What are individuals experience with the DLAB?

Maj Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 02:40:33 -0400

Response by PO1 William "Chip" Nagel made Jun 4 at 2014 2:58 AM

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 02:58:58 -0400

You getting to take the DLAB? There is a reason I'm a communicator for the Intell community and not a Linguist that thing is a Bear. BS Language and you are supposed to figure out. Used as a gauge to figure out how easily you pick-up new languages. Now if you make it talk about a cool school. Monterrey, CA with Native Speakers of about any damn language you can conceive of. I worked with Splings (Spanish Linguists) RLINGs (Russian Linguists) PERLINGS, ARLINGS and Farsi Linguists. Even learned from my Arabic Linguist how to say "Your Mother has Sex with Goats" Great thing to learn. I remember trying to sell our youngest linguist to a Local in Dubai, He didn't think that was funny.

Response by SPC(P) Thomas Beliveau made Oct 29 at 2014 2:39 AM

SPC(P) Thomas Beliveau — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 02:39:39 -0400

Sir,

The DLAB is a beast as previously stated. I had no idea what I was doing half of the test and had trouble thinking afterwards. I thought I did horribly, but ended up qualifying for a CAT IV language (my recruiter said, "Well I have good news and bad news. The good news is you scored really well. The bad news is you ain't learning Spanish.") In all honesty though, it is kind of a good idea of what DLI is going to be like; having no idea what is going on, hoping for the best, and wanting to bang your head against a wall. Best of luck sir and let us know how you do!

Response by SFC(P) Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 29 at 2014 11:33 AM

SFC(P) Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 11:33:05 -0400

Sir, I honestly don't think it's a good indicator of your ability to learn a language. I saw numerous individuals bomb out of DLI that had better scores on their DLAB than I did. Can't go much into specifics about the DLAB (they brief you on that when you take it) but I'd say the best way to prepare for it is to work on pattern recognition. If you can recognize patterns quickly, you can ace the DLAB and learn really any language effectively.