Dr. Elizabeth Thomson Director of Studies Defence Force School of Languages

1. The role of research in the process of designing, developing and evaluating the ADF LOTE Tactical Interaction Course Dr. Elizabeth Thomson Director of Studies Defence Force School of Languages

2. Scope • The drivers of change • The LOTE capability model • The research process • Needs analysis • Discourse analysis • Development of curriculum • Pedagogical approach • Assessment • Evaluation • Conclusion

3. The drivers of change • A change in operations: from ‘peace’ time (1975- 1999) activities to Continuous Operations (1999 – 2011) • Iraq / Afghanistan • East Timor / Solomon Islands • Indonesia / Pakistan / PNG / Tonga / Haiti / Japan • The Defence requirement shifted to foreign language skills to enable the work of defence personnel in overseas, non-English speaking theatres of operation. • A recognition that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ • Language for Specific Purposes • For different users • Learning in different contexts • Learning using different styles • Life long learning. • Development of the LOTE Capability Model

4. Joint Land Combat Population Protection Information Actions Population Support Adaptive Campaigning The philosophical and conceptual framework underpinning Adaptive Campaigning is the five mutually reinforcing and interdependent lines of operations: Indigenous Capacity Building

5. Force Protection Tactical Interaction Military Communications Skills Operational Engagement Strategic Engagement Language Teacher Training Translator/Interpreter Training The LOTE capability model • Culturally enabled users • Vocational users • Analyst - trade specific • Professional users -operational • Professional users - strategic • Military LOTE trainers • Military interpreter/translator (NAATI)

6. HOW? By surveying and interviewing soldiers, officers and commanders in tactical contexts across all operational areas; By validating the interviews by convening focus groups of ‘returnees’ to confirm/amend/deny tasks. KINDS OF TASKS ACROSS THE FIVE LINES OF OPERATIONS: Convey pleasantries and courtesies Establish rapport with adults/ children Determine security status of an area Enforce curfew Conduct convoy escort Stop an illegal action Liaise with indigenous forces Establish Key Point Protection (KPP) and Vital Asset Protection (VAP) Control and detain an armed combatant or suspicious person Manage detainees/ displaced persons / refugees etc………… KINDS OF LANGUAGE – GENRES – REQUIRED TO PERFORM THE TASK Putting the wordings to the doings. Identifying and name the genre - OPERATIONAL DIRECTIVE Researching the need:Duty Task Inventory

7. Researching the ‘text’:Discourse analysis Defining the Genre (Text Type): Operational Directive

8. Operational Directive

9. Developing the TI Curriculum: • The Tactical Interaction (TI) course at the Defence Force School of Languages is a course focusing on basic speaking and listening skills to provide defence personnel with the language skills to: • perform routine workplace activities with local security personnel and civilians when on tactical deployment • build rapport and establish working relationships with people in the local community where they may be deployed • reflect on their own identity and understand their own values and socialisation and that of people from different cultures • deliver relevant tactical language training to their unit while preparing for or during deployment • These deployment tasks involve: • providing members of the local populace with basic information and behavioural directions in both civilian and military contexts. • engaging members of the local populace in basic hearts and minds dialogue, mostly in civilian contexts, as a means of gaining their confidence and respect. • The language other than English (LOTE) is: • incidental to the daily job in a foreign deployment • an ancillary skill which supports the primary tasks of deployed staff. • The LOTE TI course provides: • basic spoken communication to a limited (1+ ADLPRS), supported by minimal listening skills (1+ ADLPRS) • limited civilian and military vocabularies (250 wds - all classes) • sufficient cultural awareness to utilise the limited language skills appropriately • no written component • minimum reading skills (in transliteration) restricted to numbers and social sight signs.

10. TI Course Learning Outcomes • The Tactical Interaction course has eight modules. • The LOTE training consists of six CLOs characterised as • Workplace specific tasks based on the FIVE lines of operation in Adaptive Campaigning model; • using only the required macro-skills • Addressing the genre of Operational Directive in a tactical context • routine and predictable – “I need to get some help. Wait here”. • In a Red, Green and Amber (complexity) order – revisiting the operational directive genre at new levels of complexity in terms of monologic/potential threat; compliance and complicated (more than one interactant with a complex set of problems. • The Intercultural Awareness training and the ‘train the trainee’ training are each there own module • The CLOs and MLOs

11. Researching the Pedagogical approach Pegagogical considerations: • Students have the workplace expertise. • Teachers have the LOTE. • Students need to independently maintain their newly acquired skills prior to deployment • Students need to be ‘tactical ambassadors’, requiring intercultural competence • Students need to pass on their language skills and knowledge to comrades in their units It was determined that the course would adopt a joint construction pedagogy, • utilising student and instructor expertise in a collaborative learning context in and outside the classroom; • the grammatical load to be early in the learning, with the lexical load distributed throughout as new workplace contexts are addressed, with the bulk of ‘speaking/listening’ practice to be two thirds of course time. • speaking/listening practice to move from staged classroom roleplays to outside workplace scenarios in situ using military realia. • Summative assessment to be amber scenarios at the ADLPRS level of 1+

12. Teaching-learningcycle According to Brumfit (1984:23) [m]ethodology is an attempt to both understand and intervene in the process of language learning. • The teaching-learning cycle requires teachers to have explicit knowledge of the structure, grammar and vocabulary of texts and how the texts relate to the socio-cultural contexts of their use, in this case the TI situations. • Teachers are able to integrate the types of activities that are common in language classrooms into the cycle that aims to systematically lead students towards control of texts. • The role of the teacher is to explicitly intervene in the learning process through organising systematic phases of teacher-centrednessand learner-centredness in the classroom. • The cycle recognises that learning occurs through social interaction in the classroom where learners’ knowledge and skills are acknowledged and used to develop discourse skills (de Silva Joyce 2011).

13. The teaching / learning cycle

14. Dari TI CLO 3: MLO 3.1Building the field • a Commands • i As a class list eight commands in English you might need to deal with detainees. • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________

16. Building the field..

17. Modelling the text • ii Your instructor will provide these into Dari. Write the Dari translations here. • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________

18. Modelling the text

19. Joint Construction • b A detainee scenario • As a class write a scenario for dealing with the detainees that would occur in different countries. • ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ • ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

21. Individual Construction • d Role-play • Work with a partner. Go back to the scenario from Activity 1b. Use the direct and indirect commands from Activity 1c and any suitable vocabulary and phrases you know to prepare a dialogue for the scenario. When you are ready role-play the dialogue for the class. The class and your instructor will correct any errors. • _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ • _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ • _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ • _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

22. Individual Construction

23. Assessment: a complementarity between proficiency and competency • Scenario based following • CLO 3 (red) – formative in the classroom • CLO 5 (green) – formative in the classroom • CLO 6 (amber) – summative in the field • The operational directive is rated against the ADLPRS proficiency scale (1+) • Scenario example:

24. Evaluation • Course Pilots (Aug-Nov, 2011) • Arabic & Dari complete (9 & 10 wks) • Tetun (8 wks), Solomon Island Pijin (5 wks) and Tok Pisin (5wks) ….ongoing • Evaluation method • Conduct of the pilot report from the Consultancy responsible for leading the development and delivery of the pilot • Staff evaluation survey • Student evaluation survey

25. Results • Positives • Professional development workshops and weekly delivery review meetings went really well with staff; • Students (13) survey feedback: agreed to strongly agreed • that the course objectives were met • that timetable and structure were effective and paced realistically • that the instructors were effective • that the materials were effective, fair, appropriate and assisted learning • that they wished to return to DFSL to continue their language study • that they could do their job in the LOTE and apply it to situations not addressed in the course.

26. Results • Positives • Staff (5) survey feedback: agreed to strongly agreed • that the course objectives were met • that timetable and pace were effective and realistic • that the assessments were fair, appropriate and matched learning outcomes • that the activities and resources assisted learning • that the course was pitched at the right level for the students and were motivated by experience • that overall they were well supported and the course was good.

27. Issues to address: • Staff understanding of the pedagogy, their buy-in and ownership of the new curriculum and conduct of the assessment within the prescribed process was patchy and affected the students’ experience; • Not all development was complete prior to piloting which added stress; • Course documentation (DAS, LGs, TGs & course outlines) were still evolving during the pilots, resulting in some change of direction and additional planning (CLOs 7 &8) • Students need some expectations management as they arrived with a different set of expectations. • Unit commanders need to be socialised to understand the new course and what students can do. They are not commanders’ linguists.

28. Conclusion • The Tactical Interaction (TI) course at the Defence Force School of Languages is a course focusing on basic speaking and listening skills to provide defence personnel with the language skills to: • perform routine workplace activities with local security personnel and civilians when on tactical deployment  • build rapport and establish working relationships with people in the local community where they may be deployed  • reflect on their own identity and understand their own values and socialisation and that of people from different cultures  • deliver relevant tactical language training to their unit while preparing for or during deployment

29. Conclusion • Additionally, • The course is being delivered in a shorter time frame, saving training time by 2-4 weeks per course and course costs. • Students were not only having meaningful (rather than rote) exchanges, they were also proficient enough to display their personalities when performing tactical tasks. • All graduates felt that they had had a transformative experience and wanted to return to continue further language study. • From here? • More pilots, more refinements, new development of the Operational Engagement course….

30. Thank you Questions?