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Troops need more language skills, experts say

Every service member needs some minimum foreign language skills before deploying — but that capability could require an extensive change in language and cultural training that would have to start long before they enter the military, a House subcommittee was told Wednesday.

The House Armed Services oversight and investigations subcommittee, which has been looking at military programs for current and future operations, is now focused on language and cultural awareness training.

The Defense Department has been working for years to expand language capabilities, both by training people already in the service and recruiting people who are proficient in another language.

Richard Brecht, who heads a University of Maryland center for the advanced study of languages, said the military needs to do more. The Defense Department “must have better recruitment, better educated recruits with communication skills and cultural knowledge,” he said.

One big hurdle: Having a strong base of people with language skills requires training that should begin in elementary school — outside the Pentagon’s control, unless it starts subsidizing training.

“The Pentagon must lead language integration. You don’t have to pay for it, but you can lead it,” said Brecht.

The 2009 defense authorization bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year proposes cultural exchange programs that would bring foreign citizens to service academies to help train cadets and midshipmen. The bill also aims to give bonuses to people who take foreign language classes, especially Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., the subcommittee chairman, said about 17,000 military people receive bonuses today for language skills, but he has no idea if that is enough. However, the panel of outside experts on military and language training could not agree on the percentage of military members who should have proficient language skills.

Snyder also suggested a fairly radical training idea that would have drill sergeants in boot camp speak to recruits in a foreign language for at least an hour a day to increase exposure to foreign languages

The military has special pay for language skills, with payments ranging from $300 to $1,000 a month depending on the level of competency.

But Amy Zalman of Science Applications International Corps, a cultural awareness specialist, said she thinks the military’s standards are too high.

“Everybody deployed should have limited language competence; they don’t have to be an expert linguist,” said Zalman.

Brecht agreed that reaching competency levels can be difficult, with the $1,000 special pay going to those who have the equivalent of a master’s degree.