African Language Programs

African Language Studies Offered at UCLA

UCLA offers training on transregional and indigenous languages spoken throughout the African continent, namely Amharic, Swahili, Tigrinya, and Yoruba.

UCLA offers training on transregional and indigenous languages spoken throughout the Africa continent, namely Amharic, Swahili, Tigrinya, and Yoruba. ASC, with the UCLA Center for World Languages, developed a blended teaching model that combines a sustained commitment to lectureships in these languages with a wider range of African language tutorials, thereby striking a productive balance between fixed core offerings at three different levels (elementary, intermediate, and advanced) and more flexible ad hoc secondary offerings targeting specific student and project needs.

Curricula for these courses encourage students to engage with oral and written literature as well as for immersion and interaction with diasporas in Los Angeles and through study abroad. Academic program chairs collaborate with the ASC Faculties to ensure that student mastery of core languages, concepts, theories, socio-economic transformations, and political studies pertinent to the African continent are reflected in degree requirements.

In addition, the delivery framework is designed for three instructional modalities: 1) real-time and co-present instruction in UCLA classrooms, 2) hybrid instruction, whereby students and the instructor collaborate online in real time, utilizing Zoom as an instructional platform, and 3) 100% online instruction. The blended model is developing into a regional hub that serves other UC campuses and their associated school districts and communities.

These language courses combine real-time co-present classroom instruction with online components that allow UC students to enroll, thus boosting enrollment while generating economies of scale. Our online delivery can also extend to teacher training and high school students, especially those within the greater Los Angeles Area: Santa Monica School District (SMSD), Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD), and LA Unified School District (LAUSD). UCLA is ideally positioned to serve its own undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and those of its sister campuses, as well as their associated school districts. With the only state-supported African Studies Center in southern California, UCLA is rebuilding African Languages Instruction into a dynamic and cost-effective regional program to serve educational needs, heritage interests, and diversity values of the public university and of the public that it serves.

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Published: Thursday, February 17, 2022