abilities to excite young soldiers to learn.
For Col. Sue Ann Sandusky, the success of the new program was excellent.
The commandant of the Defense Language Institute and the Foreign Language Center at the Presidio of Monterey, Calif., said she is pleased with the success of the first year of the pilot program.
“We are dedicated to the Fort Huachuca program for three years,” she said.
That means the five instructors and the program manager for the course have moved to Arizona, Sandusky added.
The instructors had to apply and go through a selection process, the colonel noted, adding there are 1,700 language instructors at DLI and the organization also runs some other programs at other military installations.
But, “this one (at Fort Huachuca) is a little different,” she said.
The shorter course means pushing learning faster so that qualified linguists can be pushed out into the Army quicker, Sandusky said.
The course at the Intelligence Center also is different because not only were the students immersed into language learning, they ate, did PT and slept in the same barracks together, she said.
That allowed them to constantly use Arabic, even in their off-duty time, the colonel said.
As there are needs for additional languages, DLI will look at other pilot programs that will shorten what is taught at the California center, Sandusky said.
“Language training is difficult,” she said, noting that at DLI about 25 percent of the students wash out for a variety of reasons.
The pilot program at Fort Huachuca started with 19 students, but four fell out, which is about the same wash-out rate at DLI, the colonel commented.
The younger a person is the better attuned that individual is to learn a language, Sandusky said, and the Army has to focus on soldiers who have the ability to learn a language quickly.
She is a foreign area officer in the Army who has had many assignments in sub-Sahara Africa where French is a major language, which she speaks fluently.
After the ceremony, husband and wife soldiers, Pvt. Andrew Weaverling and Pfc. Linda Weaverling, spoke with one of the instructors, Magde Saad, from Sudan.
The soldiers were interested in learning Arabic, Saad said.
The two soldiers, who were married on July 4 — she’s from Las Cruces, N.M., and he from the Houston area — both said they speak a little Spanish.
What amazed them about the immersion training was how fast they could learn Arabic. “It’s difficult but exciting,” she said. He added he can’t wait until they arrive in the Middle East for additional and more in-depth immersion training. For security reasons, the name of the nation the soldiers are visiting cannot be divulged.
Once the 15 students, ranging in rank from private to specialist, return — they are being accompanied by two military language instructors and the program manager — they will be given another test to see how much their Arabic has improved.
Saad said, “I expect they will be much better. They are good now, but will be even better.”
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
Huachuca
Just a kool name. I love sayin’ it. Huachuca.
May they have success in their military careers.
Yup. Good old Ft. Hoochie-koochie, once again on the cutting edge!
I’m glad I went to DLI Monterey rather than Huachuca to learn Arabic. The scenery and weather is much nicer.
I went to Arabic DLI fee Medina Washington, DC. At that time (1974) it was housed at “The Annex” in a converted WWII Barracks. Nice! /s/
As a graduate of two of those schools, let me say that if those recent graduates expect to hit the ground running, they’re in for a real shock. It’s one thing to learn how to conjugate a verb, and memorize the days of the week, or maybe participate in a mock conversation with the dry cleaners clerk, but it’s quite another to be immersed immediately into the world of street lingo and local dialects, what they’ll be hearing on day one in the field. “What? Is that Arabic?”
Yup, When I first read this piece I remember getting off the aircraft at Riyada AP going thru Customs and then trying to talk to a rural tribesman Yemenee baggage handler.
LOL! I think he was speaking Arabic.
I guess the best example I can give is an Englishman hearing “Black Rap” for the first time.
T.E. Lawrence spent two years devoting 100% of his time to learning Arabic and still considered himself a neophyte when he got out into the real-world sandbox.
Good example. I came back in through Jeddah once. I had brought some Italian chocolates for my wife. Traveling with a red (official) passport, the customs guy could go through my briefcase. He took my box out and asked me what they were. I explained that they were chocolates. He asked me if there was liquor in them. I said no, of course not. Surely he could see that the cellophane hadn’t been b broken. He ripped the cellophane off and proceeded to pick random pieces and break them in half, checking for liquor. I went ballistic and began breaking the rest of them in half and then tossed the handful of them into his face. Stupid, I know, and fully expected to be PNGd, but he said, “hey, calm down, I’m only doing my job.” There is absolutely no compelling reason for me ever to return to The Magic Kingdom.
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