Mapping TW2K Language Assets to the USG ILR Scores

[Damocles]

The United States military along with the foreign affairs and intelligence communities utilize a common scoring system to characterize and determine language proficiency for positions and personnel.

http://www.govtilr.org/

The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center and Foreign Service Institute School of Language Studies are the primary centers for language acquisition for US Government personnel. Students enter language training at these institutions with the goal of achieving an Inter-agency Language Round-table (ILR) score that matches the needs of the position they will eventually encumber.

ILR language scores are expressed as two numbers, the first indicating the foreign language student’s proficiency at speaking, and the second indicating reading proficiency. The ILR scale goes from 0 to 5, with lowest score being S-0/R-0 indicating no proficiency in the tested foreign language and the highest score being a S-5/R-5, which would indicate a level of proficiency equal to an educated native language speaker with a culturally acceptable accent.

As reprinted from http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILRscale2.htm, someone with an S-2 score should be able to display the following level of language proficiency:

Speaking 2 (Limited Working Proficiency) Able to satisfy routine social demands and limited work requirements. Can handle routine work-related interactions that are limited in scope. In more complex and sophisticated work-related tasks, language usage generally disturbs the native speaker. Can handle with confidence, but not with facility, most normal, high-frequency social conversational situations including extensive, but casual conversations about current events, as well as work, family, and autobiographical information. The individual can get the gist of most everyday conversations but has some difficulty understanding native speakers in situations that require specialized or sophisticated knowledge. The individual's utterances are minimally cohesive. Linguistic structure is usually not very elaborate and not thoroughly controlled; errors are frequent. Vocabulary use is appropriate for high-frequency utterances. but unusual or imprecise elsewhere. Examples: While these interactions will vary widely from individual to individual, the individual can typically ask and answer predictable questions in the workplace and give straightforward instructions to subordinates. Additionally, the individual can participate in personal and accommodation-type interactions with elaboration and facility; that is, can give and understand complicated, detailed, and extensive directions and make non-routine changes in travel and accommodation arrangements. Simple structures and basic grammatical relations are typically controlled; however, there are areas of weakness. In the commonly taught languages, these may be simple markings such as plurals, articles, linking words, and negatives or more complex structures such as tense/aspect usage, case morphology. passive constructions, word order, and embedding. (Has been coded S-2 in some nonautomated applications.) [Data Code 20]

Reading score levels are available here: http://www.govtilr.org/Skills/ILRscale4.htm

Converting TW2.2 assets into ILR scale equivalents for PCs whose native language is English requires dividing the asset by either 2.5, 3, or 4.5, depending on the difficulty of the language. Fractional results of .34 or greater are represented by adding a + qualifier to the base score (ignore fractions of .33 or below).

Language studies as the Foreign Service Institute are geared toward helping student achieve a 2/2 or 3/3 score in a language, prior to an assignment overseas. A course of language is typically 30, 36, 44, or 88 weeks long, with some variation depending on scheduling. Students taking World Languages (French, Spanish, etc.) are expected to achieve a 3/3 level of proficiency in approximately 30 weeks. 3/3 in a hard language typically requires 44 weeks of training. 3/3 in a super hard language requires 88 weeks, so often times, students are given 44 weeks to reach the 2/2 level before being sent to overseas. Language study and acquisition continue in-country through various mechanisms, such as tutors, study groups, etc.

A break out of the language categories used by FSI to rank the difficulty of language learning for native English speakers is listed below.

Category I (“World Languages”): Languages closely cognate with English:

Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish

To map a TW2.2 Character’s language asset to the ILR scale for these languages, divide the asset by 2.5. Thus a PC with Charisma 6 and Language (French): 3, would have a S-3+/R-3+ skill in French.

Category II (“Hard Languages”): Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English. This list is not exhaustive:

Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Belarussian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Khmer, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajiki), Polish, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Zulu

Other languages which can be treated as “Hard Languages” for the purpose of these rules include:

German, Indonesian, Malay, Swahili, Tetum

To map a TW2.2 Character’s language asset to the ILR scale for these languages, divide the asset by 3. Thus a PC with Charisma 6 and Language (Czech): 3, would have a S-3/R-3 skill in Czech.

Category III (“Superhard Languages”): Languages that are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers:

Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean

To map a TW2.2 Character’s language asset to the ILR scale for these languages, divide the asset by 4.5. Thus a PC with Charisma 6 and Language (Arabic): 3, would have a S-2/R-2 skill in Arabic.

Note that maximum score for a language is 5/5 (not 5+, 6, etc.). Ignore all results above 5/5.

A PCs native languages count as one level lower for IRL scale conversion. This ensures that a PC with an average Charisma score of 5 or higher and Language (Native) 10 will always have a 5/5 in their native language. A PC with Charisma 2 and Language (Superhard Native) 10 would have S-4/S-4 in their Superhard language, representing poor language education, elocution, or a local/regional accent or dialect that impedes communication.

To add variety to ILR scores, a PC may speak or read better than he or she read or writes. A 0.5 shift can be made between speaking or reading to represent this difference between speaking and reading levels. Thus a 3/3 in Arabic, could optionally be S-3+/R-2+ for a character who speaks at a higher level than he or she reads. As players may typically prefer their PCs speak at a higher level than they read, this shift should be allowed for no more than a number of languages equal to 1/3 of the PC’s Charisma, rounding all fractions down.

In addition, as an optional rule, all Disguise tasks should be one level harder in difficulty if the PC doesn't have at least a 2/2 in the target language. All disguise tasks should be one level easier they have a 4/4 or greater in the target language.

As an aside, players who wish to use the Government Agent career path to represent members of the US Foreign Service should add 1 point of Language skill (Language: 3 total) in lieu of Small Arms: 1 . All other Entry Requirement and First Term Skills are applicable. In the event of war, they will not be drafted, but continue as a diplomat. Subsequent term skills remain the same. Terms as Foreign Service Officers are treated the same as military officers for the purpose of determining starting funds.

Now armed with IRL score meanings and the ability to translate Player Character assets into IRL scores, go forth and impress your Polish partisan friends with your Limited Working Proficiency of their Category II Hard language!