DATE: Monday, March 6, 2006
CONTACT: Ronnie Hess, Director of Communications, Division of International Studies,
UW-Madison, (608) 262-5590, rlhess@wisc.edu or Dianna Murphy, Acting Director,
Language Institute, (608) 262-1575, diannamurphy@wisc.edu
UW-MADISON TO OFFER 32 LANGUAGES IN SUMMER 2006 OFFERINGS
Madison, WI – The UW-Madison, a national leader in language education, will offer 32 languages this summer in a variety of for-credit courses. The languages will be taught through full immersion programs, special summer institutes, and regular course offerings.
The languages include Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, English as a Second Language, Filipino, French, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Indonesian, Italian,
Japanese, Javanese, Khmer, Lao, Latin, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Norwegian,
Persian, Sanskrit, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, and
Vietnamese.
Several of the languages are offered by the South Asia Language (SASLI), Southeast Asia Language (SEASSI) Summer Institutes, and Arabic and Persian Summer Immersion Program, eight-week intensive language training programs for undergraduates, graduate students and professionals. (The programs, recognized nationwide, offer the equivalent of two semesters of language study. Informal conversations outside of class, film series, and
invited lectures complement instruction.) SASLI and SEASSI are programs of U.S.
Department of Education-designated Title VI national resource centers on the UW-Madison campus, in partnership with other educational institutions. The Center for South Asia, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and Global Studies, which coordinates the Arabic and Persian program, are three of eight Title VI national resource centers within UW-Madison’s International Institute.
The Arabic and Persian program, sponsored by the Departments of African Languages and Literature and Languages and Cultures of Asia, is designed to completely immerse students in an Arabic or Persian environment. The programs include many cultural activities such as films, lectures, and field trips to meeting points of the local Arabic and Persian communities.
Over 60 languages are taught at UW-Madison. The University is home to eleven internationally prominent departments of languages and literatures, eleven prestigious area studies centers covering every region of the world, and the Language Institute, an initiative of the College of Letters & Science, with support from the Division of International Studies. Two national programs, the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages and the National African Languages Resource Center, are based at UW-Madison. Students at the University can apply to over 100 study-abroad programs on every continent of the world except Antarctica.
For more information:
SASLI: http://www.wisc.edu/sasli/
SEASSI: http://seassi.wisc.edu/
Arabic and Persian: http://global.wisc.edu/apip/
Language Institute: www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu