The Beloit College Center for Language Studies has been awarded a $100 thousand dollar grant to support study in the Arabic and Chinese language programs this summer. The program, “The Olympics and Beyond: Summer Intensive Arabic or Chinese Language Study at Beloit,” was selected for funding under the STARTALK Program funded by Congress to encourage study in critical languages and to provide curricular materials that will be shared with K-12 programs at other institutions.
The Beloit College program, an 8-week intensive program starting June 14, 2008 , is designed to provide 20 talented high school students with the opportunity to complete a year’s works of Arabic or Chinese language training over the summer.
“Our program is designed to bring students to higher levels of proficiency in all five skills−speaking, listening, writing, reading , and culture−in a short period of time,” says Patricia Zody, director of the Center for Language Studies at Beloit College. “We want to help them to continue to develop and maintain these skills after the summer program concludes and to teach them to value the study of languages as a way, not only to open up new worlds, but also to learn about themselves.” In addition to the summer study, the program will also create a curriculum that builds on the strengths of the communicative approach while maintaining the expectations of a college-level course. The curriculum will focus on the integration of culture both inside and outside of the classroom through a series of projects, activities and events that are directly related to what is happening in the classroom.
“The theme of the Olympics opens up possibilities for students and faculty to create cultural products, practices and perspectives based on what they are learning in class,” Zody says. The program is intense and will involve more than five instructional hours per day in small classes. Students will live in the residential halls of Beloit College with instructors and tutors. In the course of the summer, they will have covered a year’s worth of language training and will have earned 12 semester hours of credit from Beloit College.
Students who will be entering college in the fall will have the advantage of studying Arabic or Chinese at the second or third year level. Those entering their senior year in high school will have the ability to continue study of these critical languages in their hometowns or to engage in serious distance-learning courses, self instructional language programs, or study abroad programs.
All educational costs of the students participating in the program, who must be at least 17 years of age, will be covered under the grant. Students are responsible for room and board costs. Applications for the program are now available online at http://www.summerlanguages.com.
This is the second year of the STARTALK program at Beloit College which accommodated 16 students last summer. STARTALK is designed to create kindergarten through grade 12 programs that have future students entering college with advanced levels of proficiency in critical languages.