science

Interagency Language Roundtable

Interagency Language Roundtable is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Interagency Language Roundtable rather than just read about it. In short: The Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) is an unfunded organization comprising various agencies of the United States federal government with the purpose of coordinating and sharing information on foreign language activities at the federal level. The ILR's primary function is to act as an avenue for the varying participating federal agencies to keep abreast of modern methods and technology regarding the teaching of…

Key takeaways

Interagency Language Roundtable belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Interagency Language Roundtable to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Interagency Language Roundtable from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) is an unfunded organization comprising various agencies of the United States federal government with the purpose of coordinating and sharing information on foreign language activities at the federal level. The ILR's primary function is to act as an avenue for the varying participating federal agencies to keep abreast of modern methods and technology regarding the teaching of language, the use of language, and any other language related issues.

Membership The ILR membership consists of a large number of people with professional interest in language with regards to the teaching, learning, or use of language in a professional context. About 60% of the membership are federal employees.

Committees Aside from general membership, the ILR has three standing special interests committees:

Steering Committee The Steering committee is responsible for planning ILR direction and events, and is composed of members from eight different federal agencies. Testing Committee Training Committee Translation and Interpretation Committee. Committees are chaired by federal employees from five different agencies. Additionally, the ILR hosts the ILR Special Interest Group (SIG) on the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL). CASL SIG meetings, unlike ILR plenary meetings, are not open to general membership, allowing only federal representatives in attendance.

Joining the ILR Any interested person may attend unrestricted ILR plenary meetings and events, requiring only two days' advance registration via the ILR home page. To become an ILR member, a person must first join their mailing list. Joining a specific committee requires only notifying a co-chair of the committee involved, and regularly attending meetings. Further details are listed on the ILR website. Membership is free.

Meetings Plenary meetings are held monthly between September and June. Lectures and demonstrations on linguistic general interest topics are featured at every plenary meeting. Prior to each plenary meeting, each committee meets to discuss specific topics of interest. Some committee meetings are not open to general membership, due to coverage of certain topics of federal interest. These meetings' attendance restrictions are announced in advance. Most plenary meetings boast between 75 and 100 attendees.

Officers All officers of the ILR are volunteers who hold full-time federal positions elsewhere.

The Foreign Service Institute, the National Cryptologic School, and the Defense Language Institute lend additional minor clerical assistance.

Formation The origins of the ILR can be traced back to 1955, when the Foreign Service Institute's Howard Sollenberger, the CIA's Clyde Sargent, and James Frith of the Air Force Language Program, conversed regarding the need for communication and coordination between federal agencies in training, policies, and practices of foreign languages. Subsequent meetings included attendance by members of the local academic community as well as Charles Ferguson, Director of the Center for Applied Linguistics. The ILR was formally institutionalized in 1973, after a study conducted by the General Accounting Office demonstrated the value of the organization.

Contributions to the field of linguistics Since the 1950s, the ILR has made a number of contributions to the field of linguistics, both for American and foreign linguists, including, but not limited to:

ILR Proficiency Level Descriptions – This is a system of measuring the language proficiency of an individual, on a scale of 0 to 5. Proficiency level of 0 equates to no knowledge of a language, while the proficiency level of 5 equates to a highly educated foreigner or native speaker. Proficiency levels in excess of a whole number, but not reaching the next whole number are represented with the 'plus' sign, for example, a linguist who speaks at a near native level might be represented as having a 4+ level proficiency. ILR Translation Performance Skill Level Descriptions – Translation proficiency measurements based on the ILR Proficiency Level Descriptions, developed in 2005. ILR Interpretation Performance Skill Level Descriptions – Interpretation proficiency measurements based on the ILR Translation Performance Skill Level Descriptions, developed in 2006. Co-sponsorship with the National Virtual Translation Center of the "Languages of the World" website. The development of a widely used interagency training manual for oral proficiency testing candidates.

See also Defense Language Aptitude Battery Defense Language Proficiency Tests Center for Advanced Study of Language ILR scale

References

External links ILR Home Page CASL Home Page Languages of the World

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Interagency Language Roundtable

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Interagency Language Roundtable claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Interagency Language Roundtable before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Interagency Language Roundtable ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Interagency Language Roundtable

In research: Interagency Language Roundtable appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Interagency Language Roundtable in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Interagency Language Roundtable is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Language education in the United States, Language education organizations, Linguistics organizations, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Interagency Language Roundtable outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Interagency Language Roundtable in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Interagency Language Roundtable means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Interagency Language Roundtable out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Interagency Language Roundtable in simple terms?

Why does Interagency Language Roundtable matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Interagency Language Roundtable?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Interagency Language Roundtable.