Intensive Summer Multilanguage Seminar (Multilanguage)

In addition to WISLI’s five summer language institutes, the new Intensive Summer Multilanguage Seminar course, developed by Professor Katrina Daly Thompson and led by Dr. Adeola Agoke from the African Cultural Studies department at UW- Madison, allows students the opportunity to engage in supported, self-directed language study. The Multilanguage program is an 8-credit course offered fully online and taught asynchronously to help serve students who are not already well-served by traditional summer language programs for one of two reasons:

• Students who have achieved such an advanced level of language proficiency that traditional programs no longer serve their learning needs, or
• Students who are studying rarely-taught languages that are otherwise not offered in the classroom.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

A theoretical and practical exploration of second language acquisition (SLA) and self-instructional methods. Test and/or modify one or more theories/methods by putting these self-instructional methods into practice in order to learn a less commonly taught language (LCTL).

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Create an individualized study plan for learning a less commonly taught language (LCTL)
• Explain the characteristics of a good language learner according to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories
• Discuss and write about the application of SLA theories to language self-instruction
• Find, evaluate, and create learning materials for a LCTL
• Train a conversation partner to help them learn a language
• Use the internet to conduct research and share information with others
• Use metacognitive strategies to evaluate and improve their learning, compare different learning strategies, and style-shift
• Assess your achievement of their learning goals

The credit standard for this course is met by an expectation of a total of 360 hours of student engagement with the course learning activities, which include reading, writing, self-assessment, language-learning activities, meetings with speakers of the target language, and other student work as described in the syllabus.