The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2005

extremely disappointed by his experi- ence as a French student headed for a Canadian post. After FSI training in “standard international French,” he said, he was not prepared at all for the substantially different pronunciation and vocabulary of Canadian French. Many students would like to have a mechanism to evaluate individual instructors at the end of each rotation when the students’ memories are fresh. While some sec- tions of the School of Language Studies periodically solic- it informal feedback, the only official questionnaire is not disseminated until the end of training, and it only con- tains one specific question about teaching: “Please com- ment on the instruction, including the instructor prepa- ration and how efficiently your time was used.” Though in-house monitoring of instructors in the classroom is FSI policy, many respondents claimed it does not take place. Responding to such concerns, FSI Director Peterson says there are no plans to hire non-native speakers as lan- guage faculty, even on a trial basis. However, she stresses that “we have our own orientation for all new (and ongoing) teachers, including pedagog- ical training to make sure that they understand effective teaching meth- ods and what we’re trying to get across. And every other Wednesday afternoon, there is a wide- ranging program of in-service staff training and develop- ment.” Rote instruction. The Russian Language Depart- ment, with nearly 100 students a year heading to many countries, is one of the largest at FSI. Officers at all ranks have criticized the Russian program for failing to give them the tools they need to do their job. For example, in early 2003, a highly critical cable fromMoscow expressed concerns about the degree of preparation of junior offi- cers arriving from Russian training at FSI. Some reforms have been implemented as a result, but the basic issues reportedly persist. F O C U S J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 Area studies is widely regarded as the weak link of FSI training.