special issue: inauguration 2009 - National Peace Corps Association

Language and the Peace Corps
TALKING THE TALK
Peace Corps uses new technology to fulfill second goal
by Will Garneau
Climbing into the back of
an idle taxi in Windhoek’s
Katutura neighborhood, I
hurled a dusty bag onto the seat and
greeted my Namibian driver using the
Herero language.
“Mwa penduka nawa?”—how is the
morning?, I asked reflexively.
“Nawa.”—good, he responded,
before doing a double-take. Not only
was it a native language, but it was his
own tongue—I could tell by the name
on the side of the taxi. Foreigners,
especially white foreigners, rarely used
any of the local languages, preferring
Afrikaans or English. I could tell he
was intrigued, and complimented, by
my greeting. I had won him over and
fulfilled, in a small way, the second
goal of Peace Corps.
Language training, along with
living within a community, sets
Peace Corps apart from other
organizations working outside the
United States. It is an invaluable
tool: assisting volunteers with
immersion, developing relationships,
and even safeguarding the volunteer
from harm. In order to better serve
volunteer needs, training is becoming
more sophisticated for volunteers
all over the world. It is a big change
from the days the mimeograph
machine. Posts are now podcasting.
Training can now start before
invitees meet for staging. The
Peace Corps is using a web-based
application called MyToolKit that
allows invitees to log in and access
text and audio language training
materials.
“Currently 30 countries globally
offer introductory audio lessons on
MyToolKit for Peace Corps invitees”
explains Rasa Edwards, a training
specialist at Peace Corps in the
Office of Programming and Training
Support (OPATS). “[An] increasing
number of posts use MP3 files and
podcasts for listening activities during
the pre-service training.”
For instance, volunteers in The
Gambia use a site that hosts language
training files as well as audio lessons
for six indigenous languages. Because
the website is public, invitees can
start their language training at home
in the United States, increasing their
exposure to the language prior to
touching down in country. Posts
generate most of the audio files using
digital voice recorders and then
encoding them as MP3s. Users are
then able to download these materials
to laptops and MP3 players for
convenient playback. In addition to
Environment Volunteers learning the Arabic alphabet.
these post-generated materials, many
countries provide online accounts for
Rosetta Stone, a professional language
training company, to practice French,
Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili
and Tagalog.
Individual posts are still able to tailor
their own training to meet volunteer
needs and host country conditions.
Some countries, in particular in the
Africa Region, often teach multiple
languages while countries in the EMA
(Europe, Middle East, and Asia) will
often only teach one. Many countries
chose to use community-based training
while others use center-based—or
a mixture of the two. A group of
volunteers having difficulty with
language acquisition may request
tutoring beyond language class, and
Anthony Schmitt
20 Spring 2009