DLI's Immersion Program: Linking Language and Culture: Eric Schwartz

DLI's Immersion Program: Linking Language and Culture

May 7, 2011
Tags:
culture travel language egypt dli immersion fao
As a student of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC), my instructors worked feverishly to provide me with a working knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), that is, the Arabic of newspapers, magazines, and of al-Jazeera. The result was my ability to communicate across the Arabic world but in a limited fashion. I realized that key cultural points were missed once I was going toe to toe with the language on its own terms. DLI’s Arabic program is an arduous 16-month course and little time is given to cultural study. This makes it difficult for DLI to recreate an environment where the interplay between language and culture exists. Attempting to fill that gap, DLI offers some broad regional and cultural classes, but these classes do little more than give an overview of geography. There also is the indispensable knowledge and experience gleaned from the cohort of Arab instructors. However, on the whole, these efforts fall short of showing the close relationship between culture and language. One program, however, does succeed. It’s called the OCONUS (Outside the Continental United States) Immersion Program. Many of the language schools at DLI offer this program to a select number of students from each class, and not every class gets the opportunity to go (situation dependent, think of the recent events in Egypt). I was fortunate enough to have been selected for this unique opportunity and headed to Cairo, Egypt, in October of 2010. I spent three weeks at the International Language Institute (ILI), attending class during the day, field trips on the weekends, and spent my free time conversing with the locals. A glimpse into my experience abroad seems appropriate, and since subtleties and intangibles draw language and culture together, I will attempt to portray the benefits of immersion in a story.

A relaxing night in a Cairo café…

I took another long drag on the elaborately decorated sheesha, or water pipe, and mused over the way the Arabs say, “to smoke.” “Ashrab sheesha,” I thought, and then I imagined myself literally “drinking” the sweet apple smoke before releasing a dragon’s puff of acrid blue into the air. As the night wore on, the ambience of the little café was growing livelier. More and more young people were pouring in from the nearby schools, and for my buddy Amjad and I, this meant a chance to practice our Arabic. We struck up a colorful conversation with a group of students. The conversation was wide-ranging, and pretty typical, covering such topics as Palestine and Israel, the Iraq war, President Obama, America…. and by that point I was ready for a tea and tobacco refill. Amjad and I resorted to al-fu-sha, or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), with added bits of Egyptian dialect to the mix. The students rattled off Egyptian dialect at a rapid rate with interludes of English. This language cocktail was truly efficacious, although the feeling was closer to struggling through a three-legged race. The combination of apple smoke serenity and a caffeine kick, however, did wonders to keep the language flowing. It didn’t take long, though, and we had the students rolling over in laughter. Of course, we had no idea why. As it turned out, our use of “high-level” Arabic was having a humorous effect on the whole situation. Some of the students thought it unique that a couple of Americans were pouring forth such eloquent speech. But how were we to know? How could the MSA word for car be so different from the Egyptian word, a car’s a car right? Well, apparently not. I suppose when you consider a group of Americans conversing with a group of British you quickly get the point. Our eloquent Arabic may have sounded beautiful, but it was out of place in that cultural setting. Despite this however, our eagerness to try out our infantile language skills had some positive results. We broke down barriers and left with several new friends, not to mention we gained a greater appreciation for the complexities of the language.

I had been to Egypt before, in 2006, as a tourist. At that time, I was only armed with as much Arabic as I picked up during my Iraq deployment. Having the opportunity to go again, and this time with a full year of Arabic training behind me, my Arabic ability was extremely beneficial. I found that sitting in a café or taxicab had more to offer the Arabic student than soaking up the history of ancient Egypt or eyeing the spinning sensuality of a belly dancer. My fluency and vocabulary were the two areas that I saw immediate improvements, and I can definitely attribute my good score on the final Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) test to my immersion experience. The benefit of immersing students in the actual culture of their target language pays huge dividends. Their test scores will most likely improve, which makes DLI happy; but more importantly, the experience will make them more skilled, which is of greater importance in the long run. Most graduates arrive at DLI with zero knowledge of the region. After graduation, they end up sitting behind a desk listening to Arabic all day through headphones without a clear understanding of the Arabic culture and its connection to the words they are hearing. Perhaps a brief 3-4 week immersion trip could be the most important cultural experience of their early careers. In DLI’s quest to produce more language proficient Soldiers in the shortest time possible, the answer lies in more cultural immersion, not less.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

submitted by Major Eric Schwartz on May 7 2011