Educational Services: Language/30, World Foreign Languages, U.S. Armed Forces

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Educational Services: Language/30, World Foreign Languages, U.S. Armed Forces

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Oct 03, 2017 10:33 pm

Educational Services: Identical Series (almost*)
Over the past couple of years, I have added the German edition of three separately-named series of language guides to my collection. Although the guides had been initially prepared to meet the needs of the United States Department of Defense, as I had suspected, the three series were identical as to content (almost*). The series were published, sequentially, under the following names:

• Department of Defense Educational Services Language Familiarization Courses
• World Foreign Language Record Series
• Language/30


The language guides were initially published in 1960 by the United States Department of Defense accompanied by the annotation “Prepared by Educational Services for the Department of Defense.” These materials were made available to the public in 1965 under the name of World Foreign Language Record Series accompanied by the annotation “Published by The World Publishing Company, First World Printing 1965. Reprinted by arrangement with Educational Services, Washington, D.C.” The language guides were published a third time as of 1974 under the brand name Language/30. Interestingly, the latter courses included a promotional pamphlet inviting users to continue their language studies with the FSI courses which could be purchased at a discount through Audio-Form (one of the major resellers of the FSI courses at the time). Was Educational Services a subsidiary of, or the parent of, Audio-Forum or was this a simple association between two independent businesses wherein they had agreed to promote each other’s products? My searches of the internet yielded numerous results for Educational Services including one for Educational Services, Washington, D.C., which may, or may not, have been the original publisher of the language guides. However, I was unable to find information confirming this and I suspect that the publisher of these language guides no longer exists in the configuration under which it operated in the 1960’s.

The military and civilian editions were almost* identical as to content. The original editions contained a somewhat expanded section on Transportation, which included phrases useful for Driving and Maintaining an Automobile (road conditions, directions, regular maintenance and repairs) as well as a brief section on Military Terminology, including useful phrases such as “Don’t Shoot!” The Military Terminology section was omitted in both of the civilian editions. However, whereas the expanded Transportation section was omitted from the World Foreign Language editions, it was re-introduced in the Language/30 edition. Also, the Language/30 edition omitted the English-Language-Based Phonetic Spelling. Despite these differences, the core of the materials were identical. The audio recordings accompanying the language guides reflected the changes that had been made to the booklets.

Languages in the Series
A total of 30 languages were covered in the series: Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese-Mandarin, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Lao, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese-Brazilian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese.

Materials
The printed materials consisted of one small, 49-page booklet* in the original edition, or a booklet containing fewer pages in the civilian editions. Packaging varied according to the brand name. The audio recordings were furnished variously in the following media: (a) two 12-inch vinyl LP 33-1/3 rpm LP vinyl records, (b) five 7-inch 33-1/3 rpm flexible EP vinyl records, (c) two audio-cassettes, (d) one CD.

Approach to Teaching
These courses were designed as “language familiarisation courses” for independent study by members of the U.S. Armed Forces and of their families. These were, essentially, phrase books containing useful words and expressions to be deployed in predictable settings: Introductions, Greetings, Shopping, Hotels, Restaurants, Banking, Postal Services, Transportation, et cetera. The original editions included a brief section on Military Terminology. The words and phrases were presented in columnar fashion as: English, English-Phonetic, Target Language. Users were encouraged to memorize the basic expressions and to use whatever words they could recall appropriate to the context in which they found themselves.

Audio Recordings
The original audio recordings were approximately 1-1/2 hours in duration, but were slightly shorter for the civilian editions. The recordings presented all of the words and phrases appearing in the accompanying booklet in the following sequence: (1) the English phrase was spoken once, (2) the target language phrase was spoken twice, separated only by a breathing space, (c) a brief pause, barely sufficient for the quick repetition of the phrase, was included for practice purposes. The native speaker on the recordings delivered the words and phrases using clear, well-articulated speech in the rapid cadence that one would expect to encounter in the country were the language was spoken.

Product Reviews
The How-To-Learn-Any-Language (HTLAL) language forum and the Amazon.com website contain a few reviews of and/or passing comments on specific variants of the Language/30 series. In all cases, the reviews are quite brief; however, with a few exceptions, most commentators seemed to have liked the products. As the three separately-named series were identical as to content, reviews of any one of the brands would apply to all others.

Evaluation and Recommendation
The foreign language guides were conceived as generic phrase books with accompanying audio recordings for independent study. Although they were initially developed for use by members of the U.S. military and their families, these guides do not differ in scope or intent from other variants in the genre. At first glance, these types of materials can often appear quite limited; however, they have the potential for bringing a particularly motivated and perseverant user to a level approaching CEFR A1(minus). That is, the limited goals were achievable through the study of these materials, provided the user works hard.

On one hand, the cadence of speech on the audio recordings likely appeared too quick for many users, possibly discouraging some to the point of abandoning their studies. This effect would have been even more pronounced in cases where the target language was linguistically quite distant from English. On the other hand, one has to recognize that this cadence represents the rapid speech that one could expect to encounter in the country where the language was actually spoken. Although one could debate the virtues of presenting slowly-spoken, clearly-articulated speech to beginners versus those of presenting the rapid speech of native speakers, these were, after all, language familiarisation guides for independent study, not the materials supporting the six-month-long FSI/DLI classroom courses.

Given that the recording technology was initially LP vinyl records for which a “pause feature” does not exist, I found the break at the end of each spoken phrase to be less than generous. By way of comparison, whereas I can repeat both the prompts and the German phrases in the FSI German Basic course sentence-pattern drills in the pauses provided, I just barely managed to enunciate the phrases in the time allotted in the German Familiarisation Course in this series. I suspect that shortness of the pause might have represented an additional source of frustration and discouragement for the users. Although users of the subsequently-available Language/30 brand could have availed themselves of the pause feature on audio cassette players, this would not have been the case for those working with a turntable and the LP records.

For the commonly-studied languages in these series (French, German, Italian, Spanish, et cetera) numerous language courses were available in the 1960’s, ranging from similarly brief introductory materials to more in-depth ones. Given the choices available for the commonly-studied languages at that time, I would have recommended the Educational Services language guides only to travellers who were planning a very brief visit to the local where the target languages prevailed.

As fellow member Daristani recently pointed out, the situation for the less-commonly-studied languages was, and continues to be, quite different. That is, for the majority of the languages covered in these series, these guides would have represented one of the very few options available. Even many of the Peace Corps courses, which may not have been available to members of the public, were not much better. From this perspective, these materials could have been quite serviceable in the hands of a determined user and could still be useful today despite the free-to-the-public and wide availability of numerous, similar-but-more-current, language guides on the Internet.

Normally, I would be tempted to recommend these vintage language familiarisation guides to collectors only. However, I was rather surprised at how well these materials have aged and I believe that they still have a place in today’s market for phrase-book-style language guides. Moreover, how many other language guides will teach you how to say “Don’t Shoot!” in your chosen target language (original edition only)? You never know just how useful this little phrase might be!

IMAGES
I have appended images of one page from the language guide along with the covers of the various editions of these guides.
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neumanc
Orange Belt
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:19 am
Location: Düsseldorf (Germany)
Languages: Speaks: German (native), English, Dutch
Studies: French (advanced), Spanish (false beginner)
Mostly forgotten: Italian, Latin
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Re: Educational Services: Language/30, World Foreign Languages, U.S. Armed Forces

Postby neumanc » Tue Oct 03, 2017 11:49 pm

Thank you, Speakeasy, for your very helpful and thorough reviews. Just so you know, these courses are easily available in digital form at audible.com for $6.95 plus tax, if any. There are 33 of them including, interestingly, one for Latin (I am wondering how this one fits into their military origin?!). For anyone interested in these courses, there is also the possibility to listen to a small sample. The quality of the recordings seems to be quite good. But as you said, Speakeasy, the pauses are very short, even for hitting the pause button. Nevertheless, these courses could be quite valuable if there is a shortage of other study materials.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Educational Services: Language/30, World Foreign Languages, U.S. Armed Forces

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Oct 04, 2017 1:41 am

EDITED
This post was edited on November 11, 2017, through the addition of an "Addendum" and by the insertion of the words: "Edited, Original Post, Addendum."

ORIGINAL POST
@neumanc, thank you very much for your kind words and for mentioning the availability of the Language/30 courses on Audible, I was completely unaware of this!

I listened to the sample audio of the "German Crash Course by Language/30" on Amazon and it seems to me that the audio has been completely re-recorded. The English and German speakers are not those of the original recordings of 1960 and the German voice-tracks are delivered at a much slower cadence than the originals. However, it seems that the pauses are even shorter! The image on Amazon (see below) mentions "Revised and Expanded Edition", which likely accounts for the changes.

The description on Amazon would appear to reference the original Educational Services language familiarisation courses: "Developed for U.S. Government personnel, this accelerated learning method will have you conversing after just a few easy 30-minute lessons! These widely acclaimed courses have yielded proven results for over 60 years."

As the total number of languages in the series has reached 33, it would appear that new ones have been added, including Latin. I wonder if the Latin course includes "Don't Shoot!", which might be useful when conversing with the Pontifical Swiss Guards.

ADDENDUM (11 November 2017)
Rather than update my comments, above, by creating an additional post which could be perceived as a mere distraction by some readers, I have decided to "sneak" this update into this post via the "Edit"mode, simply for the historical record.

Subsequent to my comments above, I purchased the CD version of the renamed "Language/30 German Crash Course" to which neumanc had generously drawn my attention.

The package contains two CDs. The first CD contains the first half of the recordings in CD format, the complete recordings in MP3 format, and a PDF copy of the corresponding text. The second CD contains the second half of the recordings.

The audio portion of this new edition, copyrighted 2013, has been completely re-recorded. The delivery by the native speakers, one male and one female, is consistently clear and well-articulated. Cadence is deliberately slower than conversational speed. The English text is recorded once, the German text is recorded twice without a noticeable pause between the two, FOLLOWED BY a lengthy pause which has been provided for practice purposes.

The text of the new edition does not differ in any substantial measure from those of the previous editions, going all the way back to the first edition, which appeared in 1960.

IMAGE:
Cover of plastic box containing the CDs of the latest edition, copyrighted 2013
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