U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

68–304 cc WASHINGTON : 2001

S. Hrg. 106–801

THE STATE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE CAPABILITIES

IN NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE FEDERAL

GOVERNMENT

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION, AND

FEDERAL SERVICES SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 14 AND 19, 2000

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman

WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina

HANNAH S. SISTARE, Staff Director and Counsel

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION, AND FEDERAL SERVICES

SUBCOMMITTEE

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi, Chairman

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina

MITCHEL B. KUGLER, Staff Director

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Minority Staff Director

JULIE A. SANDER, Chief Clerk

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C O N T E N T S

Opening statement: Page

Senator Cochran ............................................................................................... 1, 21

Prepared statement:

Senator Voinovich ............................................................................................. 2

WITNESSES

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000

Ellen Laipson, Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council ............................ 3

Ruth Whiteside, Deputy Director, National Foreign Affairs Training Center,

Department of State ............................................................................................ 6

Christopher K. Mellon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Department of Defense .......................................................................... 8

David E. Alba, Assistant Director, Investigative Services Division, Federal

Bureau of Investigation ....................................................................................... 9

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2000

Hon. Richard W. Riley, Secretary of Education, accompanied by Scott Fleming, Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs ................................................. 22

Robert O. Slater, Director, National Security Education Program ..................... 28

Dan E. Davidson, President, American Councils for International Education .. 31

Martha G. Abbott, Foreign Language Coordinator, Fairfax County Public

Schools .................................................................................................................. 35

Frances McLean Coleman, Teacher/Technology Coordinator, Ackerman High

School and Weir Attendance Center, Choctaw County, Mississippi ................ 38

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Abbott, Martha G.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 35

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 103

Alba, David E.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 66

Coleman, Frances McLean:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 38

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 108

Davidson, Dan E.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 31

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 93

Laipson, Ellen:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49

Mellon, Christopher K.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 61

Riley, Hon. Richard W.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 22

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 72

Slater, Robert O.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 28

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 79

Whiteside, Ruth:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 56

Page

IV

APPENDIX

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000

Additional material submitted for the Record:

Article from CNN, May 7, 1999, entitled ‘‘Chinese demand U.N. meeting

after Belgrade embassy attached’’ ............................................................... 110

Article from The Washington, Post, May 8, 1999, by Daniel Williams,

entitled ‘‘NATO Missles Hit Chinese Embassy’’ ......................................... 116

Article from CNN, May 9, 1999, entitled ‘‘Amid protests, U.S. says ‘faulty

information’ led to Chinese embassy bombing’’ .......................................... 119

Report on Foreign Language Proficiency ........................................................ 123

Cover Story: Area Studies Putting the World in Context, May 1997,

State Magazine .............................................................................................. 128

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2000

Prepared statements submitted for the Record from:

Rebecca R. Kline, President, National Council for Languages and International Studies, Executive Director, Northeast Conference on the

Teaching of Foreign Languages, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of

French, Penn State University .................................................................... 129

Myriam Met, President, National Network for Early Language Learning . 133

Anna Uhl Chamot, Ph.D., Co-Director of the National Capital Language

Resource Center at Georgetown University, the George Washington

University, and the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC ..... 142

Kathleen M. Marcos, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC ...... 147

Gilbert W. Merkx (University of New Mexico) and David Wiley (Michigan

State University), Co-Chairs, Council of directors of Title VI National

Resource Centers for Foreign Language and Area Studies ....................... 155

Letters received by Senator Cochran from:

Virginia S. Ballinger, President, National Council of State Supervisors

of Foreign Languages, dated September 13, 2000 ..................................... 158

Edward M. Dixon, Ph.D., Academic Technology Coordinator For Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, dated

September 19, 2000 ...................................................................................... 159

Susan Schmidt, Executive Director, Alliance of Associations of Teachers

of Japanese, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, dated September

18, 2000 .......................................................................................................... 161

Lynne McClendon, Executive Director, Southern Conference on Language

Teaching, dated September 9, 2000 ............................................................ 162

Scott McGinnis, Ph.D., Executive Director, National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly Taught Languages, dated September 18, 2000 . 164

Additional Material Submitted for the Record:

S. 601, Foreign Language Education Improvement Amendment Act of

1999 ................................................................................................................ 166

Statement from Congressional Record, March 11, 1999 ............................... 168

Emily Wax, Schools Desperate for Foreign Language Teachers, July 4,

2000. The Washington Post, p. A09 ............................................................. 170

Speaking in Tongues. Newsweek: How to Get Into College, p. 34 ................ 173

Marcia Harmon Rosenbusch, Director, National K–12 Foreign Language

Resource Center, Iowa State University, prepared statement .................. 175

Richard D. Brecht, Ph.D., Director, The National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, prepared statement ............................ 178

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THE STATE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE CAPABILITIES IN NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY,

PROLIFERATION, AND FEDERAL SERVICES,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:05 a.m. in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Building, Hon. Thad Cochran, Chairman

of the Subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senator Cochran.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN

Senator COCHRAN. The Subcommittee will please come to order.

Today we are having our first hearing on the state of foreign language capabilities in national security and the Federal Government.

Earlier this year, the House-Senate International Education

Study Group hosted a briefing on the crisis in Federal language capabilities. As the subject of that briefing suggests, it is feared by

some that the deficiencies among Federal agencies and the departments which have national security responsibilities in our government are serious enough to be called a crisis. This hearing will examine that subject.

We already know from previous hearings in both houses of Congress that this has been a serious problem for some time. There is

a concern that the situation is getting worse rather than better.

Are the right languages being taught to enough people? Are contract linguists sufficient for high level analysis? The Defense Language Institute trains up to 5,000 military personnel in 52 languages every year. The Foreign Service Institute teaches over 60

languages to its recruits. Our investment in training is very expensive. It costs $70,000 in tuition for foreign service officers to become

proficient in some languages.

Our security depends upon our ability to communicate with other

nations’ security agencies to interdict drug trafficking, monitor

terrorist activities, and conduct joint military operations. Having

individuals who understand the languages of other nations is important to our success in diplomacy, defense, and intelligence-gathVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Mar 15, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 68304.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
2

ering. We need to know how we can do a better job in meeting the

need of our government personnel for foreign language proficiency.

We appreciate very much the witnesses who are here today to

help us understand these issues. Ellen Laipson is Vice Chairman

of the National Intelligence Council; Ruth Whiteside, Deputy Director of the National Foreign Affairs Training Center; Christopher

Mellon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and

David E. Alba, Assistant Director of the Investigative Services Division. Your full written statements will be printed in the record

in full, and we hope you will be able to summarize your statements

for us at this hearing.

I am going to ask at this point that a statement by our distinguished fellow Subcommittee Member Senator Voinovich of Ohio be

printed in the record in full.

[The prepared opening statement of Senator Voinovich follows:]

PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH

Good morning. I would like to commend you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing. Since July of last year I have held six hearings in my Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and Restructuring and the

District of Columbia on various aspects of the human capital crisis confronting the

Federal Government. The purpose of my Subcommittee’s hearings has been to learn

how the lack of attention governmentwide to sound workforce policies has adversely

affected the management of Federal agencies and programs.

Your hearing today is interesting, Mr. Chairman, because it focuses on a specific

problem—the state of our foreign language capability—and in doing so you are able

to expose an acute need, which I think makes it easier for everyone to understand

the consequences of what I call the human capital crisis facing the Federal Government.

Perhaps the current shortfalls in our language capability and their affect on mission success are best demonstrated in the ongoing U.S. peacekeeping intervention

in the Balkans, an operation in which I have keen interest.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, General Wesley Clark,

former Supreme Commander of NATO, stated that NATO’s actions in the Balkans

had generated significant language requirements. At the same time, he said, you

really have to look hard to find a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army who speaks fluent

Albanian. There just aren’t many of them, and the military is always going to be

short of skilled linguists.

Therefore, the Department of Defense has had to hire more than 900 linguists on

contract for its operations in the Balkans. Several of the contractors, in turn, are

experiencing difficulty in recruiting qualified personnel to meet their obligation to

the Defense Department. And depending upon the sensitivity of the situation, the

use of non-U.S. Government personnel raises concerns about security.

Clearly, the shortage of organic language skills in the armed forces diminishes our

peacekeeping ability. In the Balkans, our soldiers lack the cultural awareness and

understanding that comes with a command of the spoken language. It almost certainly hinders our ability to cooperate with and assist the people we are there to

help. Furthermore, it invariably makes conflict avoidance and resolution more difficult as well.

For the foreseeable future, our lack of language capabilities is going to greatly increase the difficulty of peacekeeping operations and compromise the safety of our

troops in the Balkans and elsewhere.

There is another example I would mention, Mr. Chairman. Over half of the linguists and international experts in the FBI are nearing retirement, which could

leave the FBI woefully short of the personnel needed to investigate international organized crime. We are seeing this retirement trend in critical positions throughout

the Federal Government, and we must do something about it, especially since the

current administration has failed to take the initiative.

Mr. Chairman, earlier this year, Senator DeWine and I introduced legislation to

provide workforce realignment authority to the Department of Defense. Its purpose

is to assist the Department in meeting its need for qualified staff in professional

fields, such as linguists and computer specialists. The modified language of our bill

was amended to the defense authorization bill, which is still in conference. But it

3

1The prepared statement of Ms. Laipson appears in the Appendix on page 49.

is only a down payment on the more comprehensive reforms that are needed to address the skills shortfalls in the Federal workforce. My Subcommittee is working on

a report that will explore ways to improve the management of Federal agencies and

programs through a concerted effort to develop and retain a world-class civil service,

and I look forward to sharing that report with my colleagues and the next administration.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you once again for holding this hearing, and look forward

to working with you, Senator Akaka, and Chairman Thompson next year on human

capital reform.

Senator COCHRAN. Ms. Laipson, you may proceed first. Thank

you.

STATEMENT OF ELLEN LAIPSON,1 VICE CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL

INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL

Ms. LAIPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you

for giving me the opportunity to address your Subcommittee regarding the Intelligence Community’s foreign language requirements. I approach the subject from three perspectives. As the Vice

Chairman of the NIC, I have a role in producing all source analysis

and am aware of the Intelligence Community’s capabilities to do so.

As Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Collection Board, I

participate in discussions about collection needs and shortfalls, including our ability to process and exploit foreign language material.

And lastly, I am the Director of Central Intelligence’s representative on the National Security Education Program Board, which sets

broad guidelines for this new foreign language scholarship program, about which your Subcommittee will be hearing more in a

subsequent hearing.

Let me say a few words just to define what the Intelligence Community is. It is a wide array of agencies and institutions under the

DCI’s leadership. It comprises principally of the CIA, the Defense

Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National

Reconnaissance Office, and the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, as well as components of other departments and organizations. I will try, in my remarks, to give general

points that would be true of virtually all of these agencies and also

identify for you issues that may pertain to some parts of the community more than others.

One cannot overstate the centrality of foreign language skills to

the core mission of the Intelligence Community. Foreign languages

come into play at virtually all points of the intelligence cycle—from

collection to exploitation to analysis and production.

The collection of intelligence depends heavily on language,

whether the information is gathered from a human source through

a relationship with a field officer, or gathered from a technical system.

Information then has to be processed and exploited, which entails

verifying the accuracy and explaining it in clear and unambiguous

terms.

All source analysts then integrate these intelligence reports

along with media reports, including information from the Internet,

which, as many people don’t know, is now increasingly in nonEnglish languages, embassy reporting, and other information to

produce finished intelligence products for decisionmakers.

4

Of course, the finished product is in English. But the inputs may

come from several different foreign languages and need to be

assessed by a range of people with the ability to translate and interpret the material in its original language and in its particular

context.

Mr. Chairman, the Intelligence Community has a large number

of talented people with the appropriate language skills. But their

quantity, level of expertise, and availability do not always match

the ever-changing requirements of the intelligence mission. You

have asked, Mr. Chairman, how our language needs have changed

over the past 25 years. During the Cold War, when the Soviet

Union was the only credible threat to vital U.S. interests, one could

structure a workforce to have a critical mass of personnel with

needed skills, including Russian language, and then smaller ranks

of cadres with expertise on other regions and critical hot spots.

Today, as we face much more diverse and complex threats, one

would ideally want a workforce with skills that balance more evenly the requirements of events in Russia, China, the Arab world,

Iran, Korea, Central Asia, and key countries of potential instability

in Africa, Latin America, and East Asia. As nationalist tendencies

continue to increase, we are seeing more independent nations come

into existence, which places an ever greater burden on the Intelligence Community to keep pace with expanding language requirements.

There is no doubt that most managers in the intelligence business wish that foreign language capabilities of the workforce,

whether in technical jobs, overseas positions, or analytic jobs, were

more robust. At present, CIA, DIA, INR, and various other agencies have identified their key shortfalls in Central Eurasian, East

Asian, and Middle Eastern languages. Of course, the Community’s

need for foreign language skills is not limited to non-European languages, even though that is where the emphasis is in new hiring.

Strong language skills, for example, in Spanish and French, which

are more readily available, can be critical for analyzing selected intelligence issues, such as counternarcotics in Latin America or turmoil in Africa.

Let me give some sense of what the shortfalls in foreign language

capabilities can mean for our ability to serve our customers—senior

national security decisionmakers:

The Intelligence Community often lacks the foreign language

skills necessary to surge during a crisis. For example, Serbo-Croatian skills in the period of the buildup to the NATO bombing of

Serbia.

At times, we obtain large volumes of documents that may be critical to make the case about gross human rights abuses by someone

like Saddam Hussein. But lack of right scale of translating capacity

makes it hard to provide thorough analysis in a timely way for policy decisions.

And a lack of language skills can limit our analysts’ insight into

a foreign culture, restricting their ability to understand and anticipate a deterioration in a particular situation. This often diminishes

our ability to warn policymakers about a potential trouble spot.

Thousands of technical papers that provide details on foreign research and development in scientific or technical areas currently go

5

untranslated because we lack the funds and personnel to interpret

the material. Should this situation continue, we could face the possibility of a technological surprise.

So let me address some solutions. The Intelligence Community

clearly would like to remedy key shortfalls, have a higher percentage of its officers with knowledge of at least one language in the

areas they work on, and have those with languages able to maintain their skills at a high level of functionality.

Let me turn to some specifics. Clearly, in recruitment, the Community is posting in its vacancy notices and advertisements to prospective job applicants an emphasis on foreign language. Hiring

new officers with the appropriate language capability is clearly one

important solution to the shortfall, but these newcomers to the intelligence business will require other training and seasoning before

the range of their skills is put to full use.

For the workforce that is already in place, a number of important

initiatives are underway to mitigate language shortfalls and plan

for long-term needs across the Intelligence Community.

The Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and

Production, John Gannon, has recently completed a strategic investment plan for Intelligence Community analysis. It identifies

strategies and a series of initiatives to improve analysis and production capabilities, including a focus on training and career development. Foreign language training will be a necessary component

of these kinds of activities.

The Community also has a Foreign Language Executive Committee composed of senior intelligence professionals who bring a

broader vista to our language work and try to make sure that foreign language is considered in discussions of policy, requirements,

planning, and budgeting.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which translates

nontechnical foreign media, has made excellent use of foreign nationals and contract employees who can be tapped when a crisis

erupts but may not become permanent employees of the U.S. Government. Because FBIS works in the unclassified arena, it has enjoyed a greater degree of flexibility than the National Security

Agency or other agencies who also have a great need for linguists

and translators but where security requirements are very stringent.

Many agencies, including DIA, CIA, and INR, offer on the job

language training, and growing numbers of analysts are being sent

to full-time language training in the course of their career. CIA,

DIA, and NSA also provide incentive pay for both the maintenance

and the usage of language on the job.

There are a lot of projects to develop and use technology, including machine translation tools, for foreign language because of the

problem of the volume of the amount of data that has to be processed. But our current judgment is that humans must remain a

very key part of this endeavor. The trend towards the development

of machine translation tools is intended to assist rather than replace the human language specialist or instructor. Still, though

this capability is not intended to replace human staff, it is increasingly useful in niche areas, such as technical publications.

6

1The prepared statement of Ms. Whiteside appears in the Appendix on page 56.

In conclusion, it is clear that strong and adequate foreign language skills are essential to the successful performance of our foreign intelligence mission. It is also clear that, despite some innovative efforts to address the shortfalls, we still have a lot of work to

do in this area.

I would like to thank the Members of the Subcommittee and staff

for this opportunity to address you. I will be pleased to answer any

questions.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Laipson.

Ruth Whiteside, we will go to you next.

STATEMENT OF RUTH WHITESIDE,1 DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL FOREIGN AFFAIRS TRAINING CENTER, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Ms. WHITESIDE. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate very

much the opportunity to appear before you on behalf of the State

Department to talk about the importance of the State Department’s

language program.

American diplomats, indeed, are our first line of diplomatic readiness. Good language skills are clearly essential to their ability to

do their jobs. And we believe they are as essential as the planes,

tanks, and ships that provide the force readiness for our military.

Recently, in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Secretary Albright noted, ‘‘our Foreign Service, Civil Service, and Foreign Service National personnel contribute every day to

American readiness—through the dangers they help contain, the

crimes they help prevent, the deals they help close, the rights they

help protect, and the travelers, American citizens, they just plain

help.’’ Strong language skills in our foreign service corps are vital

to achieving these goals.

The Foreign Service Institute represents what we believe is the

finest language teaching capability in our country. We have the

capacity to provide the necessary language training for the U.S.

Government international affairs professionals and many of their

family members.

FSI’s training focuses specifically on the work-related requirements of international affairs professionals, and the survival needs,

the ability to get along in a particular country, of those who are

unable to receive full-time language training.

At present, as you noted, we teach 62 languages, ranging from

Albanian to Uzbek. Our largest enrollments continue to occur in

French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. And interestingly

enough, in spite of the shifts that we will talk about in a moment,

these languages have generally been our five since the Foreign

Service Institute was founded in 1947.

For us, language training is very much a growth industry. In fiscal year 1999, we delivered more than 800,000 hours of language

training in Washington, and that was an increase of about 22

percent over the previous 2 years. We also enrolled about 1,500 individuals from the State Department and a little less than 500 individuals from other foreign affairs agencies who come to FSI for

training.

7

In terms of our specialist corps, those who are secretaries, communicators, and security officers, we are also working hard to increase language training. And our fiscal year 1999 total was about

45 percent higher than it was 2 years before in those categories.

And another growth industry, we are working very hard, as we

have space available, to provide language training for family members of our foreign service personnel. That training has increased

by more than 100 percent in the last 2 years.

We routinely provide individualized language training for ambassadors going to post. For example, our Ambassador to Tajikistan

recently wrote of his ability to address the parliament on national

day in Tajiki, while his Russian and Iranian counterparts were

speaking in their own languages. And other examples abound. Almost every few weeks we hear from another ambassador or a deputy chief of mission who tells us about how his language ability

played favorably in the local press or in the foreign ministry conversation.

We are also focused very much on language training for our newest employees, junior foreign service officers. Here again we have

in recent years been able, because of modest increases in our own

intake, to increase the language training we are able to give to new

junior officers.

We are also looking at a variety of programs, and have implemented a number of programs, to provide incentives to our foreign

service personnel to continue the languages they have, to use the

languages they have, and to acquire new languages. We recently

initiated, for an example, a new language incentive program which

provides pay incentives for using and maintaining languages rather

than the prior system which focused primarily on simply mastering

a language without regard to whether or not it was used.

We are providing more intensive language and area training for

our mid-level specialists, and enhancing the training in languages

for all new personnel.

One of your questions was how our needs have changed over the

past 20 years. I have indicated that in many ways our core language requirements have not changed that much. But we have continued, as we have expanded the number of languages we offer, to

reach a number of areas that were inconceivable to us just a few

years ago.

Generally changes in language requirements reflect changes in

our foreign policy. In the early 1990’s, when we opened numerous

posts in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, we created new language requirements in many of these countries. We

are now teaching Armenian and Kazakh, Kurdish, and Ukrainian,

and a number of other languages that are new in the last decade

or so.

We are very proud of the language capabilities of our foreign

service corps and we are proud of the job we do. But the reality

is that we are often unable to provide these individuals with the

full course of training they need and the studies they need due to

the urgent staffing requirements at our posts overseas.

A recent report of the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel on the

State Department’s diplomatic readiness noted that the State Department needed to increase the size of the foreign service by 10

8

1The prepared statement of Mr. Mellon appears in the Appendix on page 61.

to 15 percent in order to provide the kind of training float that

could assure that at any given time our officers are able both to

acquire the needed language skills and cover the critical job requirements overseas. When we are not able to leave officers in the

full language training, it is because there is a critical vacancy overseas that simply must be filled.

If we are not able to address these resource needs, we risk, as

the panel’s report noted, we risk relying on an ineffective and

hollowed out force to defend America’s interests. And the consequences of that, as we all recognize, would be quite serious.

I welcome your questions, sir. And, again, I appreciate the opportunity and the focus you have brought on this very important subject.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you, Ms. Whiteside.

Christopher Mellon is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for

Intelligence at the Department of Defense. Mr. Mellon, welcome.

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER K. MELLON,1 DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTELLIGENCE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Mr. MELLON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank

you and your staff both for providing an opportunity to discuss a

critical national security issue that rarely receives the attention it

deserves.

The Defense Department’s language needs for national security

are driven by our national and Defense Department security strategies. Engagement and enlargement requires the United States to

deftly engage our foreign partners and adversaries to shape the

international security environment in ways favorable to our interests. Clearly, foreign language expertise is critical to our success,

critical to the success of our national security strategy.

Our needs have shifted from a singular Cold War focus on the

former Soviet Union to hot spots across the globe. The impact on

our language requirements has been profound. For example, in the

case of the former Soviet Union, which mandated the use of Russian across 11 time zones, we are now in a position of having to

engage with 14 different Republics, most of which insist on using

their native languages.

Foreign language capabilities are essential in war-fighting today,

particularly with our growing emphasis on coalition warfare. Foreign language skills and area expertise are integral to or directly

support every foreign intelligence discipline and are essential factors in national security readiness, information superiority, and coalition peacekeeping or war-fighting missions. Information superiority is the paradigm promulgated by the Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff and approved by the Secretary of Defense which underpins our military strategy for the future and assumes that we

will have superior information regarding our adversaries, dominant

battlespace awareness, etc. And foreign language skills and effective Intelligence Community is essential to achieving that strategy

in the future. At any one time, our total needs are estimated to be

9

1The prepared statement of Mr. Alba appears in the Appendix on page 66.

30,000 civil employees and contract translators and interpreters

dealing with over 80 different languages.

Are these needs being met? Clearly, they are not. Combatant

commands and defense agencies have been reporting significant

shortfalls in language capabilities. These unmet needs and requirements are reflected in commander-in-chief integrated priority lists

and joint military readiness requirements documents.

We are partially meeting our needs by operating what is arguably the world’s largest language school, the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. We provide basic language education to about 3,000 enlisted and officer personnel every year. We

provide about 13 percent of all post-secondary instruction in foreign

language and are still experiencing shortfalls in the less commonly

taught and hard to learn languages.

We operate this school because we have learned that the high

school and college language programs do not currently meet our

needs in terms of numbers, proficiency level, and specific language

requirements.

In response to the shortfalls, we have promulgated a strategy for

Defense Foreign Language Program which has eight different

elements that we hope will lead to an optimal level of foreign language capability within our workforce, drawn from the military active and reserve components as well as our civilian employee workforce and contract services. We hope to enable that workforce with

appropriate technology to provide qualified professional service and

support across DOD component organization lines and the mission

spectrum. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council has earlier

this month given their support to the strategy and the Defense

Planning Guidance for 2002–2007 directing our efforts to further

develop and provide the policy and program guidance required for

implementation.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement. I have

tried to condense my remarks. I hope the prepared statement is

fully responsive to the questions that you asked.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Mellon.

David Alba is Assistant Director of the Investigative Services Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Alba.

STATEMENT OF DAVID E. ALBA,1 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,

INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF

INVESTIGATION

Mr. ALBA. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about the FBI’s foreign language program.

Among other things, I am responsible for the FBI’s foreign language program itself. I am also fluent in Spanish and can speak

first-hand of the value of foreign language expertise in law enforcement as well as in national security investigations.

The 1990 Census figures show that almost 14 percent, or approximately 30 million people, in the United States speak a foreign

10

language at home. Many of these people will be victims or subjects

or witnesses in our investigations.

When you look at the FBI’s major initiatives, such as foreign

counterintelligence, international terrorism, international drug investigations, and multinational white collar crime, foreign language

ability becomes even more critical. The FBI looks primarily at

three different sources for its foreign language support. That is the

special agents themselves, language specialists who are full-time

employees, and contract linguists. Fifteen years ago, the language

needs of the FBI were predictable, but today things have changed

dramatically. Spanish continues to be one of our seven critical language needs. The other six are Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean,

Farsi, and Vietnamese. The FBI never has enough agents or linguists who speak these critical languages.

A few times a year, the FBI receives a request for a language we

have never heard of. These include Twi, Avar, and Gypsy. Sometimes it is just a challenge identifying the language, but it is more

difficult to find somebody who can translate a tape or a document

from that language into English, often under pressure of short

deadlines.

Court authorized electronic surveillance is highly effective and

often involves a foreign language. Criminals usually use coded language to cover their activity and this complicates the issue even

further. In 1993, you may remember the plot to bomb several New

York landmarks by radical followers of an Egyptian sheik. The code

word used for the bombs was the Arabic word ‘‘Hadduta,’’ which literally means a child’s bedtime story when translated from Arabic.

It sounded innocent enough, but it became obvious that something

was wrong when the suspects talked about ‘‘preparing four

Hadduta,’’ ‘‘renting a warehouse for the Hadduta,’’ and ‘‘buying oil

and fertilizer for the Haddutas.’’ We know that not all people who speak a foreign language are

able to translate, or even fewer are able to interpret. These are

very difficult and separate skills. Last year, the FBI language specialists and contract linguists translated over a million pages of

documents and countless hours of audio material. With the growing

demand for certain languages, the work continues to back up.

When we are talking about unaddressed work coming from critical

national security-related investigations, the implications are very

sobering.

One problem we have is being able to keep some of our contract

linguists busy enough so they won’t be looking for other jobs. In

some languages the volume of work never ends, but in others the

amount of work may be intensive only for a few months. And when

we need the language again, often after a period of months or even

years, our contract linguists have found other jobs, and now we

must start recruiting, testing, and processing all over again, which

is very time consuming.

The FBI is now working with other Department of Justice components to develop common language proficiency and security

standards for linguists who will have access to law enforcement

sensitive information. That problem does not necessarily exist in

the Intelligence Community but it does exist in law enforcement.

The project is to create a database accessible to law enforcement

11

components that contain all known linguistic resources by specialty—for example, an interpreter, translator, or monitor, and also

give language skill levels and, an important thing for us, security

clearances.

We are always looking for new and innovative ways to find linguists and process foreign languages. We have a very active foreign

language training program. Another source of support, something

that has been mentioned already today, is machine translation. I

have been told that in some languages it may be as accurate as 80

percent, but still you need a linguist to prepare it. So in essence,

what it does, especially on documents, is kind of like a document

triage. It does help.

The language requirements have multiplied several times over.

For example, agents we have working on the border now who do

not speak Spanish cannot take complaints in Spanish, interview

victims or witnesses, nor can they develop informants in Spanish.

Because of the influx of Spanish-speaking and other immigrants

into the United States, this situation is happening not only on the

border but in the rest of the country.

I appreciate the opportunity to brief the Subcommittee on things

that are critical to FBI operations. I will be happy to answer any

questions.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much.

I appreciate so much the overview that we have received from

this panel of witnesses. It is, I think, an excellent way to start our

hearings to equip us with a knowledge-base to make some determinations about what policy changes or programmatic changes

need to be made in the Federal Government to help meet the needs

that we have for those who can speak foreign languages and at the

level of proficiency that we need throughout our government.

One thing that occurred to me while Ms. Laipson was testifying

was whether or not we have enough resources in terms of appropriated funds being provided to the Central Intelligence Agency for

its language training needs. I also serve on the Appropriations

Committee so it immediately occurred to me. You talked about the

machine translation tools that are used now. These cost money I

know. People who are contract linguists or instructors who actually

work directly for the Federal Government have to be paid. What

is the cost impact on your budget, and are those costs being met

at the current levels of funding?

Ms. LAIPSON. All of the initiatives that I mentioned are currently

funded. And in many cases, I think some of these projects are actually quite modest in their cost as compared to much larger systems

and programs.

But in terms of any upcoming needs, I expect that you will see

that in the build for the budget for 2002 and it will be discussed

at the kind of program detail level with our oversight committee.

At the present, the initiatives that I did mention are not lacking

for the startup funds that are needed.

Senator COCHRAN. Does your agency, because it is involved in intelligence-gathering and classified documents and activities that

are secret and not available for general public knowledge, do you

have special problems in dealing with language skills and getting

access to those who can translate unusual languages and the like?

12

Ms. LAIPSON. I cannot speak for all of the agencies, but my impression is that some of our requirements are similar to those at

the State Department and the Defense Department, where for

many positions a security clearance is required and, clearly, that

takes time. So sometimes a need emerges and we may identify people with those language skills that have not worked in government.

The time it takes to get them into the system is certainly affected

by the security requirements, but that is not unique to the Intelligence Community.

Senator COCHRAN. Is there a government-wide agency or resource available to the FBI, the CIA, State Department, or DOD

for emergency access if you need something addressed on an emergency basis, a translation of an unusual language that Mr. Alba

brought up, for example? Can anybody access that resource, or does

each department have its own place to go for that kind of thing?

Ms. LAIPSON. Well, our Intelligence Community, which does include the FBI, is now working on making sure that there is a database that cross-references language capabilities in the different

agencies. So if an acute need were to arise for one agency, they

might be able to either borrow or share the available translating

capabilities of another agency. I cannot say that it is up and running in all of its potential capacity, but people are thinking exactly

along those lines of trying to pool the available resources and making sure other agencies are informed of where the pockets of language capability are across the system.

Senator COCHRAN. When we were hearing about the fact that we

have got a crisis and the problem is getting worse and not better

in terms of the capability of staffing positions with people who are

qualified in foreign languages, is that oversold, or is that really an

accurate description of the situation, in your opinion? Is it overstated, Ms. Laipson?

Ms. LAIPSON. Overstated?

Senator COCHRAN. In terms of the CIA’s experience, whether we

have a crisis or not, whether the problem is getting worse or better.

I am hearing from Ms. Whiteside that it sounds like we are doing

a very good job of helping deal with the need for language training

in the Federal Government. What is your impression?

Ms. LAIPSON. I think it is hard to generalize. Clearly, if you took

the Somalia incident or Serbia, you could come up with discreet periods where for a period of months it could accurately be described

as a crisis and the lack of ability to get on board enough of the linguists and translators that were needed for a discreet operation or

a discreet period of time. I think if we look at it across the board,

at least in terms of the intelligence mission, I would describe it as

something less than a crisis. It is a chronic need, it is a chronic desire to be playing at a more robust level, but I think that I would

reserve the word crisis for more narrow specific episodes that were

time-limited.

Senator COCHRAN. I know that you have a previous commitment

and you need to keep that commitment, and I am sensitive to that.

So if you need to go now, you are free to go. We appreciate your

being here at the hearing. Thank you very much.

Ms. LAIPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

13

Senator COCHRAN. Ms. Whiteside, you mentioned that training of

foreign language skills in the State Department is actually increasing, not declining. You are training more people, you are it seems

to me responding to the need for greater proficiency in foreign languages in the State Department. Is that an accurate summation or

reaction to your testimony generally?

Ms. WHITESIDE. I think, if I may, sir, I would make the distinction between—in the first place, yes. In the last couple of years we

have been able to begin to reverse a pretty long decline in our ability to expand language training. We believe we have a lot of capacity for language training at the Foreign Service Institute.

Our frustration in the State Department, the resource issue is in

many cases the people to train. We are still sending officers overseas with less training than we would like them to have. We are

giving them in many cases more training than they have had before, but we are not meeting what we would believe is our national

security need for the training they really need. And that gap is the

critical decisions that have to be made between leaving a critical

job open overseas or sending an officer who may not have had the

opportunity to get the full capacity of language training they need

to operate at the top level.

Senator COCHRAN. One other impression I had of your testimony

was that we could actually help this problem by providing more

funds for staff needs generally at the State Department rather

than trying to target funds to a foreign language training system.

Is that right? You were talking about the fact that you had to rush

people over into different posts all over the country and you had

to take them out of language training to get them there.

Ms. WHITESIDE. Yes, sir.

Senator COCHRAN. That that was a bigger problem than—— Ms. WHITESIDE. I would never want to say, sir, that the Foreign

Service Institute does not need and could not use more money. But

I absolutely agree that the primary need at the State Department,

we are a people agency and diplomacy means putting our people

on the ground, and our critical need is to have a larger reserve of

people so that we can meet those needs and meet the training requirements that those people have. So I would put increasing the

staffing needs of the State Department, for me, that would be at

the top of the list.

Senator COCHRAN. It occurs to me, just from my own personal experience, that at some of our embassies and offices around the

world we have spent a lot of money recently on security and protection and trying to respond to the terrorist threats and the reality

of terrorist incidents that we have confronted. Is this draining

funds, do you think, that could be used for staffing and language

training and other activities? Is this one of the problems that we

have right now, the expense that we are having to bear to deal

with the threats of terrorist activities?

Ms. WHITESIDE. Sir, I believe dealing with those threats to the

security of our own employees and American citizens overseas is a

top priority of the State Department and one that Secretary

Albright has given a great deal of attention to. So for me, the issue

is not could we move money from the security of our embassies to

the training of our people, the issue is we need all of those things.

14

We need well-trained people, and we need to assure them that

when they go overseas they will be as safe as they can possibly be.

I would just, if I might, make one other comment on the security

side. I would emphasize the importance of languages to our security profile. As our officers, our security officers, our administrative

officers have the ability to deal with local police in the local language, to deal with local intelligence counterparts and counterterrorism counterparts in their languages, they are that much more

capable of assuring that we are addressing the security issues than

they are when their language skills are not at that top level.

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Mellon, you talked about the need to start

early in terms of language training, that we need to do a better job

in our schools, that you are not getting the kind of trained person

coming out of high school and college with the language capacity

that the Nation really needs at the Department of Defense. I think

you are absolutely right about that. But it seems to me that schools

are doing a better job than they used to. It was unusual when I

was going to school for a school in my State to have foreign language courses. Now, more and more schools do have those courses

and students are learning foreign languages at earlier ages. My

daughter, for example, started out, I think, in kindergarten, certainly the first grade learning French. There was a French component in all of her classes all the way through to the 12th grade.

She ended up with a major in French and she sounds fluent to me.

I think she is. I can’t understand her. [Laughter.]

But aren’t we doing better on that though than we used to?

Mr. MELLON. Yes, sir, I think we probably are. My deputy, one

of his children goes to a magnet school in Fairfax and he is in an

emersion program where all of his courses are in German. And as

near as I can tell, he is fluent in German. I am not in a position

to assess that; we have not administered the DFLP proficiency test

to him yet. But that is very encouraging and very positive.

I think one of the key points in considering our requirements are

and what is at issue here is that in this changing world environment the levels of language expertise that were adequate many

times in years past do not cut it today. When we are talking about

counterproliferation and counterterrorism and counternarcotics, it

requires a degree of real fluency in many cases to engage with

these people or understand documents, interpret them, translate

other information. So when it was a more static situation and you

had more rigorous sorts of conventional military units, I am talking

from a DOD standpoint now, reporting in standardized sorts of

ways about what they were doing, you could teach people key

words and get a better grip and deal with a more narrow, limited

set of issues. This is a much more challenging environment.

So I think some of those trends are extremely positive and we

are hopeful that in the future there will be more Americans with

these kind of higher degrees of expertise to support our national

strategy.

Senator COCHRAN. Along with advances in better education, I

think we have also realized that we have better technology and

new computer technology and related technology. Ms. Laipson

talked about machine translation tools. Do you use these as well,

15

and do you have the funds that are necessary in order to acquire

these tools to help you do a better job?

Mr. MELLON. Yes, sir, we invest fairly considerable resources

through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other

agencies in various kinds of machine translation capabilities. They

are a partial answer to our needs and to our requirements. We are

reviewing right now some internal proposals for increased funding

for language which we want to put forward and advocate in our internal process.

Some of the examples, probably the clearest examples of Defense

Department language skills being brought to bear, maybe some of

the most salient ones, are ones that also show the limits of machine translation. For example, during the conflict in Panama,

there were a number of instances where violence was averted because we had individuals with foreign language skills who could

talk to a commander who was in a garrison or an individual that

was under fire as we were approaching the kind of final moments

where it was either you guys surrender or we are going to have to

open fire sort of situation, and they were able to reconcile the situation without violence. Similar sorts of things happened in the Persian Gulf. In fact, the broad spectrum of that coalition with nations

from all over the world placed extraordinary demands on the central command for language requirements.

Again, the automated tools can help us in those situations, but

there is no substitute for having people who can talk face to face

and engage.

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Alba, when you were talking about some

of the real life experiences that law enforcement personnel have at

the FBI, I could not help but remember sitting in on a class at the

University of Madrid one time, I just happened to be there, and it

was a class where they taught colloquial Spanish, as a matter of

fact. And I remember a phrase that the instructor was trying to explain, ‘‘Sabelo todo,’’ which means somebody who is a know-it-all.

I loved that. I have remembered it ever since 1963, or whenever

that was. [Laughter.]

And I think it sometimes, but I try not to ever say it to anybody.

But these are examples.

I wonder if in the language training courses that are available

for FBI agents there is an emphasis on real-life situations that you

run into and phrases that are used. You mentioned the World

Trade Center. That was fascinating. Is there a special discipline

that equips agents with their understanding of colloquial phrases

that they are likely to run into in their line of work that you might

not run into if you were in another environment?

Mr. ALBA. That usually comes from experience. When you are

trying to learn a language, it is tough enough just to learn how to

say good morning, good bye and remember how that goes. But

when it comes to picking up the subtleties of the language and

codes like that, we have made efforts at times to put together a

glossary of those terms. But they change quite a bit because people

put their own terms to it. It is very difficult to be able to teach that

to somebody else. They usually have to have it from experience.

It becomes very important to have that in cases where life is at

stake. If there is an extortion or a hostage-taking situation, we alVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Mar 15, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 68304.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
16

most need to be able to get the correct translation as accurately as

you can with some of these subtleties.

Senator COCHRAN. I asked earlier about the centralized availability of a resource for emergency translation. Is there a reliance

by the FBI on such a database that we heard mentioned, or do you

find that it is more appropriate that you have your own in-house

capability for this kind of thing, the unusual languages that crop

up occasionally? You mentioned three and I had never heard of any

of the three. So I am impressed that we even know what those are.

Mr. ALBA. Originally, I guess we didn’t know what they were,

but we found some help and got that. We rely on some of the more

common languages from Defense Department when we do not have

enough personnel. Our effort is going to be to develop that. But on

these other languages, now that we know they exist, we can make

arrangements to have them available or make arrangements to develop resources. But for those that we do not know yet, we can only

try to predict. But that can also be very difficult as to how do you

go about developing and preparing for that? Nevertheless, I think

it is somewhat necessary.

Senator COCHRAN. Are there any particular obstacles to hiring

linguists? Are we hard-pressed to compete with the private sector,

is this a problem? Is the pay better in other areas of our society

than teaching languages to government employees? Is that something you can answer? This is really for everybody because it does

cover all government agencies. What is your experience?

Mr. ALBA. The same problem we have in the government is the

same problem the private sector is experiencing. As globalization

and mobility and communications are improving, they are having

the same difficulty. And, of course, quite often they can pay more

money than we can, so that definitely becomes a problem. Sometimes people may come into the government and get training and

then they go out and we lose them to the private sector.

Senator COCHRAN. Yes.

Mr. Mellon, what is your experience?

Mr. MELLON. Yes, sir, it is a problem. It is more acute for some

languages than it is for others. Individuals who have rare foreign

language skills, say in Chinese or Japanese where there is an expanding economy and expanding trade, lots of corporate investment

and so forth, are more likely to get offers to, hey, come work for

my corporation than somebody who works in a region that is not

experiencing that kind of growth and so forth. So we certainly do

encounter that. It bothers me to generalize. I would say a lot of it

depends on the individual language.

Senator COCHRAN. Ms. Whiteside.

Ms. WHITESIDE. I would agree. There are two kinds of issues.

One is finding teachers. It is not the question of losing teachers to

the private sector, it is finding them at all. Our experience sometimes is in 62 languages it is very difficult simply to find a teacher.

And then the pay is another issue. It is also a problem though in

this kind of economy finding specific languages, some of the ones

mentioned, Chinese, for an example, where there is a great demand

for strong Chinese linguists and the government salary scales are

not always competitive.

Senator COCHRAN. Ms. Laipson.

17

Ms. LAIPSON. I think when we are looking at people who are pure

translators, looking for that very technical skill, we are clearly

competing with the private sector that may need the same skills.

But it strikes me that we are looking for a mix of skills in which

the sense of mission makes government service different than nongovernment work. So sometimes we are appealing to people who do

have a sense of excitement about working, using a foreign language

and applying it in a national security setting where they feel that

they are contributing to national decisionmaking. I think that what

we are looking for is people that see language as part of a cluster

of skills, and that therefore working in the government allows

them to use all of their skills, not just the language skill.

Senator COCHRAN. As we conclude the hearing, I am curious to

know what each of you would think we should consider as a program change or a resource emphasis to help meet the growing need

that we have in all of our defense-related and security agencies for

language skills, language training. Does anything occur to you specifically that you could recommend if you were up here proposing

a new piece of legislation or a new program or funding with greater

emphasis? What would you do?

Ms. Laipson.

Ms. LAIPSON. It seems to me that this hearing, in and of itself,

has been enormously useful. I think it helps remind people and

raise people’s consciousness of the importance of this issue. Obviously, I think individual agencies have initiatives underway or

have wanted to do initiatives that might require some more support and funding. Clearly, retaining the workforce that we have

and recognizing the skills that they have is part of the issue. One

of the issue that you are planning to address in subsequent hearings, making sure that language training is available for young

people so that when they enter their professional service they are

bringing the skills that the government needs, is a long-term strategy that is very much warranted. Obviously for the people who are

already in-house, some of these incentive pay schemes, etc., I think

are important to help us retain the workforce that we have.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much.

Ms. Whiteside.

Ms. WHITESIDE. I think bringing to a broader consciousness in

our country the critical nature of language issues in the world we

live. I like what Mr. Mellon said in terms of even though we are

all doing more, and we are very proud of what we are doing, the

world is so much more complex that the target is always moving.

I think the emphasis on learning languages at younger ages is always good. Our own experts say that the best predictor of success

in learning a language is to have learned a language. And so when

people come to us and we need to teach them a very difficult language that they are not likely to have learned in high school or college, if they have learned Spanish, French, other world languages

earlier on, they have a sense of what learning language is all about

and they are much better students. So I think the emphasis on language training across the board is critical for all the government.

For the State Department, I think our interest continues to be to

have the people to train and still meet our requirements.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you.

18

Mr. Mellon.

Mr. MELLON. Yes, sir. I hope and expect that you will receive a

budget request from the Defense Department that will ask for your

support for increased funding for language programs within the

State Department. More broadly, I would strongly agree that we

would welcome programs that will help to produce more American

citizens with high degrees of language proficiency. That is far beyond my ken in terms of education policy, but obviously we would

benefit enormously. I think that some of the latest research suggests that in fact there are organic reasons why it is very difficult

later in life to adopt and achieve a high degree of proficiency in a

foreign language. I happen to have had a need to review some of

this information recently and it appears that there is a certain

plasticity in the way that we are wired and in our neurons and so

forth at an early age that starts to drop off at about age seven or

eight. [Laughter.]

Early exposure actually helps the way your neuro architecture

sets up. In any event, early in life that kind of exposure to education and training helps to produce the kind of people that we

think we are going to need, which is more and more fluency to deal

with these complex issues like counterproliferation and counternarcotics and terrorism and so forth. So we agree that raising the

awareness is a very helpful thing to do. And we are going to work

within our budget and activities to try to place increased emphasis

on this.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Alba.

Mr. ALBA. I guess I can repeat what he said. If you see a budget

request from us to increase funding, I hope you keep in mind what

we discussed today.

Senator COCHRAN. I will.

Mr. ALBA. And I know you have other needs, too.

Senator COCHRAN. Yes. We will.

Mr. ALBA. But it is interesting, as we have foreign officials coming in from different countries, how many of them speak English.

It is somewhat embarrassing at times. But fortunately we do have

a few agents who can speak their native languages. I have made

it a point to tell our people that I am trying to learn another language at least, and that I will pick it up from there, to encourage

them to do the same. I think it will make a better world to live

in. It gives us insight into different cultures that we now have here

in the United States, and I think it is very important. I appreciate

the emphasis you have focused on it.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much. I think this has been

an excellent hearing, a wonderful way to start our effort to examine and understand more fully what the problem is and what the

challenges are, and then to take a look at what some of the options

are that we should explore and emphasize in terms of Federal policies and programs and funding levels to help improve the situation.

I appreciate so much your all being here.

We have some materials that we are going to put in the record,

including experiences that have indicated how serious a challenge

it is to understand foreign languages and the national security context, our experiences in Bosnia, in Kosovo, other countries where

19

1The referenced materials appears in the Appendix on page 110–127.

we have had experiences that illustrate this importance to our national security effort. So we will put those materials in the record

to lay a groundwork for our additional inquiry that we will make

later on.1

We will schedule another hearing. I do not think we actually

have it scheduled. Oh, we do. September 19. And do we have a title

for it, to kind of jazz it up?

Part II? That’s the title? OK. [Laughter.]

Until then, the Subcommittee will stand in recess.

[Whereupon, at 12:01 p.m., the Subcommittee recessed, to reconvene on Tuesday, September 19, 2000.]

(21)

THE STATE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE CAPABILITIES IN NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2000

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL SECURITY,

PROLIFERATION, AND FEDERAL SERVICES,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:05 a.m. in room

342, Senate Dirksen Building, Hon. Thad Cochran, Chairman of

the Subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senator Cochran.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN

Senator COCHRAN. The hearing will come to order. We continue

our hearings on the state of foreign language capabilities in national security and the Federal Government.

At our first hearing last week we heard from representatives of

the State Department, the Department of Defense, CIA, and the

FBI about the needs of those departments and agencies for personnel who are proficient in foreign languages.

We heard about some of the shortcomings and some of the ways

they are working to help meet the needs for personnel in these

areas and the relationship that has to our national security interests.

One of the questions I asked of the witnesses last week was what

new Federal policy or legislation would you recommend to improve

our preparedness in foreign languages. Each witness mentioned the

importance of language instruction in elementary and secondary

schools.

One panel member said the best indicator of how well a person

will learn, how quickly they will learn and how efficiently they will

learn a foreign language is whether or not they have already

learned one at some point in their education, whether they attended school or were proficient in a second language.

The fact of the matter is that there are obviously needs for our

education system to respond in this area. Today, we will examine

the trends in foreign language education.

We hope to be able to learn what the Federal Government is

doing or should be doing to ensure that our national security needs,

which are dependent upon language skills, are being met.

22

1The prepared statement of Mr. Riley appears in the Appendix on page 72.

We are very pleased to have as our first witness this morning the

Hon. Richard W. Riley, who is Secretary of the Department of Education. He is accompanied by Scott Fleming, Assistant Secretary for

Legislative Affairs.

We have a second panel which will include Dr. Robert Slater, Director of the National Security Education Program; Dr. Dan Davidson, President of the American Councils for International Education; Martha Abbott who is Foreign Language Coordinator, Fairfax County Public Schools here in Fairfax, Virginia and who is also

a member of the Board of the Joint National Committee on Languages; and Dr. Frances Coleman, who is an Eisenhower Fellow

and a teacher and technology coordinator for Ackerman High

School and Weir Attendance Center in Choctaw County, Mississippi.

Secretary Riley, we appreciate very much your attendance. We

hope you will speak to this issue and we will have an opportunity

to ask you some questions.

We know you have a tight schedule. As soon as my questions and

your answers are completed, you can leave. But thank you so much

for coming here.

Thank you also for your visit. We surely appreciated your coming

to Mississippi. It was several months ago now, I guess. You picked

a hot time of year to go down to Mississippi. We appreciate your

visit to our State and your assistance in some of our programs

down there has been very welcomed. We thank you for that.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD W. RILEY,1 SECRETARY OF

EDUCATION, ACCOMPANIED BY SCOTT FLEMING, ASSISTANT

SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS

Secretary RILEY. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. It is a real

honor for me to be here and talk about the importance of foreign

language instruction and how language knowledge can really affect

our effective role in world affairs.

This might be my last testimony before a Subcommittee of Congress. It is a pleasure to be before you, if that is true.

The benefits of helping Americans acquire a second or third language are really significant. Strengthening this one area, foreign

language instruction, helps to build a better work force, to improve

our national security and diplomacy and, as research shows, to lift

other areas of education as well.

That is why I am convinced that we should do everything we can

to ensure that we have high quality foreign language instruction in

America’s schools.

Now, let me focus on three benefits of promoting what I call

‘‘biliteracy.’’ The first benefit is a better workforce. Today, more of

America’s countries do business in other countries. More of our citizens regularly speak a language other than English in their home.

We should welcome these changes so long as learning English is

our first priority. But knowing an additional language can make

our Nation stronger. We should make sure that those who live in

the United States and speak more than one language are valued.

23

We should think of a second language as an asset for a student,

not a barrier.

Now, let me be clear though, knowing a second language is not

a substitute for mastering English. But with their language skills,

people who are biliterate may enjoy greater opportunities in our increasingly diverse Nation and command a greater salary in the

marketplace.

The second benefit is stronger national security, a subject, you

have been, of course, very interested in. Helping young people learn

foreign languages can, I think, even make our Nation safer.

If more Americans understand the language and the culture of

others, I believe that we will be more likely to avoid conflicts and

reach across cultural difference to form international friendships

and partnerships.

There are also clear advantages in having members of our armed

services who are biliterate.

The third benefit is improved academic achievement for our students. We have strong evidence today that studying a foreign language has a ripple effect, helping to improve student performance

in other subjects.

The European Union has a goal for their students to learn three

languages and surely we can help students remain competitive by

learning English and at least one more language.

Here is what research says: Children who have studied a foreign

language in elementary school score higher on standardized tests

in reading, language arts and mathematics.

They also show greater cognitive development in areas such as

mental flexibility, creativity, tolerance and higher order thinking

skills, four qualities that are very desirable in today’s workplace.

So far, our Nation has not done enough to help our children

learn second and third languages. The United States lags behind

many other developed countries in providing foreign language

study to elementary and secondary school students.

Research suggests that students acquire foreign languages more

easily when instruction begins at early grades. Despite this evidence, few elementary schools in the United States offer foreign

language instruction.

Increasing our efforts in two areas will help us catch up with

other nations in foreign language instruction and provide the excellent, complete education that our children deserve.

First of all, we recently have promoted a number of changes at

the Department of Education to improve foreign language instruction in the United States. Our proposal to reauthorization the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA), would set a national goal

‘‘that 25 percent of all public elementary schools offer high quality,

comprehensive foreign language programs by 2005 and that 40 percent offer such programs by 2010.’’

Our ESEA reauthorization proposals includes provisions that

would help students to make a smooth transition in their foreign

language studies as they advance from elementary school to middle

and on to high school.

Another program is that when America’s elementary schools offer

foreign language instruction, typically it is an introductory exposure to the language. So our ESEA reauthorization proposal also

24

focuses on ensuring that the elementary school foreign language instruction is more challenging and more meaningful. Our fiscal year 2001 budget request includes $14 million for For- eign Language Assistance, which is $6 million above the fiscal year

2000 level. The increase reflects the growing important of foreign

language skills, which I have outlined.

The second area in which we can increase our effort and improve

foreign language instruction is what are called ‘‘dual language’’ programs. These differ from regular foreign language instruction in

that students are immersed in English and a second language,

rather than being taught the second language as a separate subject.

In dual language programs, approximately equal numbers of

English-speaking and non-English speaking students participate in

classrooms, with every student challenged to meet high academic

standards for each subject in both languages.

Again, this approach is backed by research showing that students in high quality dual-language programs have higher achievement than their peers who are not enrolled in a language program.

I have called on educators and community leaders urging them

to create more dual language schools. Right now there are about

260 in the United States. I would like to see 1,000 dual language

schools by 2005.

To help meet this goal, the Department announced on September 1st that we would be setting aside $20 million through the Bilingual Education program for two special competitions for dual language projects.

I am pleased that the budget plan that the President submitted

to Congress for fiscal year 2001 would increase funding for bilingual education including dual immersion programs, to $296 million

and increase our investment in foreign language education by 75

percent.

We will continue to do everything we can to ensure that bilingual

programs make a positive difference in helping students learn

English and achieve academically.

While my formal testimony focuses specifically on the work we

have undertaken to enhance foreign language skills at the K–12

level, which is what you indicated was something you were very interested in, I would be remiss to not briefly discuss important work

supported by the Department in the post-secondary area.

Under the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Program, the Department seeks to strengthen the capability

and performance of American education in foreign language and

international studies. These programs originated in the National

Defense Education Act of 1958 and reflect the need to address high

priorities critical to international security and to the conduct of

business in the world economy.

Through the domestic component of the International Education

Foreign Language Studies Program, we provide resources to institutions for higher education to strengthen instruction programs, to

fund fellowships, to focus on effective teaching strategies, and assist in curriculum development.

Studies show that the Federal assistance is most important in

otherwise neglected languages. A lot of them I could mention, SwaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Mar 15, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 68304.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
25

hili, for example, Indonesian, Serbo-Croatian, those kinds of languages. You really have to have some kind of special effort to make

sure that this kind of knowledge is obtained.

Large proportions of students in those languages are supported

by Federal programs. Similarly, the Department assists in overseas

training of U.S. citizens in these areas through faculty research

abroad, group training abroad, doctorial dissertation work abroad

and special bilateral projects with foreign countries.

I am so pleased that the appropriations process appears headed

toward meeting our budget request and possibly surpassing our request for these very important domestic programs.

I suspect the Chairman might be somewhat responsible for those

favorable results.

I would like to emphasize that President Clinton and his staff

have been leaders in the effort to improve foreign language acquisition.

At the beginning of the administration we made competency in

foreign languages part of the Goals 2000 Education America Act.

We added two things, I think, to what the governors had in theirs.

One was foreign languages and the other was arts. Then I think

later civics was added.

In 1993, we provided funding to four national language organizations to develop national standards in foreign language. These

standards were issued in 1996. They have given us a strong foundation for improving foreign language acquisition.

In addition, on April 19 of this year, the White House released

a memorandum on international education policy, which directs our

Department of Education and other agencies to work to improve

international education.

The memorandum specifically addresses the need to improve foreign language learning, including efforts to achieve biliteracy and

to enhance the Nation’s capacity to produce foreign language experts.

Technology and demographics are changing the world and changing the United States. As public officials, I think we should adapt

our education policies to reflect these changes. By working together, we can encourage better foreign language instruction in our

Nation’s schools.

If we do that, we will strengthen our workforce, make our Nation

more secure in the world, and elevate the level of education for

America’s children.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be happy to respond.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I compliment you

for supporting the increases in funding for foreign language training and education.

I am also pleased to hear about your support for college level and

postgraduate foreign language training as well, at colleges and universities in our country.

I noticed from my notes, preparing for this hearing, that over the

last 4 years the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, with the

support of the House committee as well, was successful in increasing funding for the Foreign Language Assistance Program, which

is an elementary and secondary level program, from $5 million to

$8 million.

26

These were not included in the administration’s budget, but this

year the fiscal year 2001 Labor, Health and Human Services Bill

will include $14 million—that is our anticipation—for this program.

We have introduced, too—to try to help support these increases— a Foreign Language Education Improvement Act Amendment of

1999 which increases the funding authorization and puts special

emphasis on schools serving disadvantaged students.

I am curious to know if the Department is using Title I or any

other program to provide special support for those schools with

high concentrations of disadvantaged students in providing foreign

language classes.

Secretary RILEY. Well, under this Foreign Language Assistance

Program there is no specific emphasis on low-income students.

However, most of the recipients are Title I schools. So, you do see

a strong connection between disadvantaged areas and these programs and the same is true with bilingual education programs.

So, the answer, I think, Mr. Chairman is yes, it ends up going

in that direction, but certainly if certain language was in there it

would make it very clear. But Title I is where the Federal Government, of course, is involved primarily, and that is where most of

these funds go.

Title I, by the way, has gotten very flexible. I think you are indicating that, too. We are very free and now we have FLEX in most

States and we have the potential of getting it in all 50 States. Of

course, you can have waivers on Title I use of money if it is something that a State, a school district is particularly interested in.

So, we do have a lot of flexibility in Title I now and we are very

free about giving waivers where local people have emphasized a

particular thing and certainly this would be very important.

Senator COCHRAN. My personal recollection, growing up in Mississippi as I did in a small rural community school in the outskirts

of town—that meant out in the country, but we called it ‘‘the outskirts.’’ It sounded better. But we didn’t have teachers who just

taught foreign languages.

The teachers who taught foreign languages in our schools basically stayed one chapter ahead of us in the book. They may have

taken a course or two in college, and I am not saying their instruction was not good. It was very good, I thought. That was my experience. I am talking about Latin and Spanish. They were both taught

in my high school, even though it was a pretty small school.

Is that a problem that cuts across geography and regional lines,

an inadequate number of trained professionals who teach foreign

languages and how do we encourage more who are proficient in foreign languages to teach in the elementary and secondary schools

of our country?

Secretary RILEY. Well, you are exactly right. Of course, I, like

you, took Latin in high school. I never have been sorry about it.

I have felt it was a tremendous background. I took Spanish in college. I have always felt like it was a very good learning process to

understand English and other languages.

Right now, the numbers we have in the mid-1990’s, in the 1993,

1994, 1995 area, show that approximately 25 percent of the schools

that sought to hire foreign language teachers were unable to find

them. That is a very large percentage of something that a school

27

district is seeking to find and simply can’t find them in their community or attract people in. So, that is a real problem.

One of the critical needs for teachers, as you know, we are going

to need over two million teachers over the next 10 years, four critical needs are math, science, special education, and bilingual teachers, teachers who speak more than one language as the country is

becoming more and more diverse.

So, it is a critical need and you are seeing a lot of school districts

and a lot of States are doing special things to attract teachers who

meet these critical needs and in critical areas, very poor areas,

some rural, a lot of them inner-city. Those are critical, needy areas

and those critical needs for teachers and certainly language is one

of them.

Senator COCHRAN. There is, as you pointed out, support at the

college and university level. Tell me how this works and what the

funding levels of these programs are. How does a college or university qualify to receive Federal funds for Federal programs in that

area?

Secretary RILEY. Well, the funding for the big program in postsecondary, the domestic programs, as they are called, is for 2001,

the administration proposed $62 million for those programs, the

same as fiscal year 2000.

The overseas program that I referred to, $10 million, proposed an

increase of $3.32 million over fiscal year 2000. Another program,

International Public Policy, is like $1 million. It is a small program

that deals primarily with encouraging African-Americans and other

minorities to get into international service. It is kind of a related

thing.

In the domestic programs grants are awarded to support centers,

programs, fellowships and institutions of higher learning to

produce increased numbers of trained personnel in research, in foreign language and so forth. Those are very sought-after programs.

The percentage of schools offering foreign language instruction is,

I think, an interesting point. Some 86 percent of our secondary

schools and 31 percent of elementary schools offer some kind of

language instruction. So, it is not something that is not out there.

But these higher education programs are really what we build

on. They are, we think, very, very important.

Senator COCHRAN. There is one program that I don’t recall hearing about. It is not referred to in my notes here. But my personal

experience is that the Teacher Corps is something that the Federal

Government participates in and local governments match some

funds and try to place teachers of foreign languages, math, and

science in areas of States where they have an inadequate number

or just none whatsoever.

I know my daughter taught French at Brookhaven High School

in Mississippi, a public high school where there was no French

teacher and they wouldn’t have had one, I guess, but for this program. The Department of Education in our State participated. We

had a private foundation that provided some money. I think Federal funds were involved, too. Is that a Federal program and are

you still supporting the Teacher Corps program?

28

1The prepared statement of Mr. Slater with attachments appears in the Appendix on page

79.

Secretary RILEY. Scott says he doesn’t think it is now. It was in

the past. I think Federal dollars were used to get the program

started and then I think they phased out.

Senator COCHRAN. I see. Well, thank you very much for giving

us an overview of the Federal role in which you see are some areas

of emphasis where we can play an important role in helping to

meet this very important need for foreign language education and

training and teacher recruitment as well.

Thank you for your service as Secretary of Education.

Secretary RILEY. I thank you and I thank you for your service

and I appreciate your interest in this very important education

subject.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you.

Our next panel will include, as I mentioned earlier, Dr. Robert

Slater, Director of the National Security Education Program; Dr.

Dan Davidson, President of the American Councils for International Education; Martha Abbott, Foreign Language Coordinator

of Fairfax County Public Schools; Dr. Frances McLean Coleman, a

teacher and technology coordinator at Ackerman High Security and

Weir Attendance Center in Mississippi. We welcome you to our

hearing. Thank you for responding to our invitation to be here this

morning to discuss the issues that we have under review.

I am going to ask Dr. Slater to begin. Let me point out just for

information that prior to joining the National Security Education

Program at the Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C.,

Dr. Slater was Director of Research and was responsible for developing a major program of research directed at improving interactions between the academic and defense communities on important third world issues.

He also served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense on

matters related to foreign language capacity in the Federal Government. He has also spent 11 years with the private sector as a Senior Research Consultant.

He is a Ph.D. in International Relations from the School of International Service at the American University. He has written and

published and edited, as you all might expect, books and articles

on the subject of global transformation and revolution in political

change. We have a copy of your statement that will be put in the

record in full. We encourage you to make such summary comments

that you think would be helpful to our hearing this morning.

Dr. Slater, welcome. You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT O. SLATER,1 DIRECTOR, NATIONAL

SECURITY EDUCATION PROGRAM

Mr. SLATER. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

In testimony provided to this Subcommittee last week you gathered some important evidence concerning the increasing importance of language competencies for the Federal Government.

The rapidly increasing complexities of globalization have exposed

the need for overhauling the current training and recruiting system

in the Federal and academic sectors, including increased funding

29

for goal-oriented academic language programs in critical languages

coupled with incentives for linguistically proficient students to

enter Federal service.

The lack of language skills among professionals in the Federal

Government, particularly in critical languages is an issue of U.S.

national security.

It is imperative for the Federal sector to consciously and systematically invest in a national effort to produce more qualified internationally skilled graduates from its colleges and universities.

In my remarks today I would like to focus ever so briefly on some

critical issues and respond to the mandate from this Subcommittee

to offer some solutions.

Each year the National Security Education Program surveys

Federal agencies and offices involved in the conduct of U.S. national security affairs to identify critical areas in languages of the

world. The needs are across the board for competent professionals

who are language proficient.

A submission from the Department of Commerce is instructive.

It cites, for example, difficulty in finding qualified individuals with

skills in Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Russian, Central Asian languages—Hindi, Tamil, Ukrainian, to name a few.

It outlines needs for scientists and engineers who have Asian

language skills, skills in economics, statistics, public policy, business administration, and law, coupled with language skills.

The Department of State has experienced such difficulties in addressing some of its personnel needs and much to our satisfaction,

they have turned to NSEP for assistance in identifying language

competent professionals.

To date the Department has hired at least 34 NSEP award recipients. A number of these individuals are filling positions in U.S.

embassies. Their language study under NSEP auspices has provided them with the necessary competencies without need for additional and sometimes time-consuming language training. A list of

these individuals is included in my complete testimony.

In terms of a Federal response, the Federal Government really

has no systematic plan for ensuring that its workforce possesses

the necessary international competencies. Its two preeminent language-teaching institutions, the Defense Language Institute and

the Foreign Service Institute, focus on important, but narrow segments of the existing Federal population.

Furthermore the mission of these schools is for these students to

generally attain basic or functional levels of language proficiency.

These schools fill a critical void because students from high school

and college language programs cannot meet Federal needs.

While Federal programs need to be maintained if not strengthened, the longer-term solution to this program must also include

more directed Federal investment in the U.S. educational system.

As the Association of American Universities has stated, the raison d’etre of the American research university is to ask questions

and solve problems. America’s research universities are at the forefront of innovation. We rely on the U.S. higher education community to educate and train our leaders in business, commerce,

science, and technology, and expect them to train the best and

brightest for work in academic, business, and public sectors.

30

But in the international skill arena, we are terribly deficient and

woefully under-funded. The role of the higher education community

remains pivotal in solving this problem. Indeed, together with an

increasing emphasis on language acquisition in the K-through-12

environment, higher education offers the only feasible solution.

It simply makes more sense to invest in our national capacity to

produce educated Americans whose skill set includes language proficiency and then to create a path for them to Federal service. Otherwise, we continue down a path of ad hoc responses and Band-aid

solutions.

What role can the National Security Education Program play in

addressing this growing problem?

NSEP is the only Federal program that makes a direct link between the Nation’s security interests and the development of critical language skills.

The National Security Education Act of 1991 states that the Federal Government has an interest in ensuring that the employees of

its agencies with national security responsibilities are prepared to

meet the challenges of this changing international environment

and has an interest in taking actions to alleviate the program of

American students being inadequately prepared to meet the challenges posed by increasing global interaction among states.

Each year we fund a small number of outstanding U.S. students

to undertake meaningful language study as part of their academic

programs. But equally important, we are a pipeline for students to

enter Federal service because its award includes an obligation to

seek Federal employment in an agency or office involved in national security affairs.

You heard in earlier testimony about difficulties in identifying

and retaining talented professionals in the Federal Government.

Let me reassure you, there are many outstanding students in our

colleges and universities who are eager to find jobs in the public

sector.

Our challenge is to create and increase opportunities for students

to learn critical languages and then to establish paths, not obstacles, for them to facilitate their access to Federal jobs.

It is this pragmatic function and accountable partnership that we

embrace that has led us to propose a targeted solution to the Nation’s critical shortfall in intermediate and advanced language expertise.

In concert with the National Foreign Language Center at the

University of Maryland, we have already committed NSEP to a

pilot effort to create national flagship language programs in critical

languages. The purpose is to establish a set of programs that will

produce significant numbers of graduates and candidates for employment with the Federal Government with advanced levels of

language proficiency in languages critical to national security.

The NSEP and NFLC have already begun to map out such an

effort through a series of in-depth site visits to universities. The objective is to make investments in a relatively small and manageable number of outstanding and regionally located institutions that

will enable them to produce high-proficiency graduates.

These institutions will demonstrate a commitment and capacity

to achieve this goal. They will draw students from local, regional

31

1The prepared statement of Mr. Davidson with attachments appears in the Appendix on page

93.

and national communities. They will support distance education,

critical languages, and intensive language programs for a national

student audience and program articulation with local, secondary

and heritage education partners.

The flagship programs will, through NSEP, attract students motivated by the service requirement to gain employment with the

Federal sector. Most importantly, these programs will have one single and paramount goal: To produce advanced language proficient

graduates.

Let me close with one final thought. For many of us who have

struggled for years to address this important issue, we are heartened by the interest demonstrated by you and this Subcommittee.

We are eager to work to identify solutions and we are confident,

given the right structure and funding, that the U.S. educational

system can be successfully challenged to answer the call.

This concludes my testimony. I will be glad to answer any questions.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you, Dr. Slater. We appreciate your

testimony. It was very helpful and interesting.

Dr. Davidson, we appreciate your being here. Dr. Davidson is

President, and Co-founder of the American Councils for International Education. He is a Professor of Russian and Second Language Acquisition at Bryn Mawr College.

He has held the rank of full professor since 1983. We are very

fortunate to have him here today. Dr. Davidson has degrees in

Slavic Languages and Literature from Harvard University and a

long list of accomplishments that you would expect from someone

who is so well educated as Dr. Davidson.

Please proceed, Dan Davidson. We welcome you here.

STATEMENT OF DAN E. DAVIDSON,1 PRESIDENT, AMERICAN

COUNCILS FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Mr. DAVIDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very grateful for

the opportunity to appear before you today and to present views,

experience and also some research results concerning the state of

foreign language learning and instruction in the United States in

the year 2000.

Most of my work, as you pointed out, has focused on the study

and teaching of Russian. More recently, however, I have worked as

chair and member of the K–16 U.S. Foreign Language Standards

Collaborative, part of the Goals 2000 initiative that Secretary Riley

mentioned. It is a group of presidents and CEOs of the National

Foreign Language Professional Associations.

I am also a member of the Standards Development Committee

for all the foreign languages of the National Board of Professional

Teaching Standards.

I am a practicing teacher. For the past 25 years I have headed

the principal study of broad organization for the study of the languages and regions of Russia, East Europe, the South Caucasus

and Central Asia. These are programs funded by the U.S. Government and over 500 participating schools, colleges, academies, and

32

universities where these languages are taught in the United

States.

First, I want to underscore that the central Federal responsibility, in my view, is to ensure that with regard to critical languages that we are able as a Nation to maintain language readiness or preparedness for the national security, economic, and educational needs we can reasonably anticipate.

It is obviously too late to be worrying about language readiness

for our military or intelligence and diplomatic capabilities when we

are already deploying peace-keeping troops in Kosovo or negotiating a pipeline deal in Azerbaijan or hammering out a trade pact

with China.

Readiness begins, as the Chairman himself has pointed out, with

the educational expectations of our youth, and it continues

throughout our lives.

Second, while it may be axiomatic that our national security

needs in this area include law enforcement, diplomacy, defense,

and intelligence, we cannot afford to see these needs solely as a dimension of the Federal Government and its agencies.

Matters of national security for which sophisticated language and

cultural skills are needed are cross-cutting with the private sector

as well and obviously include business interests, NGO activities,

and educational enterprises.

Our solutions to the problems we face as a Nation typically involve all of these sectors, whether the challenge is focused on trade,

public health, the environment, or the like. So, we must all consider that the solutions that we may find for the Federal Government may well have major implications outside the Federal Government as well.

Third, I do want to mention to the Subcommittee and to you, Mr.

Chairman, that there is a very strong track record of Federal assistance in foreign language when it has occurred. It can have profound positive, and effective results.

The National Security Education Program is one such example.

It is a relatively small and young program. It has made a difference in our language readiness.

I would also like to point to the important work of the Title VI

Program and the Fulbright-Hayes 102(b)(6) Program against small

programs referenced by the Secretary of Education that have had

leverage and impact well beyond their relatively small budgets.

I also want to point out work done over the years in teacher

training by the NEH programs that terminated largely in 1995–96

and also the Title VIII Program for my regions of the world administered by the State Department.

A lot of the results are summarized in an excellent book that appeared only a couple of weeks ago, published by the National Foreign Language Center’s Dr. Richard Brecht and William Rivers,

who are here today at this hearing. It is called ‘‘Language and National Security in the 21st Century.’’ It is an excellent volume summarizing the role of the Title VI/Fulbright-Hayes in supporting national language capacity. It is a good volume. I recommend it.

There is more to mastering a foreign language than simply

knowing a lot of words and remembering the complex rules for

33

stringing those words together. No matter how quickly and skillful

a learner can be.

As previous testimony from the FBI, the State and Defense Departments have underscored, effective communication and successful negotiations with a foreign partner—whether with a partner in

peacekeeping, a strategic economic partner, a political adversary,

or a non-English speaking contact in a critical law enforcement action—requires strong comprehension of the underlying cultural values and belief structures that are part of the life experience of the

foreign partner.

In fact, English language alone is probably sufficient if all we

need to do is buy our products abroad, if we need to purchase foreign goods and services. But when it comes to selling a product

abroad, you have to understand the psychology and the belief structure of your client.

If you are selling America abroad and telling America’s story

abroad, as our colleagues in the State Department stress, then you

have to understand the value systems of that foreign public that

you are speaking to.

Our Nation’s distinguished senior diplomat in Russia, Ambassador Jim Collins, who is also a good friend, in a recent conference

on the Department of Education’s Title VI, commented that in Moscow he arguably has at his disposal the best translators and linguists produced by the U.S. Government and by the Russian government, for that matter.

Yet, if he did not speak Russian at the 3+ level, he would be

largely lost or in deep difficulty in trying to make political sense

of the things that take place in an average day at our embassy in

Moscow. That is how important his personal knowledge of Russian

history, language, and culture has been for this very senior and respected diplomat.

I think that says a lot about what we need to do here. The solution is not through technicians, but it is through educating, as Dr.

Slater has said, people, professionally and early on in their careers

in languages.

I want to turn now to the issue of the architecture of the U.S.

foreign language field. What are we doing right now and where are

we succeeding and why aren’t we succeeding more? We have, entering American colleges and universities in September 2000 the largest freshman class in the history of America.

We have a total 14.5+plus million students in 2- and 4-year public and private universities across the country, a total of 4,096 institutions. Of those 14.5 million people, a grand total of one million,

or fewer than eight percent, will actually study any foreign language at all in their college careers. Of those one million students,

50 percent will be studying Spanish. Of the remaining half million

students, a disturbingly large percentage will spend that time in elementary and low-level, intermediate courses. Very, very few will

go on to the most advanced levels. Thirteen percent will go beyond

the 1+ level. Five percent will move to the 2+ level and a disturbing one percent will go to the 3+ level.

Now, we in our research have looked at that one percent. How

did they do it? What is the secret of those who do succeed and what

can we possibly do to increase that flow? The system can produce

34

the three levels. The question is: Why doesn’t it? We have looked

at the successful models. They have been called variously flagship

models of excellence. This is not something that has to do with necessarily the size of an institution or its name in the field. It has

a lot to do with what happens in the foreign language career.

I would like to point out in summary what we have seen that

works in the American system. When we have articulated programs of the K–16 model, when we have universities capable of

picking up the students from their high school training and moving

them successfully on to the next step in the sequence of learning,

we have a success rate that is by far disproportionate to the numbers that go on the K–16 sequence. I am happy to report that there

is more of that planning now going on.

Second, when we have students in the less commonly-taught languages who don’t always have the opportunity to begin these critical languages in high school or in elementary school, those students who have learned another language and then go on to add

a critical language almost invariably do better and have a higher

likelihood of succeeding and achieving high level proficiency in the

critical language thanks to that expertise that they developed in

school prior to that.

Third, program students who have access to intensive summer

institutes, we sometimes call them ‘‘greenhouses,’’ but those intensive summer immersion institutes are remarkably successful at

bringing people over a critical threshold in the study of a language

that then positions them ideally to study abroad for a year in that

target language.

When you can study abroad for a year and you have the language to sit alongside a student in a foreign university, then you

can not only do your language, you will be growing in your language even as you study your other discipline at the same time.

We see the results of content-based instruction improving results

of language training and we see students coming out of those programs better specialists, not only in language, but also in fields like

business, thermodynamics, physics, art history, whatever their

other interests are.

Finally, we see institutions that will find a place in their senior

year curriculum for a capstone experience for those students who

have had the successful career, and have spent the year abroad.

There must be something to do when you get back to college that

is a capstone experience where you can apply those skills, where

for the first time you will be speaking with heritage speakers of

those same languages in an intellectual experience that integrates

that knowledge in language, in business, in history, in physics, and

whatever else one has done. I think institutions where that happens are producing those 3+ level speakers.

Mr. Chairman, if I can elaborate on any of these comments later

on, I would be happy to. Thank you very much.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you, Dr. Davidson. We appreciate your

comments and your statement, which will be in the record in full.

Thank you.

Ms. Abbott, we appreciate your being here. Ms. Abbott is serving

as the K–12 Foreign Language Coordinator for Fairfax County

Public Schools. She supervises 400 foreign language teachers who

35

1The prepared statement of Ms. Abbott appears in the Appendix on page 103.

are involved in programs ranging from elementary programs in

French, German, Japanese, and Spanish, to secondary programs

including other languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and

Russian, which are designed for fluent speakers.

She has been given awards and citations for her excellent performance in these areas. She serves on the Executive Council

Board of the Joint National Committee on Languages and the Foreign Language Academic Advisory Council to the College Board.

In 1998, she was awarded a Florence Steiner Award for leadership in K–12 foreign language education.

Ms. Abbott, thank you for taking time to be with us this morning. We look forward to hearing your testimony.

STATEMENT OF MARTHA G. ABBOTT,1 FOREIGN LANGUAGE

COORDINATOR, FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Ms. ABBOTT. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for inviting me to provide testimony this morning. Every morning more

than 3,000 elementary students in Fairfax County public schools

begin their day saying ‘‘Buenos dias, Bonjour, Gutentag, or Ohayoo

gozaimasu.’’

But their use of the foreign language doesn’t stop there. For half

of their school day, all the learning takes place in the foreign language. The subjects taught are math, science, and health.

Around mid-day they change teachers and the rest of the school

day the learning takes place in English in the studies of social

studies and English language arts. Foreign language programs like

these are being replicated across the United States because the

time is right and the time is now.

We have entered the age of global communication and cultural

diversity. Now, more than ever, there is a need for Americans to

equip themselves with languages other than English in order to

work, live, and compete economically in this new world.

In order to prepare our citizens for this new world, we must

begin to build up the capacity among all Americans to be multilingual and multicultural world citizens. Building this kind of capacity needs to become a goal of all governmental and educational

institutions across the country.

Building this national capacity is a lengthy process that must become a fundamental part of the education of every American child.

That is why over 3,000 students in Fairfax County public schools

begin their day learning in another language because they are the

beginning of our capacity building.

The first students to begin in our Language Immersion Program

in 1989 are now entering college. Their dreams and aspirations are

quite different than they would have been had they not had the opportunity to learn in two languages.

These students have their sights set on majors in international

business, their summers filled with internships working in foreignowned businesses and their vacations destined for countries where

they can speak the language and function in the culture.

Learning in two languages has a profound impact on one’s view

of the world. It liberates individuals from their insularity and it

36

provides students with more than one way of looking at issues and

even more possibilities for resolving those issues. Most of all, it produces students who are confident in their abilities, who look beyond the usual boundaries in life.

I would like to add that many of the students in our Foreign

Language Immersion Program qualify for entrance in our magnet

school for students gifted in science, the Thomas Jefferson High

School for Science and Technology. Even though they learned their

math and science from Grade 1 on in French, German, Japanese,

or Spanish, they still meet the entrance requirements for this prestigious magnet school.

Yes, the time is now and the time is right. As the only industrialized country that routinely graduates students from high school

with knowledge of only one language, English, we need to act now

to set in motion the foreign language programs, the funding, and

the professional development for teachers that will provide this opportunity for all American children and will begin the capacity

building in languages nationwide.

One of the best ways that the Federal Government can build the

language capacity of our Nation, as suggested at last week’s hearings and as you heard today by members of various government

agencies, is to begin with our children in foreign language programs that begin early, including programs in Latin and dual language programs that allow native speakers of a language to learn

English while improving their native language skills as well.

Building our national capacity in this area also requires us to

look at the type of programs we fund, the availability of qualified

teachers and the professional development of in-service teachers.

Changing the instructional approach in foreign language classrooms from the old emphasis on grammar translation to an emphasis on functional communication is a necessary first step.

How many generations of Americans have to say, ‘‘I took 4 years

of French, but I can’t say anything’’ before we take action and

change our direction?

Programs aligned with the National Foreign Language Standards focus on developing our students’ ability to communicate in

the language and to understand how to interact with native speakers of the language. But how many of our programs reflect this

focus? Pitifully, very few. Most often it is at the elementary level

where one finds programs that are truly designed to meet this communicative objective and that truly engage the students in this

learning process.

These elementary school programs have increased due to Federal

support through the Foreign Language Assistance Program, FLAP.

But the few new programs that FLAP supports are not enough. We

need a more concerted and consistent national approach to the establishment and maintenance of quality foreign language programs

across the country.

Probably no discipline stands in a position to benefit from technology innovations as much as foreign language instruction. We

should have given up long ago the teacher-directed model of the

foreign language classroom.

Language learning is an individual process, which should be facilitated by the teacher, but enhanced by current video and audio

37

1The article from The Washington Post appears in the Appendix on page 166.

technology components so that students can truly progress at their

individual learning rates.

Distance learning and other technological advances help us address the issues of the less-commonly taught languages such as Arabic, Russian, and Chinese, which are difficult to implement particularly in rural areas.

We need to harness the capabilities of the technology age to help

us teach languages effectively to our young people. With the need

to change our instructional focus comes a critical need for professional development for teachers. Most teachers are doing what

comes naturally, teaching the way they were taught. We will continue to perpetuate the old way of instruction unless we radically

change the focus of our current teaching force.

With the recent approval of the foreign language standards for

the National Board for Professional Teachers Standards, there will

be an incentive for master foreign language teachers to get board

certification.

We must develop a plan for ensuring that these teachers become

an important resource for both novice and veteran teachers alike.

It is a new age and we need new ways about thinking about language instruction.

Finally, few obstacles stand before us as mightily as the shortage

of qualified language teachers nationwide. Although some disciplines are in a more difficult situation than others, a July 4, 2000

article in The Washington Post entitled,1 ‘‘Schools Desperate for

Foreign Language Teachers,’’ outlined how particularly critical the

situation is within the foreign language field.

As someone who is responsible for assessing the teacher candidates who apply to our school system, I have witnessed this

shortage, particularly over the last several years. Even in a large

suburban school district such as Fairfax County, we were never

fully staffed in Spanish last year. Due to illness, maternity leave,

or transfers, we were in constant search for teachers of Spanish

during the 1999–2000 school year.

This year our new hires included 80 new foreign language teachers as well as four teachers from Spain through a program offered

by Spain’s Ministry of Education.

And we still have vacancies. A crucial part of our capacity-building effort is to professionalize the teaching field to attract the best

and brightest to enter the education profession. We are positioned

as never before to move forward in our capacity-building effort to

create a citizenry for the future, a global citizenry in which languages and cultures are valued, encouraged and rewarded.

As the United States moves forward from the isolation of the

past, so, too, must we work to move our children’s young minds beyond the familiar neighborhood to a wider world of experience. We

must use languages as a means to accomplish this.

Thank you.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Abbott. That was

very interesting and helpful testimony.

Frances Coleman is a Ph.D. from Mississippi who is a friend of

mine of long standing. We are very lucky that she is up here in

38

1The prepared statement of Ms. Coleman appears in the Appendix on page 108.

Washington right now as an Albert Einstein distinguished educator

fellowship winner at the Department of Energy.

She has extensive personal experience as a teacher in our State.

She has been cited time and again as a recipient of awards for excellence in science teaching as well as the use of technology in the

classroom.

She has been a leader in our State in so many areas. It is kind

of hard to believe. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Physiology and Biophysics. She also has

studied and become proficient in French, German, Computer

Science, Mathematics, and in teaching gifted children.

She has won the Mississippi Association of Physics Outstanding

High School Teacher Award, a Presidential Award in Excellence in

Science Teaching, the Tandy Technology Prize. She is a member of

a lot of organizations. She has published a lot of things. She has

presented papers. The list is kind of staggering here. I am not

going to read everything. But you get the drift of this. She has been

chosen by the Mississippi University of Women for the Teacher

Hall of Fame.

We are glad she is here in Washington to try to help us get a

better understanding of some of the practical things that we can

do to assist and support education in the elementary and secondary

levels and the college level as well.

I am delighted to welcome to our hearing one of our distinguished citizens of the State of Mississippi, Dr. Frances McLean

Coleman.

STATEMENT OF FRANCES McLEAN COLEMAN,1 Ph.D., TEACHER/TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR, ACKERMAN HIGH SCHOOL

AND WEIR ATTENDANCE CENTER, CHOCTAW COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI

Ms. COLEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In my other life, before I became an Einstein Fellow, I taught in

two small, relatively poor rural schools in Choctaw County, Mississippi. Choctaw County is about 100 miles north of Jackson, so

you know where it is.

I am going to describe how we have been attacking the problem

of teaching foreign languages as well as some other problems in

these schools.

I teach in Ackerman High School and Weir Attendance Center.

Ackerman High School has about 500 students in grades 7–12 and

graduates about 60 students each year. Weir Attendance Center

has about 600 students in grades K–12 and graduates about 30

students each year.

There are also about two elementary schools in the district for

a total of about 1,900 students. The district is approximately 40

percent minority.

In 1981, our newly-elected County Superintendent of Education

had the idea of using a Liberal Arts graduate and technology to

teach the students at these schools the courses they would otherwise not be able to take, but that they needed to take to prepare

for college. The courses might be unavailable either because there

39

was not a teacher to teach the course because only one or two students wanted the course and a teacher could not be spared.

For example, in the past Ackerman had occasionally had 1 year

for foreign language but Weir had never offered a foreign language

and neither school had ever offered physics. Our superintendent

applied for and received a grant from the Federal Government for

an experimental program.

He offered me the chance to start this program in the 1982

school year at Ackerman High School. As I remember, I taught

Physics, French, German, Basic Programming and Calculus to a

handful of students.

The district decided that the program was a success and the next

year Choctaw County funded the program and expanded it to include Weir. At that time I taught all the foreign languages that

were offered. Since then we have added a regular teacher who

teaches 1 year of French in Ackerman and one who teaches 1 year

of Spanish at Weir. I teach in the years after that first year.

I teach three periods in Ackerman in the morning and three periods in Weir in the afternoon. The number of students now varies

between 60 and 100 for the year.

In addition to the subjects with which I started, I teach Anatomy

and Physiology, Marine Science, Environmental Science, Humanities, Mythology, Creative Writing and various computer courses. I

am certificated in all the subjects that I teach.

Those subjects in which I am not certified, including Spanish,

Russian and Japanese, my two aides and I arrange to offer to the

students through distance learning.

This program is different from other courses in that the students

are scheduled to come to my room whenever they can fit a class

into their schedule. Scheduling is particularly difficult in a small

school because there is often only one class period when a course

is offered.

I might have four or five different courses being studied in my

room at one time. All classes are taught in a variety of ways, but

making full use of technology. The students learn personal responsibility and independent as well as their course work.

Distance learning for us has mostly changed from one-way video

and two-way audio, that is, television delivered by satellite and

telephone responses by the students, to a better distance learning

model, the two-way audio, two-way video network that Mississippi

has in place and is coordinated by Mississippi Educational Television.

Almost every county in the State now has an electronic classroom

in at least one of its high schools. K–12 schools, community colleges

and universities can be connected as desired. We have found, however, in our district that although distance learning is better than

no course at all, in most instances a teacher in the classroom with

the students, even if that teacher is split between students in several courses, works better.

In order to increase the number of students who become proficient in the language, I would agree with almost everything I

have heard.

First of all, we need to make the students, their parents, and

school administrators in the K–12 system especially see the imporVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Mar 15, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 68304.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
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tance of foreign language proficiency to students and to the country.

Next, we need more foreign language teachers. There was an effort by the Mississippi Foreign Language Teachers Association to

encourage the State Legislature to require 2 years of language for

high school graduation. This failed, largely because many of the superintendents in the State said it would be impossible for them to

find teachers.

Finally, we need to increase the requirements for foreign language in both K–12 and post K–12 institutions.

Thank you.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Coleman. I think

one of the interesting things about Dr. Coleman’s comments is that

a Federal program grant started the teaching of subjects in this

school district which, but for that Federal grant might not have

been started, or I think we can safely say, wouldn’t have been

started, at least when they were started.

This illustrates another point, I think, the Teacher Corps Program that I asked Secretary Riley about, which has been discontinued now in terms of Federal funding, is still in place in different

ways.

I know there is a foundation based in Meridian, Mississippi that

has assumed the responsibility of providing some of the funds for

that program. I think it has taken up the slack. The State has also

put more money in foreign language instruction in a variety of

ways.

In terms of an organized plan and strategy for leading the challenge of recruiting teachers, training people to be teachers and

starting foreign language programs so they are available throughout the K–12 experience is something that we have to work on to

accomplish.

I think that is the message that I get from this panel of witnesses and the importance of it is very clear.

Ms. Abbott mentioned getting teachers from other countries

through programs that are available in those countries, reciprocal

opportunities. That is an interesting idea and I hope we can explore how we can take advantage of that in more countries other

than just Spain and Fairfax County. But that sounds like it offers

promise as well.

Dr. Davidson’s comments about our Ambassador to Russia, Ambassador Collins, brings back the memory of a recent trip to Moscow where I was with him and saw him in action in several meetings where his cultural and language proficiency stood him in very

good stead in discussions that we had.

It also reminded me, when you said something about cultural

education, not just technically trained language scholars are needed for effective influence as diplomats or in business or the like. If

you don’t understand what somebody is talking about in terms of

their cultural and national interests, you might be just as lost as

can be.

It reminds me that I did spend a year at the University of Dublin

in Ireland. I thought I spoke that language until I went during my

first week there to an arts festival and on the stage one of the first

41

people was a storyteller who was telling folk tales about Ireland.

I didn’t understand a thing he said.

But the crowd would laugh or they would gasp and they were reacting to the stories and obviously enjoying these stories about Ireland. I didn’t understand the language and didn’t understand the

point or anything at all. But that was the first week I was there.

I think by the time I finished the entire year I did understand,

not only the language, but also the nuances and the humor and

why things were funny that the other people there thought were

funny, too. So, that is a very important consideration in all of this,

particularly for the Foreign Service professionals and the Defense

Department professionals who are going to have contact with people from other countries.

Dr. Slater’s comments about the goals producing advanced language graduates in our colleges and universities in the program

that you have made in investment in, selected universities where

we can concentrate the teaching of language programs at a higher

level of proficiency, sort of super graduate schools, I guess, in these

areas.

Let me ask you in that connection when you were talking about

that program, how did that program get started? What is the

source of funding? Does the Federal Government have a direct role

in that program?

Mr. SLATER. Well, the program I referred to is actually a part of

our institutional grants we award every year to universities to undertake innovative programs in language and international study.

The program I alluded to in my testimony is a pilot effort we

have undertaken where we have carved a small amount of money

out of our program to simply explore.

What I should add to that is we don’t really have the funding to

implement at this point, but we felt it is so important to start to

work with universities to identify ways in which they can be empowered to leverage the resources they have now to start producing

intermediate and advanced language-competent individuals.

One of the things you have to understand is that enrollments in

these languages on any single campus is extraordinary low. Dr. Davidson referred to the small number. When you divide that among

thousands of universities across the United States, we may have

five students at one campus taking a particular language at the intermediate or advanced levels. So, the university is not capable of

mounting a program without leveraging funding.

What we are looking toward is building the capability to hopefully start to fund some of these institutions to raise the level and

build them as institutions that we recognize as the ones in the

United States where you go, whether you are in the university,

whether you are in the Federal Government, if you want to pursue

language education at an advanced level. These are the ones who

become the models for providing that. But we don’t yet fund them.

Senator COCHRAN. You referred to language skills coupled with

disciplinary training. What disciplines are in most demand and for

what languages?

Mr. SLATER. Applied sciences and health are two examples of disciplines that cut across Federal needs. We find, for example, that

the Defense Department indicates that we need health and enviVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:26 Mar 15, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 68304.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
42

ronmental professionals who speak other languages. The new agency that deals with issues of denuclearization in the Department of

Defense has difficulty finding individuals with a science background who speak Russian at the intermediate and advanced levels.

So, it really increasingly over the years has cut across all the disciplines, particularly the applied sciences, engineering, but also

law, health, environmental science, etc. Those are becoming critical

fields.

Senator COCHRAN. Dr. Davidson, you mentioned the need for cultural immersion. How, as a practical matter, are we going to do a

better job of that as we are teaching the technical foreign language

capabilities to Federal employees who need to know a foreign language?

Mr. DAVIDSON. I think we have several resources that we know

will deliver higher levels of sophistication and culture. Increasingly, Mr. Chairman, we understand that actually language and

cultural knowledge are almost indivisible. I mean learning one is

the other. I think probably the handicap of the greenhouse is that

it tends to emphasize, the stateside greenhouse tends to emphasize

the technology skills of producing a speaker of a somewhat disembodied kind of language that isn’t so anchored.

You know from your year in Dublin that a lot of those experiences are grounded in actual things that happened to you while

you were there as you watched people react to what you said and

you learned why something was funny in a particular context.

So that obviously study abroad is a major value-added for the

language learner. Doing it at a point when you can combine your

study with an area of intellectual or academic or professional interest is a big value.

For those who can’t go abroad, the Internet has come to our assistance with streaming video, authentic materials we can now use,

live video and authentic sources, archives, conversations in the

classroom process. I think both my colleagues mentioned that as

well. It is a powerful tool. It doesn’t substitute being there, but it

does bring authenticity at really even the earliest levels.

Senator COCHRAN. Has it been your experience that the distance

learning has the capacity to be improved or has it been improved

in your experience and does it offer a potential that we may not

have yet realized.

Mr. DAVIDSON. My experience is a long one, Mr. Chairman, so

that I recall very well in the 1970’s and 1980’s when our technology

basically was sort of fancy electronic flashcards just giving us quick

technical responses. We have come a long ways since the economic

flashcards.

The fact that learning nowadays can be modularized, that as my

colleague in Mississippi pointed out, it is possible for independent

study that is facilitated and overseen by a teacher, but modules

that actually are self-paced and geared to a learner’s particular

style of learning, the level that they have reached, and continual

assessment element at the end so that I know before I go on to the

next module how well I have mastered this unit, whether I should

return or whether I can go on.

43

So, it does wonderfully powerful things in terms of individualizing learning. The example that Dr. Slater made, we may have

a total of only five learners of Azeri in all of the United States at

this moment. But those five learners, if we are lucky, are in one

or two places. More likely they are in more than one or two places.

They may each have a specific need. They may need Azeri or they

may need that language for business. So, the modularized approach

that distance learning now makes possible is there.

I think your question, though, is can it really replace teaching?

I think the answer is that we haven’t really seen that happen yet,

but it certainly enhance and let teachers say ‘‘yes’’ to student requests that before they would have to say ‘‘no, we don’t do that. We

don’t have that’’ Now, you can say ‘‘yes’’ more of the time.

Senator COCHRAN. We had some demonstrations here in our Subcommittee of jurisdiction over education a few years ago. We had

an experimental program, a demonstration program that was funded with Federal dollars. We had a few schools in Mississippi able

to take advantage of that.

The educational television system in our State, we were one of

the first States that had statewide coverage of a public television

system, so we were ideally suited, as Ms. Coleman pointed out, to

experiment and demonstrate some of these technologies.

I haven’t really checked on the status of that lately, so I was glad

to hear the report from Dr. Coleman’s personal experience.

I remember Japanese courses were being taught at Iuka School

way up in the northeast corner of Mississippi. The University of

Kentucky was the platform where the actual teaching was done

from, to these other places throughout the country.

One problem that I remember was the expense. It is not easy to

pay for the expense of these new technologies. That may be where

the Federal Government comes in, to try to help figure out a way

to more economically make these resources available to State and

local school organizations that want to use them.

What is your opinion or view of that? Do you have any personal

experience on how we can make this more economical or more feasible?

Mr. DAVIDSON. The National Security Education Program, as Dr.

Slater mentioned, funds not only scholarships for graduate students and undergraduates abroad, but also institutional grants

that allow institutions to address just these kind of problems.

I would say the issue is the development of the modularized

forms of Internet based learning. It’s the time of digitizing and of

developing those templates and testing them and so forth. That is

very labor-intensive and very expensive. There is an obviously role

for the Federal Government there.

Once it is out there, then the actual utilization is not so expensive. So, I think particularly the role in development is important.

Senator COCHRAN. Dr. Slater, do you have an opinion on that or

a comment?

Mr. SLATER. The daunting part of technology is that it changes

every day. It is very expensive. The issue of language learning is

that it is active; it is not passive. One of the challenges in technology is to interact through distance education with the students

44

as opposed to just delivering language education to students in

other locations. That becomes expensive.

As the technology advances, what is important is that we continue to monitor ways to deliver.

We have a set of students in the Rocky Mountain region through

a cooperative agreement with Montana State University and the

University of Washington where more than a dozen university students in areas you would never think would want to learn Arabic

are actually studying Arabic now that it is being delivered to them

interactively by the University of Washington.

So, it can work. The problem is it is expensive and it is technologically still very challenging. So, we need to continue to work on

ways to improve it. But this is one of the ways to get access to

more students.

Dr. Davidson points out, and it is very important, we are never

going to replace the teacher. In language education we can only

supplement and improve on what they do and gain access to more

students, but we are never going to replace the teacher in this

area.

Senator COCHRAN. Is there anything available to other school

districts like Fairfax County or those in Mississippi that tried and

true method of methodology or technology in teaching of foreign

language that the Federal Government as a facilitator could help

make available throughout the country?

Is there a magic bullet out there that we are somehow not hearing about?

Mr. DAVIDSON. I think there are probably many people in this

room that have opinions on that subject. My colleague, Ms. Abbott,

commented on the standards-based materials that are coming out.

The standards across fields are comparable in the Goals 2000. We

are seeing an increase of very interesting materials that are standards-based for Grade 4, for Grade 8, for Grade 12 or for Grade 14

or 16. They are not only articulated materials, but they make kind

of sense in terms of the outcomes that we are all striving to deliver

in the system.

So, the standard-based materials and institutions, and I am

going to mention one for foreign language called LangNet, which

is still inchoate, but it is up there already and it is available, by

the way, free of charge right now, thanks to both Federal and private foundation support, including support from the Ford Foundation as well as the Federal Government, that makes quality-assured resources that have been tried and tested by teachers themselves and sort of screened and put up on the Net for voluntary use

by teachers anywhere in the country.

So, there are some very encouraging developments. Again, that

LangNet is a structure that we have to continue to polish, but

there is good material that comes from the practitioners themselves. It is up there for use. So, I think there are some encouraging trends.

Senator COCHRAN. That is very interesting.

Ms. Abbott, what, if anything, could you recommend that we do

in terms of Federal policy and programs that would help you do the

job of meeting this challenge of foreign language learning at the

local public school level?

45

Ms. ABBOTT. I am not sure I have a magic bullet here either, but

I think in terms of attracting teachers to the field, we need to look

at the salary issue. One of the basic reasons that young college

graduates don’t go into teaching is because of a lower salary start. Even in Fairfax County with a beginning salary of $31,000, we

lost a couple of teachers last year. They were sharing a house with

young college graduates who were in the tech field. They have a

much higher salary. They don’t bring work home at night and they

don’t have the stress level during the day that a teacher does.

So, they start to weigh those kinds of issues. I think that we

need to take a serious look at the culture of the teaching profession

and the salary issues.

Senator COCHRAN. Are you in the Fairfax County Public School

System using Foreign Language Assistance Program funds?

Ms. ABBOTT. We got our program off to a start with the Secretary’s Discretion Fund grant that was given to George Mason

University that we just used for some teacher training in the early

years. Then we also benefited from an incentive grant to keep our

program going.

But we like to include it in our baseline budget because then we

can be assured that we always have it. So, it has been now long

enough in our program in our school system that it is part of our

baseline budget.

Senator COCHRAN. Do you know whether foreign language instruction is a determining factor in post-secondary education or career choices?

Ms. ABBOTT. We have talked to a number of our students graduating and they all have aspirations of continuing their language

study. They all want to travel to the country, if they haven’t already. They all want to include it as part of their career goals.

Senator COCHRAN. We had a panel of witnesses at our first hearing. We heard how agencies used something called the ‘‘machine

translation tools.’’ That is a fancy phrase, I guess, for having a machine translate foreign language writing or maybe spoken, if it is

recorded, too.

I am curious to know from the people who have had experience

in the classroom, are these devises used in schools or is this a helpful way to help teach foreign language skills, using machine translation devices?

I am going to ask that of Ms. Abbott and Dr. Coleman. Is that

technology helpful at all?

Ms. ABBOTT. It is not really helpful to the schools unless they

have a professional to review the translation. That takes quite a

bit of work. We had some elementary schools that tried to use that

kind of translation devise and they came out with some incredible

letters to parents that made no sense at all. So, we nipped that in

the bud.

But you would need a professional to overview that kind of translation. It is not perfected yet.

Senator COCHRAN. Have you had any experience with that?

Ms. COLEMAN. Just a little bit. I would say it is extremely easy,

if you happen to give an assignment that they are supposed to do

something in the other language and they do it that way, it is very

easy to spot.

46

Senator COCHRAN. In the use of the distance learning programs,

we were talking, Dr. Coleman, about your experience. There is not

a substitute for the teacher in the classroom. That is the point.

Are these programs helpful at all? Have you encountered any

televised or interactive distance-learning program that you thought

was particularly helpful or useful?

Ms. COLEMAN. Well, the programs that we have delivered over

our ETV system are interactive because that is cameras and television sets, both for the person who is producing the course and the

classroom. So, they are very interactive. You can immediately

speak to the people at both ends. So, they are good. They are still

not quite the same as having the teacher where the student can

touch them and actually be in the room with them. By the way, those rooms, which cost originally about $80,000

each, were started with Federal funds from the Star schools. The

cost has dropped now. I think they may be down as cheap as

$50,000 now.

Senator COCHRAN. It still sounds expensive, doesn’t it?

Ms. COLEMAN. Yes, it does.

Senator COCHRAN. Have Federal funds from any source been particularly helpful to your school districts or any others that you are

familiar with in Mississippi in terms of foreign language education

or training of teachers and the like? Is there anything that is helpful on the Federal program level at this point?

Ms. COLEMAN. I don’t know actually of anything. It could be that

some of the programs that are at the universities are assisted with

Federal funds, some of the things that give teachers a summer experience that everybody was talking about. They are probably assisted with Federal funds.

As a teacher who teaches both science and math and foreign languages, I see many more programs for science and math teachers

where the teacher can go for 2, 3, or 4 weeks in the summer and

be paid, than there are for foreign language teachers to go, and be

paid. That would be a place I could see the Federal Government

putting some money.

Senator COCHRAN. Ms. Abbott, do you agree with that? Is that

a program that you think would be helpful to your teachers or

would help you recruit teachers?

Ms. ABBOTT. Yes, definitely. I think that teachers would benefit

from that kind of concerted effort toward professional development.

As I mentioned in my testimony, we need to turn around the way

languages are taught in this country, definitely.

I also fully support the FLAP program and believe that it has

started a lot of good, new foreign language programs. But we need

to have some quality control there and we need to make sure that

those programs are getting off to a good start.

We need to make sure that those school districts can sustain

those programs because the worse thing is to start a child off in

first grade in a language program and then have the funds cut in

fourth grade. Then they are out of the loop. That frequently happens.

Senator COCHRAN. I want to ask this question of both of you as

well. How is technology used in your schools, to your knowledge,

to teach languages? Are there any new technologies that you have

47

encountered that could be helpful, that are being developed, either

Internet-type technologies or other communication technologies?

Ms. ABBOTT. I would say that the main thing that we are looking

at right now are online courses, because it is difficult for school systems to maintain the wide variety of courses that students need.

Our immersion students, when they arrive in high school, we

need to make sure they still have challenging foreign language

courses available to them.

We have started some dual credit classes with local George

Mason University, but online courses would help us meet this kind

of need. We are currently looking into some of the online courses

that are available and possibly developing our own if they don’t

quite meet our needs.

Senator COCHRAN. Dr. Coleman.

Ms. COLEMAN. I would agree with that. The modular courses online sound particularly interesting because you could use modular

courses as developed and make them fit each individual student.

So, if modular courses were being developed, I think they would be

very useful.

Senator COCHRAN. Well, I think this has been a very helpful

hearing. I appreciate very much the participation of each witness

in this panel. You have added to our understanding of the issues

and the challenges we face in making our programs, our schools

and colleges and universities and our government agencies more

responsive to the need we have for well-trained, proficient users of

language as it relates to our national security interests.

Thank you all for being here. This concludes our hearing.

[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m. the Subcommittee was adjourned, to

reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

(49)

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