Revista Armas y Cuerpos nº 123 - Ejército de tierra - Ministerio de ...

Teniente Coronel Rafael Jiménez Sánchez
Director Departamento de Idiomas. AGM
LEARNING LANGUAGES:
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?
A brief discussion about learning languages in the military
Introduction
Language learning is something that we have done
since the day we were born, and continue until the end of
our life. Second Language education is a particular case
and may take place as a general school subject or in a
specialized language school. There are many methods of
teaching languages. Some follow the “natural pattern” for
learning our mother tongue; others are more academic in
nature and are based on the so called grammar- translation
techniques, or on linguistic theories. Obviously, these
methods are far from being an ideal solution. We do not
pretend in this short article to provide an analysis and
evaluation of such methods neither do we plan to offer
a checklist for learners 1 . Our intention is simply to offer
“Language most shows a man; speak, that I may see thee”
There are many types of learners: we simply respond
differently to different stimuli
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Ben Jonson
a wide approach (holistic –approach we may say) to the
problem of learning a language in the military.
The importance of language is obvious for the
armed forces. Warfare Doctrine tells us that there are
three necessary capabilities to achieve military success:
lethality, mobility, and protection. To these we should
add a fourth element: awareness. In strategic terms
globalization means full spectrum dominance, and one
component of the full spectrum is information. Following
the global approach, Daniel Kuehl defines information as
an aggregate of three “C,s”: cognition, connectivity and
communication. These three “C,s” are present in language
learning and fit nicely into an ideal training scheme for
language acquisition, and effective use. As with weapons,