For the first time in Indiana U.’s history 20 high school and middle school students will take on the African language of Swahili in a free four-week course that starts Monday.
The course was planned by IU’s African Language Program in collaboration with the STARTALK program. STARTALK is a grant-funded language program that wlll work with IU to attract students to lesser-taught languages. The grants are renewable every year; however, receiving one depends heavily on the success and number of students involved in the applying university’s language program.
Alwiya Omar, a Ph.D. in the African Studies Program and the Department of Linguistics, said the efforts have paid off.
This summer program is not the first time she has worked with STARTALK. Last summer, she worked with middle school students in Rochester, N.Y., where she collaborated with the program director and acted as an adviser.
The Swahili classes are formatted so there are two class sessions and a lunch hour each day. The first class will be a group lecture that lasts two hours. Then, during the lunch hour, associate instructors will facilitate conversation in Swahili with the attending students. The second class of the day will allow students to split into smaller groups to review the material learned throughout the day.
“It is a kind of immersion,” assistant instructor Abdulwahid Mazrui said. “This is not 100 percent immersion, but (the class) is going to be taught in Swahili and conversations (will be) in Swahili.”
Even though a four-week, three-credit class could seem daunting to the participants, Mazrui said no previous knowledge of the language is required to take the class.
“This is right from square one,” he said.
The intensive class will earn each participant three credit hours and two semesters’ worth of knowledge. There will also be contact between the program and its students throughout the upcoming school year. The summer instructors will visit the students once a month to maintain the participants’ knowledge and their interest in the language.
Though Omar commented on many of the attractive aspects of the class, there seems to be one positive attribute that stands above the rest.
“They don’t have to pay for anything,” Omar said. “What we need from the students is the motivation and dedication.”