Aims

Overall aims

ALI Swahili creates virtual space for facilitating a live encounter with East Africa and its Swahili-speaking population. Its primary aim is to offer students a means of bridging the language and culture gap and at the same time making the effort an enjoyable and enriching experience.

Format

ALI Swahili is currently available as a database in CDROM format. It consists of a set of interconnected resources from which the student is encouraged to select the ones most suitable for reaching his or her self-defined goals and for putting them to their best use at his or her own pace, while developing his or her own personal learning strategies.

Specific learning objectives

Specific learning objectives include:

• the practical mastery of everyday interaction and conversational routines;
• the ability to meaningfully participate in connected talk covering a wide area of subjects and domains of life;
• confidence in decoding and comprehending native discourse and text materials;
• a working knowledge, based on solid linguistic analysis, of an African language exhibiting the typological characteristics of the Bantu language family, of its grammar, lexicon and idioms, and the rules controlling its use in common situations of social life;
• first-hand access to the abundant documentation available in the Swahili language on East African culture, politics, history and contemporary debate;
• the pleasure of being able to read and enjoy in the original language the growing body of novels, plays, poetry, short stories and comics published in the Swahili language, some of which have a place in world literature.