The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) expanded its reach as it opened French and Nihongo Courses at the Department of Foreign Affairs – Office of Consular Affairs (DFA-OCA) at Aseana Business Park, Parañaque City.

The participants are personnel from DFA-OCA and other partner government agencies. These courses were conducted as a response to requests received from consular and satellite offices for FSI to make language classes more accessible to them. The funding of these Enhanced and Expanded Language Programs which include these language courses at DFA Aseana was sourced from the Congress-introduced increase in appropriations and new budgetary items for FY 2018.

Patterned after the regular Foreign Language Program (FLP) at FSI, each level of instruction is composed of 90 training hours. The Basic Program has three levels. This involves the acquisition of adequate communication skills and knowledge to meet the fundamental requirements of basic grammar, pronunciation, and comprehension of the language. There were 26 participants who completed the first level which started on 10 May 2018 and ended 23 August 2018; participants will then proceed with the Level II, which runs from 28 August to 06 December 2018.