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Is there a written proficiency exam for Thai that the DoD (or some other government agency) uses that anyone knows about? I'm a civilian and have taken an OPI over the phone (through a contractor, Language Testing International or something like that), but they don't offer a written exam. Most of my language course focused on reading/writing and I'm crap over the phone in any language, so I'm hoping this isn't a permanent bottleneck for me (I'm hoping to get a job with my language skills as an analyst or something, either with the government or a civilian contractor).
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Jun 24, 2010 19:13
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 16:11 |
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AlternateNu posted:Though....I'm not so sure about authoritarian culture aspect. The German instructors certainly don't hide their discontent when we gently caress stuff up. Though, in regards to our MLI, we've seen him maybe once in the last 4 months. He doesn't even come close to our class, anymore. In fact, whenever unfair or retarded poo poo comes down, our AF Master Sergeant doesn't hesitate to go down and brow beat him. It's kind of funny, because us O's don't really give a poo poo when they ask us to do a little something extra. Has anyone ever accidentally called someone a "grammar Nazi" or something similar in front of the teacher and had things get awkward?
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Jun 29, 2010 01:09
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themarine posted:I'm stationed at DLI right now, did my first enlistment as a combat engineer, now becoming a 2600. It's true about the internet nerds here: I was at the base gym back in April, it was sexual assault awareness month so there were "SAA"-themed posters plastered all over the place. One of them was a giant mudkip and it said something along the lines of "sexual assault is serious business. /b/ lieks mudkipz". It made me rage a little. It seems like every other stupid boot here either plays WOW or LARPs secretly, or whatever else. I guess that's still not as bad as starting inter-service marriages at their ripe old age of ~18. I don't know how they even find time for all this poo poo, considering how difficult the course is (regardless of language). It's a whole different world out here, I swear, especially compared to being in a line company. Jesus christ. What is it about DLI that attracts the sperglords, do you guys think?
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Jul 9, 2010 03:49
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grover posted:Countdown until happy cat posts to defend this comment.... Waiting to see :iamafag: challenge coins pop up in SA Mart.
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Jul 11, 2010 18:27
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StabbyRipStabStab posted:DLI and translators should be phased out in favor of BabelFish, Yes/No? I know this is a troll/shitpost, but: I interviewed at a startup that was working on similar technology 2 years ago: basically feeding tons of translated material into a program and trying to "teach" it how to translate based on experience. The problem is that translation is seldom 1:1, it's contextual and computers don't have the necessary intuition/outside knowledge to make the right calls, at least right now. For interpreting, you also have to add situational context and two separate, effective speech-to-text programs on top of all of that. So the short answer is that no, translation and interpretation aren't going anywhere until computers get a lot smarter.
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Jul 12, 2010 18:24
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Do you guys at least get to do the OPI face to face, or is it over the phone?
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Jul 22, 2010 22:58
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tengohemroidz posted:Not to join in on this and turn it into an "oh woe is me" train, but I can attest to the fact that, at least in the Latin America schoolhouse, enlisted personnel will never come out of an OPI with more than a 2, in a basic course. Officers, however...There was an Army Major in my class who couldn't speak Spanish to save his drat life. He came out with a 2, while another Captain who was fluent in Italian got the same score. There was this smokin' hot OSI agent, who was a Captain, that got a 2+, and she was no better than the O who spoke Italian. No enlisted personnel got above a 1+. Holy poo poo, are those numbers ILR scores (1-5, same one the DoS uses)? 
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Aug 20, 2010 17:19
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Earlier you guys mentioned something about unpleasant exercises to help you handle numbers more rapidly in a foreign language. Can you elaborate on that?
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Aug 30, 2010 19:14
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QingLaiXiguaba posted:] I'm glad I'm not the only person who does this, and it definitely helps with accent a lot. I dunno how the military's course goes, but dig up good pronunciation guides. I've never studied linguistics, but I've picked up some of the terminology (trill, aspirated/unaspirated, glottal stop, etc) from self-studying pronunciation guides, as teachers I've had tend to give up on correcting pronunciation after the first few weeks or months. It helps to get equivalents from English, or at least "it's like this in English, but your tongue/lips/throat should be like this, or halfway between this English sound and this other one. For example, the "r" sound in Mandarin isn't like our "r", it's more between our "r" and "y", IIRC. Do an "r", then a "y", then figure out where halfway is for your tongue. You aren't used to making that movement on its own, so you have to keep setting up the position using the English equivalents to get your bearings, and practicing it until muscle memory kicks in and you can do it without using the English positions as crutches. /zh/ /ch/ /sh/ and /z/ /c/ /x/ are also ones that a lot of foreigners let slide with sloppy pronunciation. We have those sounds in English, but sometimes only as final consonants (/z/ and /c/), not initials, so you need to practice making them at the start of a word, which I do by starting the English word that ends in the sound, voicing the final consonant (which is the initial in Chinese), and then saying the rest of the Chinese syllable. After a little while you won't need to rely on the English, and the Chinese sound will come to you naturally. I've taught myself how to pronounce an initial "ng" (not found in Mandarin or English, but in a few Southeast Asian languages) by practicing the final movement from the English word "song" enough; a lot of my classmates (and even a Lao-Canadian friend who grew up in the West) can't do it to save their lives. It really helps to break the characters down by radical (little component pictures; you will see the same ones over and over again, in different arrangements and combinations) rather than try to remember them as an amalgamation of random squiggles. There are self-study courses which do this systematically, such as the one by James Heisig, but it sounds like you probably don't have the time to invest in that. Just make up memorable pet names for them and weave them into stories to use as mnemonic devices; for example, "金", which means metal or gold, and shows up in a lot of other characters*, is "cruise missile" for me (my friend blurted that out when our 11th grade Japanese teacher asked us what we thought it looked like, so it's been "cruise missile" for me ever since  )*in mainland Chinese its form is simplified to the left part of this character: 镀
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Oct 19, 2010 01:47
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ElHuevoGrande posted:I am burning with embarrassment. I took an OPI today, got a contractor to pay for it, and I done hosed it up. I only got a day to prepare, and I didn't prep the chickenshit level 1 questions. So while I discoursed eloquently on the tides of revolution in the Middle East, being asked to describe the scenery in Waikiki loving BAFFLED me. (What the gently caress does that mean, anyway? The tester specifically said, "scenery in the city", so she didn't mean the beach.) Like you, I had prepared beforehand (had taken one before, knew they'd ask a current event, so I did some research and had a whole thing about the situation in Iran). Actually, the brunt of my language course was focused towards political sciencey type stuff once we got enough vocab to move into full immersion, so it this should have been one of the easier parts for me. It was actually going great up until that point, she asked me the current event thing and I breathe a sigh of relief knowing I'm in familiar territory, look down at the page or two of notes/points I have prepared to use... and just totally loving choke. I stuttered out a few barely connected sentences and asked to go on to the next part, which we did. I knocked the roleplay out of the park and did well on the other stuff she asked, and she came back to the current event again at the end to give me another chance, and... I choked again. It was just so baffling to me that I was sitting there on the phone, in what should have been my element, with a mouth full of fail. This was a civilian thing and they used a different scale from DLI, I got an Advanced Mid, which some equivalency table tells me is a 2 or 2+. Still, looking at the descriptions it was about as terrible as I thought I possibly could have done on the test  Haven't retested since, I'd probably do even worse now without another good month or two of intensive remedial study.
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Feb 25, 2011 02:39
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 16:11 |
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Yeah, it's dumb because I wouldn't be speaking my language at any of these jobs (intel analysis), but damned if the government can bother coming up with a reading or listening comprehension test. The OPI claims to measure listening but that's bullshit, there's no separate score for it.
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Feb 27, 2011 15:20
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