The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2005

common sense could have seen that a language refresh- er would have been the best use of my time, but no go. I ended up paying for private classes out of my own pocket — a couple of thousand dollars — rather than waste the time. My other suggestion to improve FSI training is to adopt a more realistic view of how much time a class takes. The instructors cram as much as possible into as few days as possible. We are given so much (really good) reading material, but no time to read it, much less discuss it. It is unrealistic to expect us to read dur- ing the evenings, when almost everyone is frantically trying to finish the million admin errands they need to do before departing for post. Plus, I work enough unpaid overtime at post; I am not willing to spend my few precious free hours doing “homework.” And any free hour during class time is spent running over to the department instead of reading. Elaine Samson Embassy San Jose My Experience in Hebrew at FSI I have always considered language training one of the major perks of joining the Foreign Service. When, on Flag Day in the summer of 1999, I learned I would have nine months of Hebrew, I was thrilled. I’d studied sev- eral languages in the past and had always enjoyed the process. I learned French and Italian while in college, and taught French in graduate school. Afterward, I worked for over a decade as a French literary transla- tor, as well as a translator and editor at the United Nations. However, even before the first day of class, I could sense there was something troubling about FSI’s teach- ing of Hebrew. During a preliminary hour-long meet- ing with our teachers, we raced through the Hebrew alphabet. It turned out to be the last time we reviewed it. From the first week of class we were attempting to create conversation and read articles — learning specifically for the exam, basically, which was nine months away. F O C U S 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 5