The Dod's Critical Need Languages In U.s

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A third contributor to the nation's security "language crisis," Wholesale Jewelry federal officials contend, has been geopolitical and cultural interests that have influenced the infrastructure of foreign language education.

This infrastructure has guided a majority of students to learn Western European languages such as French, German, and Spanish rather than the languages spoken and written by peoples where the U.S.

Military has initiated conflict in recent years. In his remarks Jewelry On Sale at the 2004 States Institute on International Education in the Schools, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness David S. C.

Chu expressed his disappointment that, according to a 2002 MLA study, "Less Commonly Taught Languages" comprise only 12 percent of all U.S. college-level language enrollments ("Meeting" ...
... 5).4 Chu criticized colleges and universities because these numbers signal their "lack of instructional capacity" in DoD "investment languages": Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, Korean, Russian, Turkish, and other central Asian languages.

Although statistical increases in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and Tagalog instruction were "heartening," Chu noted that these enrollment figures were mostly for introductory courses. Instead, he argued, the DoD needs both high schools and colleges to create sustained courses of study in these languages. Chu warned that if language scholars do not shift their attention to the DoD's critical need languages, "a large proportion of our American youth will not be prepared for the very different environment in which we find ourselves" .

Having identified these three sources of the national security "language crisis," the DoD pursued two courses of action to address the problem, the first of which is internal. Under Secretary Chu assembled a team to create a Defense Language Transformation Roadmap, which upon its January 2005 publication sought "to transform the way [the DoD] value [s], develop [s], and employ[s] language and regional expertise" (U.S. Dept. of Defense, Defense 2004, 6).

Among its many recommendations, the Roadmap calls for DoD leaders to generate a complete list of the military's language needs for particular missions and personnel roles and to devise an index that measures the military's level of readiness, in terms of its language capabilities, for specific operations (U.S. Dept. of Defense, Defense 2005, 5). The Roadmap also calls for the DoD to create one-time tests for identifying the kinds and levels of language competence that all U.S.

Military personnel possess, and it charges U.S. military leaders with deploying these personnel in positions that allow them to use, and thereby maintain, these skills in their day-to-day military activities. Finally, the Roadmap tasks the Defense Language Institute with redesigning its curricula and calls for the DoD to develop strategies for recruiting heritage language speakers and other students who possess "critical need" language skills.

The DoD leaders see the Roadmap as a means of "ensuring] the right skills are developed" to enable U.S. military personnel "to shape events, to respond rapidly, and to operate globally" in the twenty-first century (U.S. Defense Language Institute 29).

Although the DoD's Roadmap proposes internal solutions to the language crisis, military officials contend that only a broader, more nationwide effort can develop the language resources that they need to secure the United States. The DoD initiated such collaboration by convening the "National Language Conference: A Call to Action" in June 2004.

This conference, co-hosted by the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language,5 brought together various stakeholders in this language policy issue, including leaders from federal agencies such as the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Labor, and Health and Human Services; the corporate sector; foreign language scholars from both the secondary and collegiate levels, including MLA Executive Director Rosemary G. Feal; and private companies that provide language services.

Through presentations and roundtable discussions, conference participants attempted to define the nation's critical language needs, identify its existing language resources, and create a strategy for developing new language resources.