Language and Cultural Training on the Fly
Written by Kenya McCullum
MT2 2010 Volume: 15 Issue: 5 (September)
If you learned a foreign language in school, you may remember how time-consuming the process could be—listening to tapes, conjugating verbs, and repeating all the words and phrases that you could commit to memory. This kind of language learning may be effective when you’re cramming for a high school exam or learning conversational language to use on vacation, but when the stakes are higher, a more immediate approach is necessary.
For servicemen and women preparing for an operational assignment, language and cultural training can mean the difference between life and death—and they do not have the luxury of learning language the way they did in high school. Military personnel need training that can quickly and effectively teach them how to communicate to survive in Iraq, Afghanistan and other venues.
To help ensure that the military has access to this kind of training, the Department of Defense created a set of language training standards in January 2005 known as the DoD Language Transformation Roadmap. According to Jim Winters, senior intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance research specialist for the Army, this roadmap is designed to “create foundational language, cultural competency and regional area expertise within the Army and the capacity to provide foreign language resources, establish a cadre of foreign language professionals, and establish processes to track foreign language expertise and professionals.”
In order to meet these requirements, the Army conducts institutional language training at the Defense Language Institute, the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and Foreign Language regional training centers at Forts Lewis, Bragg and Hood.
“From DLI to the Army Post training centers, all use language training technologies to aid language training and maintenance. These technologies range from electronic flashcards to foreign language immersion through foreign media access aided by machine foreign language translation,” said Winters. “Finally, soldiers have access to networked language training on Army Knowledge Online.”
Similarly, servicemembers have access to Joint Knowledge Online, or JKO, which is an enterprised system of portals that is developed by U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) in order to provide training capabilities to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines—as well as civil servants and multinational military partners. One of these products is the Virtual Awareness Trainer, also known as VCAT, which is a Web-based games environment that facilitates users in scenario-based operations that provide stimuli for them to learn, make decisions and interact. As a result of these activities, users gain an appreciation for the language and culture of the region being studied.
VCAT, which is the result of a collaboration with dozens of industry partners, does not give trainees a comprehensive understanding of the language being studied—and it’s not supposed to. Unlike high school Spanish or French, these language courses are meant to provide a quick glimpse into how to communicate verbally in common scenarios that soldiers encounter when they are deployed.
“We are very cognizant of the learner’s time. In all honesty, when you log on to these courses, it could probably take 25 hours to go through all of the core and optional training and still keep learning. But learners are busy men and women who may not have 25 hours to devote to this. So we optimize what we train to prepare them to deploy into harm’s way,” said Marty Vozzo, deputy program director for Joint Knowledge Online. “You have to know enough about language to be able to engage with your local inhabitants based on your environment, the scenario at hand, and some of the common phraseology that you may hear and need to know.”
But just because the training can be done relatively quickly doesn’t mean that essential concepts will slip through the cracks. VCAT is designed with a remediation component, which allows learners to retrain on areas that were challenging for them. “In a lot of these training courses, you’ll go through the training, take a test at the end and get 13 out of 15 questions right, but the program does nothing to help you get retrained on the two areas you missed,” said Vozzo.
In addition to the virtual scenarios that VCAT users train with, the program also includes videotaped interviews with servicemembers who have firsthand experience communicating in Iraq and Afghanistan— giving trainees the opportunity to hear what it’s like to work in these environments from those who have intimate knowledge of the regions.
“Seeing is believing, and when you hear firsthand what people have experienced—what goes well and what doesn’t go well—that goes a long way toward shaping your thought process about how you want to interact with different kinds of people in that environment,” Vozzo said.
Other Language and Cultural Training Systems
The military has a number of industry partners that provide language and cultural training systems to help soldiers prepare for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. One of these systems is the Operational Language and Culture Training System, or OLCTS, which is made by Alelo. OLCTS is a suite of programs—with desktop, handheld and Web versions— that teaches users language and then allows them to test their skills in a mission rehearsal environment. In this environment, learners use avatars called virtual role players to act out scenarios and practice conversation skills.
According to Alelo Chief Executive Officer Andre Valente, what makes OLCTS effective is the way the program teaches servicemembers how to use specific tenets of a culture to accomplish specific tasks that they will encounter when they are deployed. For example, in the Iraqi system, users may learn skills such as how to behave at vehicle checkpoints, how to handle a crowd control situation, and how to gather information from the people they encounter in the theater.
“We don’t teach just language, we teach communication. We teach language, culture and the elements of the task that you need to do in order to get things done,” said Valente. “We don’t teach you just, ‘Here are some words and here are some phrases that are useful.’ We turn it around and ask, ‘What do you want to accomplish as a warfighter once you go to this theater?’ and then try to teach you the language, culture and information you need to perform the non-kinetic aspect of that mission.”
The OLCTS, which has about 15,000 registered users, teaches survival language in about 20 hours of training. Users who have the time to increase their knowledge base can become more proficient by completing 80 hours on the program.
The Theatre of Theater
The virtual environment is just one way that soldiers are taught to speak and interact in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military is partnered with companies that can bring the battlefield to life—literally—in dramatic and culturally-relevant ways. One company that creates this kind of realistic experience is Mission Essential Personnel, also known as Mission EP, which trains customers on language and culture with live role players. In addition, the company—which provides training and technical services to the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State—offers services such as translation, interpretation and transcription.
According to the director of training and technical services, Todd Miller, the reason that Mission EP is able to provide realistic training to soldiers is because the company’s staff has over 100 years of military leadership and training experience among them—so they know what works in military training and what doesn’t.
“That combined experience from a leadership and training standpoint allows us to really address the needs of the military because if it’s been experienced, we probably have either done it ourselves or been involved with those who have done it,” he said. “This allows us to really look at training through a very special lens.”
That lens is focused on being as culturally relevant as possible, so that trainees get the clearest picture of what their working environment will be like in Iraq or Afghanistan. With the help of the company’s subject matter experts, Mission EP is able to immerse its customers into an environment that feels genuine and requires them to communicate in a culturally accurate way.
“That’s the stuff that you can’t get from somebody who hasn’t been a part of that culture or raised in that culture,” said Miller. “You can read books, but to really be able to translate that information into what is actually going on in an environment, there has to be a culturally-correct, human dimension. This is what we bring to the table.”
Similarly, the Tatitlek Corporation develops custom virtual training and language programs for the military by using the clothing and other cultural artifacts, vehicles and weapons that trainees will encounter when they are deployed. The company also provides people—who are pulled from a database of over 6,000 role players who come from a number of cultural backgrounds—to act out these scenarios. These workers, who oftentimes have professional acting experience, must undergo Tatitlek’s extensive background checks before becoming a role player—a process that helps the company provide the level of security that the military needs. In addition, role players are tightly controlled by Tatitlek, which makes it impossible for them to pick up any classified information during a training exercise. This secure environment allows the company and the military to focus on the important job at hand—preparing soldiers for what they can expect on the battlefield.
“We do what we can to make sure that the environment in which soldiers train will best prepare them for the environment that they’re going to go operate in,” said Mike Sovacool, Tatitlek’s role player director. “We try to paint the cultural picture—from the actions people will take, to sign languages, to reactions—and then teach trainees the specific spoken word.” ♦