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Language Learning

Within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), language instruction in 18 modern languages is offered, regularly or semi-regularly, on campus or through collaborative, long-distance learning consortia:

  • 1 African (Swahili)
  • 6 Asian/Eurasian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Uzbek, Indonesian)
  • 1 modern Middle Eastern (Arabic)
  • 10 European/Slavic/Latin American (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Russian, Czech, Polish, Turkish, and Croatian)

Several less commonly taught languages (including Kannada) have been offered in the past thanks to support from Title VI (NRC or UISFL) funding.

The Croatian Ministry of Education has helped to support the teaching of Croatian on campus as well as student participation in an intensive language immersion program in Zagreb for the past several years.

In 2007-2008, Modern Hebrew I and II will be offered on a pilot basis, through the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, funded as a Saturday and Evening course.

Fulbright FLTA Program

Without Department of Education funding, the University has taken creative approaches to staffing less commonly taught language courses, often with financial or administrative support provided by International Programs. This has included utilization of the Fulbright FLTA program for the teaching of Indonesian, Turkish, Hindi and Arabic, and participation in consortia with other Regents or CIC institutions for the teaching of Czech, Polish, and Uzbek.

Second Language Acquisition

The University is particularly strong in the area of Second Language Acquisition. The Ph.D. program in Second Language Acquisition has graduated two cohorts of students and is well regarded nationally and internationally.

Language Pedagogy

The Colleges of Education and Liberal Arts and Sciences boast faculty with significant expertise in the area of less commonly taught language pedagogy. The University’s strength in the area of Chinese language pedagogy, in particular, led to its recent recognition as one of only a few Confucius Institutes in the U.S. With funding from the Chinese government, the Institute offers accelerated Chinese language courses to UI students as well as introductory courses to the larger community. Recently, CLAS has begun offering introductory Russian to the community, as well.

ALLNet

Students and faculty may study languages not otherwise offered on campus through IP’s ALLNet (Autonomous Language Learning Network), a program that provides participants with tutors and instructional materials free of charge.

With the support of ALLNet staff, learners can customize their study plans to learn basic language skills or improve upon existing skills in preparation for research and study abroad. Languages offered through ALLNet have included Dutch, Norwegian, Ewe, Tibetan, Bengali, Swedish, Latvian, Hungarian, Romanian, Nepali, Icelandic and Dari.

Foreign Language Incentive Programs

The UI offers two foreign language incentive programs. In FLIP option one, entering students who complete an approved course at a level beyond the General Education requirement with a grade of B- or higher receive 4 semester hours of “retroactive” credit, in addition to credit for the course itself.

In FLIP option two, students who completed four years of second-language study in high school (or who have completed the foreign language component of the General Education Program by some other means, including foreign language study at The University of Iowa), may, at any time before graduation, earn up to 4 s.h. of bonus credit for study of a language different from that which they studied in the General Education program.

Formal Language Across Curriculum

Currently, The University of Iowa does not offer any formal Languages Across the Curriculum (FLAC/LAC/LxC) or Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) opportunities to students.

Initiatives in this area have been isolated to individual faculty experiments, and have included a Mathematics course taught in Spanish, a history of the Holocaust course with German language components, a Latin American Politics Political Science course with Spanish language components, and an Introduction to Marketing course with a special Honors section that incorporated CLAC-style pedagogy.

Although actual practice  is quite limited, many UI faculty have indicated interest in LAC/CLAC, and there are indications of potential for growth in this area.