Introduction
Swahili (also known as Kiswahili) is the lingua franca of Eastern and Central Africa and is one of the working languages of the African Union. While Swahili has been taught at IU for over 25 years, it is not taught in Indiana high schools or lower grades. The main goal of the proposed STARTALK Swahili program is to introduce Swahili to Bloomington High schools, initially, as a nonresidential program. In the future we would like to offer it as a residential program and make it available to all Indiana high schools
STARTALK Swahili is an intensive, four-week course for 8th - 12th graders that meets daily from Monday through Friday with classroom instruction of 3.5 hours and an hour of conversation. On successful completion of the course, students will get 3 credits. In the afternoon, there will be one and a half hours of small group sessions which will focus on reinforcement of materials introduced in the morning sessions via interactive activities like role plays, vocabulary games, and songs. At the end of the program students will participate in a festival which will allow them to share their Swahili language and culture experiences to the local community. By the end of the program, we expect the students to reach ACTFL Novice Mid. A tuition benefit is provided to participants in the program.