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DLI Alumni Association |
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1, Message from the President
2. Calendar of Events
3. Retirements (Jan – Jun 04)
4. In Memoriam (Apr – Jul 04)
5. Chinese Mandarin Speech Contest
6. Captain Blanco Was Here –
A Brief Account of the Spanish Program since the 1960s
7. Proficiency Enhancement Program (PEP)
8. Immerse
Yourself in a Total Arabic Environment
9. Relocation of Language Programs:
Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, etc
10. Comments on the M-16 Rifle and its 5.56mm
Round
11. Chair of Modern Languages, Norwich University,
visits the Defense Language Institute
12. Street named after DLI Graduate and Former Iranian Hostage – Family visits
DLI
13. DLI Map (Russian School Area)
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Welcome
to the third DLIAA Quarterly Newsletter. Alumni often request additional ways to
stay in touch with the Institute, with fellow alumni, and with
instructors. We hope that this
newsletter will facilitate more contact. This newsletter will provide periodic
updates on the Institute and its alumni.
The
newsletter is not meant to be a one-way communication flow. We invite you to share your experiences and
observations as linguists, or as former faculty/staff after you left the Institute.
Finally,
we also welcome your referrals to former classmates or colleagues. Most members
join the Association as the result of personal referrals from alumni like
you. So, if you have benefited from
being a DLIAA member, then please encourage others to join.
I
hope you enjoy this newsletter. I look forward to hearing from you about your
thoughts, suggestions and stories. You can
write to me at president@dli-alumni.org. Benjamin De La Selva, President .
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2.
Calendar of Events
CLPM
Seminar and Join DoD Language Conference, - 18 - 22 Oct 04 (Hyatt Regency)
Federal Degree Granting Institutions (FDGI)
Update – 27-29 Oct 04 (Pomerene Hall, Presidio)
DLI 63rd Anniversary – 1 Nov 04 (Presidio)
ACTFL* Conference – Nov 04 (Chicago, Ill)
Annual Program Review, Feb 05
(Hyatt Regency)
Digital Stream Conference, Mar 05
(California State University, Monterey Bay -CSUMB)
Worldwide Language Competition – May 05 (Presidio)
Language
Day – May 05 (Presidio)
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3.
Retirements (01 Jan – 02 Apr 04)
These individuals took
advantage of the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP)
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Alexander, Eloise (Arabic) Eassa, Maher (Arabic) Haroun, Trize W. (Arabic) Marashi, Sultan (Arabic) Nimri, Saleem (Arabic) Alexander, Eloise (Arabic) Khatib, Nuha A. (Arabic) Khalil, Rode (Arabic) Knight, Lillie W. (Arabic) Yuan, Chia (Chinese) Claudine Benigni
(French) Benigni, Claudia
(French) Krueger, Karl E
(German) Jamieson, Cholhee I.
(Korean) Ahn, Ana (Korean) Chee, Joanne H. (Korean) Han, Tai Choon
(Korean) Kim, Woo-Che
(Korean) Yu, Chin-Sei
(Korean) Woo, Byong-Koo (Korean, SCE) |
Farmanesh, Parivash (Persian) Farmanesh, Ray (Persian) Neustadt, Larisa (Russian, SCE) Baratoff, Irene (Russian Chairperson) Brisker, Zinaida (Russian) Emerson, Alexis (Russian) Kadiev, Nina (Russian) Krupski, Joseph A. (Russian) Reznich, Rachel F. (Russian) Vinokurov, Zinovy (Russian) Jurado, Arturo, (Spanish) Sorrentino, Emma (Spanish) Funke, Maurice (Faculty Development) Dege, John (Dean, Stogner,Michael
(Academic Spec., RU and SC) Wijbrandus, Roelof (Academic Administration) Matteson, Mathilda (Library Technician) Moser, Alta (Library Technician Turpin, Lester (Pubs.
Production Coordinator) |
John Dunlap (1 Jun 04) –
German Teacher
William
Burkhardt (2 Jul 04) German Teacher
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5. Chinese Mandarin Speech
Contest
Published with permission from
Asian School I Dean
On
Asian 1 is extremely proud of the success
its students achieved at this speech contest.
This is a clear reflection of the Department Chairpersons dedication and
of those instructors who helped their students prepare for this event. Mrs. Grant, Asian 1 Dean, is working to
recognize these students’ achievement.
Asian 1 will continue to support this event and appreciates the service
units' support in allowing students to participate.
In June it was reported that the
Executive Committee of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of
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6. “Captain Blanco was Here”
A brief account of DLI’s Spanish program since the 1960s
By Ben De La Selva, Dean, European and
Were you here in the 1960s or early 70s as
a Spanish student? Then you remember
Captain Blanco, a character who appeared in the first dialogues of the Old
Spanish course; that is, the course taught until 1975. In those days, a lesson (as in almost all DLI
languages) was built around a lengthy dialogue and a reading selection, with
attendant vocabulary and pattern drills.
The course was organized around daily situations from which a
grammatical sequence was derived. Yes,
you witnessed the last vestiges of the audio-lingual method. Dialogue memorization, mechanical drills, and
contrived (non authentic) materials kept you busy during the day and part of
the night. When you started the course
you were issued a black 40-pound reel-to-reel tape recorder and a dozen or two
tape reels containing, again, contrived materials. Authentic materials consisted of newspapers
that the Spanish department obtained several months after their
publication. Thus, authentic news was
old news. As there was a dearth of
materials, teachers had to create their own and presented them using one of the
latest technologies, the overhead projector.
You had to spend about one hour a day in the listening lab, repeating
the same dialogue lines and mechanical drills piped in from reel-to-reel tapes
through the teacher’s console. In the early 70s, at the urging of the user
agencies, the Spanish program was augmented by the Basic Course Enrichment
Program (BCEP), which contained what is now known as “performance objectives”
(transcription, summarizing, number dictation, translation, etc.) BCEP exercises were mainly used with students
going to Goodfellow AFB to become cryptologists.
If you came in the mid 1970s, you experienced
a new Spanish course, developed in the now defunct “DLI Systems Development
Agency”, created by Commandant Horne in the early 1970’s to develop learning
systems. There you met Doctor Buendia,
Captain Perez, Major Vega and Major Anderson.
This course broke away from the audio-lingual method in several
ways. First it discontinued the
memorization of long dialogues. Instead,
each lesson was broken up into three or four parts called frames, or
conversational exchanges. From each
frame grammar and vocabulary were extracted.
Although not a strict situational/grammatical syllabus like the previous
course, this new course still observed a certain grammatical sequence but was
more oriented on themes. The course
writers claimed that in this modular approach they would be able to remove one
module and replace it with another without impacting on the rest of the
course. The course writers still used
typewriters in its development. The
advent of the cassette tapes allowed students for the first time to carry their
recorders from the barracks to the school and do some of the listening
exercises on an individual basis.
Second, the course replaced pattern drills with exercises called
manipulations. Although repetition
drills were removed, some substitution drills were still found in the
books. The majority of these manipulations
were open questions that made students think and come up with creative
answers. This course was definitely the
beginnings of the communicative approach to the teaching of Spanish at DLI, and
became a model for other DLI courses.
Besides the cassette recorder, there were no technological breakthroughs
in the 1970s and 80s. The cassette lab
replaced the reel-to-reel lab, with a recorder installed in each student
station. At this time, being able to
play tapes at their own pace, students could do transcription and gisting
(summarizing) exercises in the lab.
Later on came the stand-alone computer lab, which used some commercial
software and DLI developed programs.
Unfortunately, many of these programs contained countless fill-in,
multiple choice, and mechanical exercises.
At the beginning these labs were not networked, providing only materials
contained in each computer’s hard drive or from CD’s, many of them developed in
house. Early on and again, at the urging
of the users, this course was supplemented with Military Activities Modules
(MAM), comparable to the BCEP exercises of the older course. However, all students, regardless of
assignment, were exposed to MAM.
If you came in the late 1990s, you were
exposed to the present Spanish course.
Developed with the use of computers and in close proximity and
coordination with the Spanish teachers and administrators, this course is a
success story in its development and implementation. It was a contrast to the previous course,
which was developed quite in isolation from the users. This new course is based heavily on
“authentic materials” (printed, audio and video) with the appropriate copyright
permissions. The course is indeed
communicative, in that it uses authentic input to engage the student in real
life communication. It is proficiency
oriented in that it prepares the students according to the hierarchy of tasks
expressed in the ILR proficiency descriptions.
And it is in accord with the move toward the development of “performance
objectives”. Proficiency and performance
skills are integrated throughout the course so that students progressively
attain the desired level or skill. In the last several years three
technological advances have modernized the teaching of Spanish. The first one was the introduction of the
Multi-Media labs. The European and
These last
three technological innovations emerged after the development of the current
Spanish course. However, because the
course is well organized, it was simple to convert all analog (text, audio, and
video) materials into digital format, and fit them into a new system.
Since the
1960s the methodology has evolved and the technology has advanced. Thus, from audio-lingual to communicative,
from overhead projectors to smart boards, from analog tape recorders to digital
MP3 players, and from Reel-to-Reel labs to Multi-Media labs, the teaching of
Spanish at DLI has indeed come a long way.
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7. PROFICIENCY ENHANCEMENT
PROGRAM (PEP)
The Proficiency Enhancement Plan is an initiative started by
DLI to bring 80% of DLI students to L2+ R2+ S2 proficiency levels over time. Currently, the DLI graduate requirement is L2
R2 S1+ proficiency levels. To achieve L2+ R2+ S2 DLI is shrinking section sizes
from 10 to 6 students in category III and IV languages, and revamping the
curricula. DLI is also investigating the
possibility of requiring higher entry DLAB.
The first PEP class started in the
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8. Immerse
yourself in a Total Arabic Environment
Published with permission from
We believe that immersion activities provide
students with an environment where they can listen, read, write and speak
completely in the target language as if they are in the country of that
language. At the same time, we believe
that immersion experiences will provide students with a positive and optimal
foreign language learning environment where all of the current teaching
methodologies such as communicative interactive teaching, small group
activities, skill integration, problem solving, use of higher order thinking
skills, etc. can be incorporated. After
each immersion day, we received some very positive feedback from students as
well as faculty members. The following are some excerpts from students’ and
faculty members’ comments: “I like the fact that I was able to initiate
conversation with native speakers without my teachers’ guidance…” “I like the
interrogation activity where I can actually bring that experience to the field
later…”; “I was really excited because I can actually buy stuff in Arabic
stores by speaking in Arabic, I can actually use the language that I learned in
the classroom..” “I was surprised that we could actually function without
looking at the dictionary to find the meaning of unknown words. We discussed it
within our group and somehow figured out what the meaning is...” “I was happy
to be able to communicate with real Arabic speakers other than my teachers…” “I
enjoyed visiting Arabic Café and sampling Arabic coffee and authentic foods
while speaking only in Arabic. They were very realistic.” “I wondered if
students could do all the activities written in the Immersion scenarios before
Immersion, but I was pretty amazed and impressed by students’ performance.”
“Immersion experiences make me reconsider my classroom activities and classroom
language use.” Would you all like to dive in for a day of intensive learning in
a simulated Arabic environment, with great Arabic authentic food samples and
pleasant surroundings?
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9.
Relocation of Language Programs: Spanish,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, etc.
We reported previously that a
consolidation of the Romance Languages (plus German) with the Russian Language
program was imminent. Space
considerations and the present size of these programs made them good candidates
for a merge. However, new developments
have changed the language mix and now only the Spanish program will move to the
Soldier’s Field area to share space with the Russian program, and that school
will be renamed European and
Asian I – Chinese,
Japanese, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese
Asian II – Korean
Asian III – Korean
Middle
Middle
European and
Global War on Terrorism
Task Force - Emerging Languages
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10. Chair of Modern Languages,
Published with permission from Dr. Frances S.
Chevalier
This June
Associate Professor Frances S. Chevalier, Ph.D., Chair of Modern Languages and
Director of the Language Laboratory, recipient of a Bride Award, participated
in an extensive visit of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
at the Presidio of Monterey, the world’s largest foreign-language institute.
Her mission was to determine how
During her stay on the West Coast, Professor Chevalier
also met with technical directors of the language laboratory centers of
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11. Comments on the M-16
Rifle and its 5.56 mm Round
By
Robert Destatte, Vietnamese Basic Course graduate, Aug 66.
Destatte later studied Cambodian and Advanced Vietnamese.
Note: “Bob
and I served together in
I found this update and follow up discussion of the
My own experience in
When the fighting subsided later in the
day, I returned to the site and examined it. I found approximately 15
holes that my 5.56mm rounds had punched through the palm cactus, but not a
single hole in the corrugated metal side of the building 10 feet the other side
of the cactus. I have no idea where my rounds spun off to after they
struck the cactus.
A few minutes after the first
exchange, and after moving to a new position, I encountered two of these
guys again. I put three carefully aimed rounds into the middle of
the chest of one of them at 30 yards with an unobstructed line of fire."
He went down immediately. As I
turned and engaged his companion who had taken up a position behind a stack of
firewood, the guy I had just plugged picked himself up and retreated
around the building behind him. The guy behind the stack of firewood
quickly retreated without any visible sign that any of the rounds I fired
at him had struck home.
Later, as
we drove the NVA forces back, we found the fellow I had dropped lying dead
behind the building he had retreated behind. I confirmed that
my three rounds had hit him where I had aimed -- squarely in the center of the
chest; however, I doubt that those three rounds killed him--an ARVN soldier had
put a .30-06 round from a WWII vintage M-1 rifle in him after he retreated
behind the building.
Nearly every guerrilla and NVA
soldier I spoke with during the three years I worked as a POW interrogator in
Certainly, my experience in the
incident described above was that the 5.56mm rounds did not push through even
light obstructions to hit the enemy soldiers I shot at, and when they did hit
an enemy soldier they were not instantly lethal --allowing him to retreat or
return fire. I agree with those who argue that the
12. Former Iranian Hostage’s Family Visits DLI
Mrs. Barbara Holland was told recently that DLI had named a
street after her father, U.S. Army Colonel Leland J. Holland, a DLI student in
the 1960s and an Iranian hostage in 1979.
After receiving an e-mail inquiry from her, the Alumni Relations Office
(ARO) and the DLI Alumni Association (DLIAA) located the street near the
Franklin Gate (the second street after entering the Presidio) and notified Mrs.
Holland immediately. On 23 July, Mrs.
Holland, husband Robert Feth, daughter Veronica Feth, and her friend Anita
Staubach, visited DLI for a tour of the Presidio and lunch at Belas Hall. The family was escorted by Natela Cutter, ARO
Director, and Ben De La Selva, DLIAA President.
“
Mrs. Holland, daughter Veronica, and husband
Robert.
