Language Pro Pay

Last December we went up to the Annex and gave a demo of Tactical Iraqi at squirrel central agent 99 dome of silence room.

The CG jumped in the game and talked his way through the first scenario in Iraqi Arabic. We had it projected so his whole staff watched as he accomplished the first tasker. When he was finished he said that he wanted to get the training sim to a level that when a Marine completed it, he should be able to speak FLP 1 listening and spoken. The idea is to give the Marines some cash for learning.

10 months later, we finally awarded the contract.

S/A, the Army has Rosetta Stone, the Corps doesn't. Rosetta Stone's content will teach you how to order an expresso in Estonia but not how to talk tactically while drinking the expresso. The cost of developing new content hasn't been looked at because Rosetta Stone didn't seem interested.

So here we are, we have cordon and search, tactical questioning, ECP, and Embassy Post 1 questioning (no idea how that got there:) ) Last week I shifted gear with our peds oncologist and asked for triage questions. He's a Major with a tour under his belt.

So here's what we need:

Realistic non kinetic scenarios, I'm thinking COIN and I need some ideas. Any ideas?

Not to detract you from your usable scenarios, to which I don't have the meat you are looking for in reply.

But you stated you have an Intermediate Ojective, qualifying to FLP1. Is that under control? Will your main effort on the sceanrios accomplish it? Do you have a supporting effort working regarding the passing-FLP1-enablers? Can the FLP1 bar be ju-ju'd out of the cafe and into the ECP (if it is there now, which I don't know)?

Jeez Paul, I never received training like that!

Here's a real event...now six years old. Is is COIN ? Yes and no. Replace the mother and child with another U.S. soldier in the same scenario !

We’d been at our favorite watering hole for about 3 hours when Mike was ready to go, as he had to be on post one at 0600 the following day. After some serious ribbing, we let him go (gotta love a serious Marine NCO).

I guess several minutes pasted when I got his frantic call. He was less than 200 meters up the street holding a conversation with the 112 emergency center (similar to our 911, but without any direct connection to law enforcement, which is 110).

Mike walked past one of many high-class clubs and mafia-run taxi stands when he saw a 500SL taxi speeding down the adjacent street towards a mother and child walking. Mike ran and grabbed the young boy into his arms, but the mother stood in the middle of the road in slight shock and was struck by the speeding Mercedes. The driver stopped briefly and then jumped into his cab and fled.

Mike had memorized the details, but now was faced with a young child screaming in Estonian asking Mike to help his mother. Mike immediately called 112 and asked for an ambulance as well as repeating the license number of the taxi. The woman that responded couldn’t understand Mike as he repeated the need for help and the number of the fleeing taxi, by responding that Mike needed to call 110 to report traffic accidents. Frustrated, he hung up and decided to tend to the bleeding/conscience woman in the middle of the road. She was now reeling in pain (a broken right leg and deep head wound), and asking in Estonian to call an ambulance. Mike put his jacket under the woman’s head and began looking at her leg.

I had just arrived and called emergency as well as requesting that 110 be notified. Mike rattled off all the details, as if he retained them to permanent memory.

It’s a bit of a long story for a scenario. Mike performed flawlessly, but without the benefit of some language background was stymied and later told me he felt nearly helpless. Years later, I’m happy to report that our MSGs begin their tours with 8 weeks of language training.

So, what’s a 1/1/1 FLPT include? Basically nothing. I’d prefer we center on real life situations and not some dog-and-pony show ‘Hi, my name is’ and then we immediately begin learning cuss words.

Sorry about the ambigous opening in the thread. I posted that from my Blackberry and now that I'm a geo-bachelor for the next two days I have some time between work and sleep. We are holding the kick-off meeting on this contract tomorrow here in Orlando.

I'll be able to get better windage adjustments then.

Stan pretty much has it, scenarios, ideals and so on. We can not teach to take the DLPT-1 but we need a wide range of teaching scenarios for the individuals to speak and listen to be reasonable able to pass the test. Currently the tests are proctored/administrated usually at the Learning Resource Centers, this won't change in the near future that I'm aware of.

It would be easy to work out Berlitz or Rosetta Stone type but we are trying to distance this from those types of scenarios. I haven't had a chance to go into the CL-150 yet, MARSOC purchased 4-5 Tactical Language Kits, we tacked those on to the contract when it was awarded.

Sidethought: Why has DARPA not awarded Big Money X-Prize style to someone who can find a way to *deeply speed up* the time factor of language acquisition? Not merely for mil use, but generally; it's something that's boggled me.

In my own experience, all the tech in the world (granted, I've not used the Tactical Language products, though I wish I could!) might help you remember what you learned better, but it's never seemed to speed up learning a language.

In other words, are there techs that could speed up the 26-week process to, I dunno, 12 weeks?