Courses

The NC State LTC offers modular courses ranging in length from three weeks to six months, covering basic, intermediate and advanced levels of language. We provide Enhanced Language Programs (ELP) in Chinese, Korean, Russian and Spanish, accelerated training for novice learners of Arabic and French, and novice and sustainment classroom instruction in Arabic, Chinese, French, Korean, and Spanish. Each course focuses on functional proficiency and region- or country-specific cultural competence. Courses are designed for mission specificity, whether the objective be oral engagement with local populations, training and cooperative exercises with allied forces, diplomacy, conflict resolution or intelligence analysis. We can assemble courses for any language spoken in the world today. To date, we have offered classes including Arabic-Levantine & MSA, Chinese-Mandarin, French, Korean, Pashto, Persian-Dari, Persian-Farsi, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tamasheq and Urdu. All courses are taught by expert native instructors with extensive experience in language training for the military.

A Typical ELP Course:

  • is aimed at heritage speakers or students with a working knowledge of their target language.
  • lasts six months.
  • has in-class time of six hours per day, five days per week.
  • focuses primarily on oral proficiency.
  • engages students in mission specific lexicon, situational dilemmas and scenarios related to the target region of their language of study.
  • conducts periodic comprehensive assessments of participatory listening comprehension and speaking to ensure that the rate of emerging proficiency is commensurate with expected levels of progress.

While the course outlined above is the type most commonly requested by our partners, the LTC can also tailor a course to suit your specific needs.

Examples of some custom courses:

  • Focus on a specific dialect, such as sub-Saharan French or Levantine Arabic.
  • Refresher and sustainment courses
  • Technical vocabulary enhancement
  • DLPT and OPI preparation
  • Mission-specific pre-deployment language and culture immersion
  • Culex final assessment language and culture immersion


Assessment


Students are assessed using an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), a 20-30 minute one-on-one interview between a certified ACTFL tester and an examinee. The interview is interactive and continuously adapts to the interests and abilities of the speaker. The speaker’s performance is compared to the criteria outlined in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012 - Speaking or the Inter-Agency Language Roundtable Language Skill Level Descriptors – Speaking. The objective of each LTC course is to ensure that students receive a minimum of ILR 1+ on the OPI with the goal of attaining ILR 2/2 or higher.


AnchorOral Proficiency Interview (OPI)