ASKING QUESTIONS, EXPLORING OPTIONS, CHANGING THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.

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The Language Learning Curve – Part 2.

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What is the Foreign Service Institute? The Foreign Language Institute (FSI) is the branch of the US Department of State that teaches foreign languages to diplomats.  So, what does the language difficulty ranking show us? What can we learn from it? Did you know Linguists say there are close to six thousand languages? This will be our Part II of Language Learning Curve.

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School House

The Language Learning Curve – Part I.

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When I was doing my research on Chinese schools I found out that The U.S. Foreign Service and Defense Language institutes ranks languages in 3 to 5 categories based on the hours English speakers must spend to become fluent. What is the Defense Language Institute?

The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center teaches foreign languages to the military.  It was founded on the eve of America’s entrance to World War II to teach the Japanese language. It was a secret school in 1941 in an abandoned airplane hangar. There were about 60 students at the time who were second-generation Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. They studied the Japanese language and military terminology. In 1942 it was known as the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS). It was the only class ever given in this building. Wartime fears had led Japanese and Japanese American expulsion to isolated camps. This was a wartime internment in post-war years, but it marked the beginning of the importance of learning a foreign language to help in wartime.

So, why is this important to note? How did this affect what we know about education in the field of teaching a second language to English speakers?

 

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