Feature Story:

A New Approach to Learning Languages

Twenty-four years ago, when Ms. Farooqi first started teaching at the Foreign Service Institute, language students endured hour after hour reciting words and phrases they'd memorized in their new language. The old teaching method, a carryover from one used by the Army during World War II, stamped out language students in much the way boot camp stamped out soldiers.

It was what H. David Argoff, associate dean for instruction at FSI's School of Language Studies, calls a "one size fits all" approach to teaching.

But the problem was that one size didn't fit all. Students brought different backgrounds and aptitudes to the training and learned in different ways--something the old-school training method didn't recognize or capitalize on. A training style that worked for one student didn't necessarily work for another.

Mr. Argoff said this realization led to the new paradigm FSI now uses to teach 62 different languages to some 1,700 students a year: "one size fits none."

It's a paradigm being put into play throughout the School of Language Studies. Ms. Bryan, a seven-year Foreign Service officer studying Urdu to prepare for an assignment in Lahore, and her FSI colleagues don't spend their classroom time merely memorizing dialogues they'd never use in real life. Instead, they use their new languages to tell stories, explain the day's headline news and discuss the issues they'll address in their new jobs.

Karine Sapondjian, center, leads her class in Armenian studies.

"It's pretty amazing what we're able to discuss after just five weeks in class," said Lisa Kenna, a Foreign Service spouse headed with her husband to Peshawar in July, and Ms. Bryan's classmate. "We're learning not just to speak the language, but to really communicate. It helps us get over the shyness of speaking in a different language very quickly."

Outside the classroom, students reinforce their classroom instruction in the National Foreign Affairs Training Center's Multimedia Center. While FSI has used recordings of native speakers since the mid-1940s to help teach language students, today's students select from a wide range of audiotapes, video discs and CD-ROMs to review or supplement what they learn in class.

In addition, individual computer stations include a computer linked to the Internet that students can access to retrieve the day's newspapers and other information in their new language.

Computer-based, interactive technology shifts the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student, explained Kathleen James, the language school's associate dean for management. Students select from the wide range of media available to learn at their own pace and in the manner that best suits their learning style.

Michelle Nichols, a Foreign Service office management specialist studying French before being posted to Ouagadougou, didn't have the advantages of multimedia products and computer technology when she studied French 27 years ago. "It offers a great way to learn because the materials here are always available, so whether you're free for 15 minutes or an hour and a half, you can come into the center and review," she said.

Instructors, too, use the Multimedia Center to develop teaching materials, to tutor individual students and to conduct full classroom sessions.

In many cases, the language school's old cookie-cutter classes, with six students to one instructor, are gone, too. Today, class sizes vary widely depending on the activity and the language being taught. Ms. Bryan and Ms. Kenna were the only students in Ms. Farooqi's Urdu class. Next door, Karine Sapondjian's Armenian class had four students: Paul Wickberg and another political officer, Mark Tauber, and two Air Force students. Several corridors away, a dozen French students gathered in a classroom to hear a French visitor discuss--in his native language--his country's political situation. Down another hallway, students studying Hindi conducted a language exercise based on women's issues in the Indian culture.

Nowhere is the "one size fits none" paradigm being put into effect as dramatically as in the new Accelerated Personalized Training, or APT, program. The program formalizes many of the educational trends that have been taking place at FSI during recent years, providing individualized instruction that helps students learn not only better, but faster, too.

New language students in the APT programs generally begin their training by filling out a voluntary series of questionnaries that diagnose how they most effectively learn. Students work with an assigned "learning consultant" to put together a program that best meets their learning profile.

Sometimes students work in groups of eight or more to focus on grammar or to practice listening comprehension. Other times are devoted to one-on-one tutoring or individual self-study in the Multimedia Center.

The program includes professional seminars during which students use the language as they would at post--whether on the visa line or on the political desk, or to discuss a facilities problem with embassy employees.

"It's a much more results-oriented curriculum than in the past," said Mr. Wickberg, whose first exposure to FSI language training was in 1983. "The emphasis now is on practical, usable language."

Jim Bernhardt, who chairs the Department of Asian, Slavic and Arabic Languages, said the emphasis on job-specific training ensures that graduates of the School of Language Studies are prepared to use their new language not just in the classroom, but where it really counts--at post. "It gives them the tools they need to really use the language, and to continue learning it when they leave here," he said.

He and his fellow language training staff members have declared the Accelerated Personalized Training program an undisputed success. Students in languages covered by the program--currently mostly the "world" languages, those closest to English--are moving faster toward their language proficiency goals than ever before.

Plans call for the APT program eventually to expand into the 44-week "hard" language courses and the 88-week "super-hard" language courses, so all FSI language students can benefit from the school's new "one size fits none" teaching paradigm.

"The faster learners are learning faster, and the slower learners are able to get more out of the training instead of feeling like they've been steamrollered or left behind," said Jim North, who chairs the school's Department of European, Central Asian, African and American Languages.

"It's a learning approach that appears to work for everyone because it fits their individual learning styles."

Ambassador Ruth Davis, FSI's director, is a strong advocate of the language school's quiet but steady progress in revitalizing language training. "Over the past several years, they've managed to break a lot of academic tradition and to overcome a lot of the conservative expectations of their students to move forward in a remarkably effective way," she said.