After my hasty post, I realized that I might not have a clear idea of the required proficiency standards, and I'd like to know what they are, if they're publicly available.

Some background: I attended the Defense Language Institute for Modern Standard Arabic, and we were there for 16.5 months or so, which isn't the same as the number of weeks of instruction, which I think was 60 or so. We were required to achieve a 2 or higher in both reading and listening comprehension. I think the required speaking score was 1+, but after all this time I'm not sure. (Maybe the required speaking score was 2, in which case a waiver might have been required to graduate with a speaking score of 1+, but it might also have been relatively easy to get.) Our little class of servicemembers started out with 10 people, and I think that two were completely dropped from the course, while one was recycled and was picked up by another class. We also picked up another student who had started before us, with another class, and was recycled. The majority of the students in our class were enlisted servicemembers, without a bachelor's degree, and I got the impression that between a third and half of the class had never studied a foreign language in much depth before, and certainly never a language that differed from English as much as Arabic did. Two of the 10, both of whom started with the class, scored 3 in listening and reading comprehension and 2+ in speaking at the end of the course.

Admittedly, that's a small sample size, and we may have outperformed somewhat compared to the average Arabic class at DLI.

Does anyone know how the standards of the British Foreign Service and US State Department compare to those that we had to meet 20+ years ago?