72 YEARS IN THE SERVICE. AN OVERVIEW OF RUSSIAN LANGUAGE MILITARY LINGUISTS’ TRAINING AT THE U.S. DEFENSE LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

Преподавание русского языка в Военном институте иностранных языков Министерства обороны США ведется с 1947 г. За 72 года существования русские программы института играли и сейчас продолжают играть важную роль в обеспечении национальной безопасности США и их союзников. Реализация этих программ всегда напрямую зависела от характера отношений между США и СССР/РФ. Сегодня на фоне геополитических изменений в мире Военный институт и его программы по обучению русскому языку военнослужащих МО США вносят свой неоценимый вклад в подготовку нового поколения военных лингвистов-русистов. Russian has been taught at the U.S. Defense Language Institute without interruption since 1947. Over the last 72 years the Russian programs have played a distinguished role in the national security of the United States and its allies. The size of the Russian programs closely reflected the nature of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR. Today the Defense Language Institute and its Russian programs stand ready to meet future needs of the nation as its relationship with Russia undergoes further changes in the years to come.

Identifying students at risk in academics

Purpose This paper aims to use a data-driven approach to identify the factors and metrics that provide the best indicators of academic attrition in the Korean language program at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Design methodology approach This research develops logistic regression models to aid in the identification of at-risk students in the Defense Language Institute’s Korean language school. Findings The results from this research demonstrates that this methodology can detect significant factors and metrics that identify students at-risk. Additionally, this research shows that school policy changes can be detected using logistic regression models and stepwise regression. Originality value This research represents a real-world application of logistic regression modeling methods applied to the problem of identifying at-risk students for the purpose of academic intervention or other negative outcomes. By using logistic regression, the authors are able to gain a greater understanding of the problem and identify statistically significant predictors of student attrition that they believe can be converted into meaningful policy change.

Bridging the Gap

As language requirements burgeon at the post-secondary level inattempts to create global citizens out of college graduates,universities nationwide have seen a sharp increase in languagecourse enrollments, especially in the Less Commonly TaughtLanguage (LCTL) courses (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin, 2007).While this is a positive trend from an intellectual and culturalpoint-of-view, the sudden growth presents a unique set of problemsfor course implementation. There has been a current trend ofoffering language courses online to meet increasing demands forcommonly taught languages (CTLs) (e.g., Chenoweth, Ushida, &Murday, 2006; Sanders, 2005), but little has been written aboutonline offerings for LCTLs (c.f., Winke, Goertler, & Amuzie, 2010).To respond to the need for high-quality pedagogical materials forLCTLs and to compensate for the lack of face-to-face classroomsettings, the Center for the Study of International Languages andCultures (CSILC) at the University of South Florida (USF) hascreated lessons in Dari, Pashto, and Urdu for the Global LanguageOnline Support System website (GLOSS; gloss.dliflc.gov)supported by the Defense Language Institute Foreign LanguageCenter. This paper is an analysis of considerations that informedthe process and products of these modules. A discussion ofimplications and directions for further study concludes the paper.

Language teaching

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