[Iraq] Desert Shield's 24-Week Arabic Programs: An Evaluation - Volume 1: Technical Report (Program Evaluation, Research, and Training - Research Division Report No. 92-04, Dec 1992

Original comb-bound printed wraps 22x30cm. xvi, 54, (33)pp Tables and Figures, with (2)pp card section dividers. Good with highlighter lines to several pages and a couple of ms annotations. Volume I of 2 only. Volume I contains the complete report. Volume II (not present) contained supporting Appendices on evaluation method (site details, instruments used, selection criteria, plan, costs, researcher qualifications, etc). A very rare internal document, not recorded on Worldcat. The US Army's Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (DCSINT) rolled out six 24-Week Arabic Courses "in a crisis" in October 1990, when hostilities in the Middle East were looking increasingly likely. The aim was to teach as much Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as possible and introduce the Iraqi dialect in 6 months at 5 locations in the US, UK and Germany. The students were Military Intelligence (MI) linguists already qualified in another language. They were to be deployed to assist fellow MI linguists already on the ground, although this did not happen "because of the early termination of hostilities" (p.iii). DCSINT asked the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) in the US Department of Defense to assess the effectiveness of its courses, whether they should be repeated, and which of them performed best. The work was done by DLIFLC's Research Division led by John Lett Jr. It collected data from official records and on-site. This report presents background information and procedures followed (Chapters 1 and 2), findings (3), lessons (4), and implications and recommendations for planning to meet linguistic emergencies in the post-Cold War era (5). It found that across all sites, 186 students took part. The courses transferred only limited MSA and thus "not very effective". This was due to insufficient preparation during a crisis, decentralised planning, student motivation issues, methodology weaknesses, and poor consideration of language learning aptitude. The courses at the Defence School of Languages (UK) and Fort Lewis performed best, and with certain improvements could be used in future. Drawing on lessons from Desert Shield / Desert Storm, Somalia and the Balkans, the report calls for a permanent "linguist contingency corps" to ensure better preparation, and a long-term plan for linguistic contingencies supported at the highest levels of the Defense Foreign Language Program and Department of Defense.…