Fundamentals of the Swahili language and culture. Emphasis on grammar, pronunciation, reading, writing, and conversational skills. Additional laboratory work required.
Athena Title
Elementary Swahili I
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will construct simple sentences that are grammatically correct and pragmatically acceptable by native speakers.
Students will write a 300-word essay using simple Swahili words and phrases.
Students will use the learned Swahili words and phrases to sustain a five to ten minutes of conversation that includes self-introduction, introducing others, describing objects, reporting incidents or events, including dates and times.
Students will identify basic cultural norms and expectations related to the Swahili language.
Students will read and demonstrate comprehension of simple Swahili words, phrases, and short stories.
Topical Outline
1. Introductory information about the history, culture, and geographical location
of the Swahili peoples.
2. Basic sound patterns and their cultural base.
3. Basic conversational structures: greetings, introducing oneself, how to start a
conversation, cultural and social codes in conversations.
4. Basic parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition,
conjunction.
5. Basic sentence structure (focusing on pragmatics, grammatical relations of
sentence units that build up simple and complex sentences and their cultural base
interpretations).
6. The cultural implications of voice: active and passive, causative, reflexives
(these will be introduced with reference to the different verb forms that affect
the overall meaning of a statement/utterance).
