Language Training Center (LTC)

This intensive, introductory course covers the fundamentals of the target language, i.e. conversational skills, everyday vocabulary, linguistic structures and essential grammatical forms, as well as culture. Students will be able to use the language for rapport building and obtaining basic information.

1. Communicate and exchange information about familiar topics using phrases and simple sentences;
2. Handle short social interactions in everyday situations by asking and answering simple questions;
3. Read and write basic phrases and short sentences.

Target Goal: ILR 0+ or above (recommended course length of four to eight weeks)

This intensive, introductory course covers the basics of the target language. Students have no prior knowledge of the language. They will use it for professional purposes. Students will use acquired language skills to build capacity for interpersonal communication beyond simple rapport building and routine survival tasks, such as verifying information on increasingly complex descriptions and narrations of people, places, objects, and events.

1. Satisfy minimum courtesy requirements and maintain very simple face-to-face conversations on familiar topics;
2. Handle short social interactions in everyday situations by asking and answering simple questions;
3. Read very simple, connected, written material in a form equivalent to usual printing or typescript, as well as known language elements that have been recombined in new ways to achieve different meanings at a similar level of simplicity;
4. Write basic phrases, short sentences, and questions on very familiar topics, as well as simple phone messages, excuses, and notes to service people.

This intensive, advanced course develops students’ professional skills in the target language. Students use the language as a part of their profession, e.g. cryptologic language analysts (CLAs), and take the course to sustain and improve. The general aim of this course is to enhance students’ linguistic and cultural competences through a variety of relevant tasks, and to broaden their understanding of some of the current social, political and economic issues in the country or region where the language is spoken.

Course objectives:

1. Describe and narrate events from print/multimedia sources;
2. Comprehend and contextualize a structured argument that explains and defends an opinion within extended discourse;
3. Discuss topics concretely and abstractly;
4. Deal with a linguistically unfamiliar content;
5. Recognize and attempt to replicate a high degree of linguistic/lexical accuracy;
6. Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the target language’s culture and apply that knowledge to the context;
7. Read with almost complete comprehension a variety of authentic prose material on unfamiliar subjects;
8. Interpret material correctly, relate ideas and "read between the lines”;
9. Follow accurately the essentials of conversations between educated native speakers, reasonably clear telephone calls, radio broadcasts, news stories similar to wire service reports, oral reports, etc.

This advanced immersive course at the ILR level 3 (reading and listening), and levels 2 to 2+ (speaking), exposes students to the target language and culture. The program is designed to help learners gain practice and confidence in using the target language at professional levels of proficiency in listening and reading, and in communicating orally in formal and informal environments. This includes interactions with guest speakers and conversation partners, and, when the course takes place at SDSU-LARC facilities, excursions to communities and businesses where the target language is used.

1. Handle with ease and confidence a large number of communicative tasks.
2. Produce speech using paragraph level discourse consistently.
3. Engage in conversation on a variety of cultural and social topics formally and informally.
4. Deal with a situation with a complication.
5. Maintain a good degree of linguistic accuracy.
6. Understand standard speech from a variety of countries.
7. Follow linguistically complex extended discourse (academic, speeches, professional settings, etc.).
8. Command a broad range of vocabulary, including precise, and specialized type of vocabulary embedded in complex grammatical structures.
9. Interpret cultural references.
10. Understand text from different genres dealing with a wide range of familiar and unfamiliar subjects.
11. Understand text featuring argumentation, supported opinion, and hypothesis, and use abstract linguistic formulations.
12. Comprehend text through the command of broad, precise, and specialized vocabulary and complex structures.
13. Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the target language’s culture and society and apply that knowledge to the context.

This intensive, introductory course is designed for students who have significant knowledge of a related language or dialect, e.g. prior knowledge of MSA and learning the Iraqi dialect. They may or may not be learning the target language for professional purposes. While instruction begins at the introductory level, because of knowledge of the related language, students advance faster than in an introductory course.

1. Read material such as announcements of public events, simple prose containing biographical information or narration of events, and straightforward newspaper headlines;
2. Follow essential points of written discussion at an elementary level on topics in his/her special professional field;
3. Flexibility in understanding a range of circumstances beyond immediate survival needs and basic social demands;
4. Able to satisfy minimum courtesy requirements and maintain very simple face-to-face conversations on familiar topics.

Target Goal: 1/1+ or above (dependent on course length; recommended course length of six to eight weeks)