American Institute of Indian Studies

LANGUAGE STUDY IN INDIA

Summer 2008

 

Hindi          (Jaipur)                                   Bengali       (Kolkata)                      

Tamil          (Madurai)                               Telugu        (Vizag)

Marathi      (Pune)                                     Urdu           (Lucknow)

Malayalam (Thiruvananthapuram)           Sanskrit     (Pune)

Pali/Prakrit (Pune)                                   Punjabi        (Chandigarh)

         

DEADLINE:  Jan. 31, 2008

 

Eligibility

                This is an intensive immersion-type language program for graduate and highly motivated undergraduate students at U.S. colleges and universities. Students applying for regular Hindi and for Sanskrit should have the equivalent of at least two years of prior classroom instruction; one year is required for applicants in Bengali, second-year Hindi and Tamil. Applicants for Urdu should have one year of Hindi or Urdu. Applicants for Punjabi, Telugu, Marathi and Malayalam may apply at all levels, including beginning. Applications for other languages will be considered.

 

Language Program

Participants are expected to devote their energies to activities that will increase their proficiency in all skills--speaking, listening, reading, and writing.  For ten weeks at each AIIS language center, there will be at least four hours a day of classroom instruction and individual tutorials with regular out-of-class assignments requiring interaction with community members. Attendance is mandatory in class as well as at other activities such as cultural visits, films, and plays. There is special emphasis on connecting with the local speech community and self-management of learning. Participants are encouraged to identify and prioritize their language learning needs and keep track of their language development. Students are encouraged to stay with host families. Note that this is not a research program. Participants are expected to devote all their energies to learning fine shades of the target language. Dependents or friends not enrolled in the program may not accompany students.

 

Fees and financial Aid

 Applicants should apply to their home institutions for Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, which are sufficient for travel, maintenance and the $2,500 program fee. Funding may also be available through the U.S. State Department’s Critical Languages Scholarship program. Information about that program can be found at www.caorc.org The AIIS will be able to support a limited number of admitted students who cannot obtain other funding.

 

Applications

All applications must include a check for the $25 processing fee. Applications may be downloaded from the Web www.indiastudies.org, or else obtained from member institutions, or from AIIS headquarters. Completed applications should be mailed to:

 

American Institute of Indian Studies, 1130 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 Tel. (773) 702-8638. <aiis@uchicago.edu >          

                                        http://www.indiastudies.org

 

The American Institute of Indian Studies is a cooperative, non-profit organization, whose members are American colleges and universities with a special interest in Indian studies.