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Soldiers must reveal language skills

Staff report
Posted : Wednesday Dec 24, 2008 12:10:28 EST

Soldiers have been ordered by the Army to divulge their foreign language skills after a voluntary survey to assess the number of soldiers who speak a foreign language failed to produce enough participants.

By March 15, all active, National Guard and Reserve soldiers, even those who only speak English, must complete an online foreign language self-assessment, according to an All Army Activity message.

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I remember filling in a self assessment when I did my service, it was a self assessment of everything from language to carpentry, so the army would know what they allready had access to. You might have access to some really skilled personnel and dont even know it.
Most big companies here do the same thing, they discovered that sometimes they could find interpreters within the company, people that didn't bother to put their native language on their resume when they applied for an unrelated job.

I predict a host of "English Only" responses from those with other language skills that want nothing to do with being an interpreter or constantly being tagged because of this 'skill identifier'. At least with the voluntary survey it's more likely that valid capability sets would be entered...

g-man wrote:I predict a host of "English Only" responses from those with other language skills that want nothing to do with being an interpreter or constantly being tagged because of this 'skill identifier'. At least with the voluntary survey it's more likely that valid capability sets would be entered...

Espcially since I doubt that proficiency pay will not be authorized for all the troops who have qualifying language skills. When I was still in, I got a new SPC whose native language was Vietnamese. I asked why he was a 98J (now 35S) and not a linguist. He said the recruiter never asked and he'd never volunteered the information because he didn't know that Vietnamese was short-staffed language. I tried to get him re-classed as a linguist so he could get his 4/4 rating and the propay that goes with it, but no dice. The director of the intel center we worked out of managed to get him a SMOS as a Vietnamese linguist and pulled the right strings to get him the 4/4 propay (an additional $150/month at the time).

TabascoKid wrote:When I was still in, I got a new SPC whose native language was Vietnamese. I asked why he was a 98J (now 35S) and not a linguist. He said the recruiter never asked and he'd never volunteered the information because he didn't know that Vietnamese was short-staffed language. I tried to get him re-classed as a linguist so he could get his 4/4 rating and the propay that goes with it, but no dice. The director of the intel center we worked out of managed to get him a SMOS as a Vietnamese linguist and pulled the right strings to get him the 4/4 propay (an additional $150/month at the time).

That's called "Doing the Right Thing", and it's part of your core values and something which makes you a valuable friend and a good parent (if you have kids). I'm sure he thanks you for recognizing it and having the Army reward him appropriately. Many of those people (Vietnamese) are used to getting screwed over by those in power before they came to this country. You provided a positive influence and no matter what happens to him later in life, he'll always know there are people out there who DO believe in doing what's right even if it creates extra work for them.

Merry Christmas, TabascoKid!!

I was reasonably fluent in German coming out of HS into the Army and was met with the sound of silence upon announcing that that particular skill was available back in the mid 70s, while stationed in Germany, I might add. Later trained myself up to a working fluency in MSArabic (modern standard, not microsoft) leading into the first episode of Dancing with Saddam after being told that I wasn't considered to be 'up to' DLI (read: boss didn't want to let anyone get away) and was promptly assigned to a mobile training team teaching Saudi crews to operate M60A3's. Finally got it right, did you say? Not quite, was assigned a shared interpreter and told to speak english exclusively. There's stupid, then there's Army Stupid.