On Monday, June 20th, the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Language Institute (APTLI) welcomed 58 undergraduate, graduate, professional, and non-traditional students from across the country to UW-Madison for its eight-week long intensive language program. APTLI offers all three languages at the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, with students receiving the equivalent of an academic year’s worth of language instruction (160 in-class contact hours) and earning a total of eight credits over the summer. APTLI students have the opportunity to meet with language tutors throughout the program to review grammar concepts, vocabulary, and practice dialogue. APTLI also provides a full calendar of co-curricular activities, events, and lectures related to Middle Eastern languages, area studies and culture. For Summer 2022, APTLI is collaborating with a partner center, the Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (CESSI), to bring students additional joint programming to further enhance its offerings.
Summer 2022 also marked the launch of APTLI’s Madison Gateway Scholarship which was developed to support Madison Area Technical College (MATC) students wishing to study at APTLI. The scholarship was created with the goal of increasing access to Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) learning for people of underserved populations, and create a pathway for success for MATC language students.
After two summers of virtual programming, APTLI is delighted to be back on the UW-Madison campus again this year. While all courses are now being offered in-person, APTLI has also been able to accommodate some distance learners in video conferencing classrooms, and has COVID protocols and instructional plans in place.
APTLI instructors from across the nation and overseas arrived a week before classes started to attend the pedagogy workshop. Instructors had a week-long training facilitated by Dr. Nâlân
Erbil where they had the opportunity to discuss and share best practices and lessons from online teaching. “Having instructors in-person again after two years is really refreshing,” Dr Erbil noted “ and it has helped us to strengthen the ties between the teaching and administrative staff and foster an even stronger collaborative teaching and learning community on our campus”. During the eight-week program, Dr. Erbil will be doing in-classroom visits and leading weekly pedagogy meetings with instructors.
APTLI runs from June 20th to August 12th, 2022. Learn more at aptli.wisc.edu.