Defense Language Institute

Academics

The campus is located along prime California coastline in beautiful Monterey. To attend, one must be a member of the U.S. Army or have sponsorship from a government agency. Throughout the year the Institute provides high-quality language instruction in over 24 foreign languages to around 3,500 students, and employs a staff of over 1,700 teachers. These intensive immersion programs, where students are taught in small groups of six to eight, involve a six hour per day, five days a week schedule. Depending on the difficulty level of the language being taught, these classes may range from 26 to 64 weeks. Upon the successful completion of a course and the transferral of 15 general education units from another institution, students receive an Associate of Arts degree.

A selection of the languages currently being taught include:

The Language Schools are all comprised of departments, headed up by a civilian chairperson who manages staff and instructors. Teams of instructors develop curriculum, teach classes, and evaluate student performance.

The Continuing Education program teaches intermediate and advanced students.

The European and Latin American Language School is composed of three category 3 languages, one category 2 language, and four category 1 languages. Here, students can learn Serbian-Croatian, which uses Cyrillic and Latin, Hebrew, which uses consonant-based script, Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet, or Portuguese, German, French, Italian, and Spanish, which all use the Latin alphabet.

Middle Eastern Schools teach the Egyptian, Iraqi, and Levantine dialects of Arabic, as well as Modern Standard Arabic over the course of 64 weeks.

The Asian Schools teach 64-week basic courses in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean through the use of immersion and examples of cultural materials such as traditional art, food, religion, and music.

Category 3 students’ programs are 47 weeks long, category 2 student’s programs are 36 weeks, and category 1 students’ programs are 26 weeks. Teaching methods vary from commercial-book-based to Institute-specific-material learning. All students use iPods, tablet PCs, SmartBoards, SCOLA TV broadcasting, and the internet to round out their holistic language experience.

Language immersion both in the classroom and in overnight off-campus events help students hone their skills with real-life scenarios and cultural traditions.

Accreditation is granted by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges