Project 2 - Foreign Language Institute for the United States Department of States, in Paris, France

Return to Course Home Page

• BACKGROUND
• PROGRAM
• SITE IMAGES

BACKGROUND

The nature of the relationship between two countries is a formal one. Whether or not the United States recognizes or has diplomatic relationships with another country is determined by the President with the consent of the Congress. The State Department is the agency of the US government that is responsible for advising and establishing the diplomatic representation in a foreign country. Thus American embassies and chanceries are designed, built and operated by the State Department. Once the nature of the relationship has been set, various other agencies of the United States government, such as Foreign Trade missions, Department of Defense or Department of Commerce, may establish their presence in the country.

While ambassadors are political appointees, other members of the embassy staff are career diplomats. They are officially members of the diplomatic corps. The State Department has a division known as the Foreign Service Institute which is under the direction of the Under Secretary for Management. The FSI provides a wide range of service to employees of the State Department and other Federal agencies, to American citizens, and to foreign citizens with specific interests or dealings with the United States.

For diplomats assigned to overseas positions, the issue of language may be a problem. Most members of the diplomatic corps are chosen and assigned duties based on their diplomatic experience, training and area of professional expertise. While all members of the diplomatic corps speak at least one foreign language, the existence of US representation in almost every country in the world makes for a severe language problem. A diplomat’s placement may be in a country whose language is different from one that they speak. The ability of these diplomats to work with their counterparts on a day to day basis will depend, in part, on their language skills. Most members of the corps will need some form of language training. As a result the State Department has developed an extensive program of language instruction. This operation is located within the Foreign Service Institute. This institution is the agency that addresses that need.

The Foreign Language Institute (FLI) is an agency of the United States State Department. Its sole purpose is to train diplomats in the language of the country in which they will be stationed. Some of the languages may are quite rare in America, such as Kurdish, Igbo (the language of Nigeria) or Somalese. For example, at the time President Bush ordered Operation Good Hope into Somalia, there were exactly nine people in the US military who spoke Somalese. In other cases, diplomats may already posses fundamental knowledge of a language but need additional training to achieve fluency. They may need to be able to distinguish between various dialects within the language, such as the Iraqi, Iranian or Levantine dialect within the Arabic language.

FLI has a counterpart in the DLI, the Defense Language Institute, in Monterey, California. The teaching techniques in both are similar. They involve a program of intense lanuage training, often known as ‘total immersion’, during which the student speaks nothing but the foreign language, reads only books, magazines and newspapers in the language, sees television shows, movies and news broadcasts in the language, use sophisticated computer training programs in the language and is taught by native speakers of the language. Every day a division of the state department records television and radio broadcasts from every country, repackages them and transmits them to the various FLIs for their use. While there is one DLI there are a number of FLIs scattered around the world.

Foreign Service Institute

"The Foreign Service Institute is the federal government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats and other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington. At the National Foreign Affairs Training Center, the FSI provides more than 500 courses, including some 60 foreign languages, to more than 30,000 enrollees a year from the State Department and more than 40 other government agencies and the military service branches.

The Institute's programs include training for the professional development of Foreign Service administrative, consular, economic/commercial, political, and public diplomacy officers; for specialists in the fields of information management, office management, security, and medical practitioners and nurses; for Foreign Service Nationals who work at U.S. posts around the world; and for Civil Service employees stationed in Washington. Ranging in length from one day to two years, courses are designed to promote successful performance in each professional assignment, to ease the adjustment to other countries and cultures, and to enhance the leadership and management capabilities of the U.S. foreign affairs community. Other courses and services help family members prepare for the demands of a mobile lifestyle and living abroad. FSI has one program available to the general public. Recently FSI has worked with the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) to make security awareness training available to U.S. private business members that operate overseas. This training is provided on a reimbursable basis."

From the Foreign Service Institute web site:  http://state.gov/m/fsi/