Quote Originally Posted by Van View Post
Kevin, You're doing the right thing in pursuing a language. Some thoughts on how to pick one;

1) Pick a language spoken in places you'd like to go.
Pick your languages for you and you alone; they take substantial time and effort and since life is short, you want to be working on something that you love.

SF, CA, FAO, MI, DoS, USAID, and OGA are some governmental pathways where an extra language or two will help you to complete missions plus the time and effort you spend on mastering them will be financially rewarded (language pay for language slots). In the private sector the banking, hotel, transportation, and energy industries seem to care about those types of skills.

Gaining and maintaining your skills: get the 500 verbs book for your language (ipod app or hard copy), take college courses, hire tutor's, pay for immersion opportunities...seek settings where you can regularly practice speaking, download foreign news podcasts, read BBC online (it's printed in various languages), read local papers (internet), read, read, read. Shortwave broadcasts are still around as well (dawn and dusk are the best listening times). Spend some bucks and get a satellite tv package with foreign channels of your choice A summer or semester abroad is a great thing and will change your life. If you haven't signed an ROTC contract yet consider a year abroad...teach english somewhere and get paid to learn....