Hindi Program

East West Language Institute offers a variety of approaches to learning Hindi:

• Structured semester classes: ranging from 3 to 4.5 hours per week
• Intensive classes: 36 hours of instruction per week at certain times of the year
• Private tuition: flexible instruction geared towards an individual’s specific needs
• Conversation Partner practice: Instead of grammar instruction, just talk! Improve your listening comprehension and speaking fluency.

Each student comes with different goals for learning Hindi. Each student comes from a different background with differing abilities and time to devote to language study. That is why each student is advised to complete the Language Learning Goals/Semester Learning Plan to help them plan their own program for studying Hindi. Students are encouraged to discuss their goals with their teachers and/or the Director Taking time and thought in forming your goals and plans will help you as you enroll and decide on what classes and tuition to take.

Shall I take classes or tuition?

All students are encouraged to take both classes and tuition, because we believe most students will learn better with this combination. Tuition definitely has a vital role to play since it is tailored to individual needs. However those who take only tuition miss out on many helpful dynamics only present in a class set-up. In a class students learn from one another, instruction can be more interesting and creative, and there is more energy and discipline. Tests, too, are quite motivational in helping us to learn. Along with improvement in the quality of our program, classes also are much cheaper for you the student. The Semester Package deal (see below) is offered by EWLI to provide financial incentive to students to take both classes and tuition in combination, and also to commit to Hindi studies for an entire semester.

Semester Package

A total of 130 hours of instruction time are provided in this package over the 20 week course of the semester with the following breakdown:

90 Hours Class (4 and a half hours per week) and 40 hours Individual tuition (2 hours per week). There is significant financial savings when you take the Semester Package as opposed to taking the equivalent amount of classes and tuition time without the semester package. The Semester Package is only available to those committing to a full semester of studies. Couples who take their private tuition time on a shared basis as a husband/wife team can save even more money on the Semester Package.

Curriculum

We have a three semester program for Beginner Hindi. The three classes are Beginner Hindi A, B, and C. We use the Landour textbook, Introductory Hindi Course.

The six intensive courses cover the same material, with two intensive courses being equivalent to one semester course. The six courses are labeled “Intensive Hindi 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6”.

We also offer Intermediate Hindi, Advanced Hindi, Bible Hindi, and Conversational Hindi and Survival Hindi classes occasionally when there is sufficient demand for them.

Beginner Hindi A

The semester course covers both Hindi 1 and 2.

Hindi 1

The entire Hindi syllabary is covered so that students have all the knowledge necessary to begin reading and writing the Devanagri script.

Topics: greetings, location, basic questions and answers. Grammar: introduction to imperatives, pronouns, nouns, adjectives, postpositions, and questions.

Main Text: Introductory Hindi Course, chapters 1-7

Hindi 2

Topics: Eating, Getting around/Transportation, Hotel, Renting a House, School, Dealing with vendors, shopping, date, time, Basic conversation. Grammar: Plurals, Oblique's, Quantifiers, Adverbs, Negation, Intensive compound; further work on postpositions and pronouns. Introduction to compulsives, infinitives, and simple past tense.

Text: Introductory Hindi Course, chapters 8-13

Beginner Hindi B

The semester course covers both Hindi 3 and 4

Hindi 3

Topics: Possession, shopping for fruits and vegetables, health/medicine/doctors, traveling, family and relationships, agriculture and rural life

Grammar: Present continuous, perfect, imperfect, future, and imminent future tenses, Participles, reflexive pronouns, agent ne construction, intransitive and transitive verbs, relative clauses.

Text: Introductory Hindi Course, chapters 14-18

Hindi 4

Topics: Indian food, restaurants, touring India/tourism, weather, parties, festivals and celebrations, Indian culture, history, and geography.

Grammar: Subjunctive, relative and correlative constructions, subordinate clauses, more on compulsives, potential and completive compounds; conjunctive participle; indefinite pronouns, uses of participles, true and neuter passive.

Text: Introductory Hindi Course, chapters 19-23

Beginner Hindi C

The semester course covers both Hindi 5 and 6

Hindi 5

Topics: Weather, News, health and sickness, cleanliness, kitchens and cooking, Indian government, jobs and professions

Grammar: Causatives; Inceptive, permissive, acquisitive, continuative, and progressive compounds; contingent tense

Text: Introductory Hindi Course, chapters 24-27

Hindi 6

Topics: Stories, narratives; Indian history, culture, and religion; Traditions, mythology, Christianity in India, rural life and rural day markets

Grammar: Presumptive and potential tenses; Frequentative and imminent compounds; various idiomatic uses. Grammar review of the entire book, Hindi 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Text: Introductory Hindi Course, chapters 28-30 and Review of entire book

Student Placement

Those who have never studied Hindi should start with the first course. The description of each beginner class as given above should help each student place himself /herself in the correct class. Consultation with their language advisor and EWLI personnel (either the Director or Senior Teacher) is also encouraged to aid correct placement. Students who have already used the Landour book or who have taken classes with EWLI should be easy to place in the correct class.

Policies governing the day-to-day operations of the Language Institute, use of the facilities available for students (the Hindi/Urdu Library and Language Learning Lab), and Hindi/Urdu learning guidelines are outlined in the Student Handbook. All students should read this carefully before enrolling

Hindi Conversation Partner Program

The way to learn to speak Hindi is to speak Hindi! Are you having trouble with fluency? The Individual Conversation Partner program is designed to help you overcome the fluency barrier. The purpose of Individual Conversation Partners is to provide students with the opportunity to use their Hindi outside of the class or tuition context. The Individual Conversation Partner is not a trained teacher. They will not be able to help you with grammar questions. They are only provided to give you someone with whom you can improve your Hindi conversational fluency (and at a much cheaper price!) They will give minimal if any correction. They will use very little English since they themselves probably don’t know much English. They will only seek to understand what you say, and seek to make you understand what they are saying. The emphasis will be on successful communication of ideas. They will be primed with materials and topics to aid conversation and trained in how to keep conversations going. But other than this, they will be like an average member of society for you to practice your Hindi conversational abilities with.

Those students who are following the method and course of study recommended by On-Site Language Services (OSLS) can work through their projects and self-directed Hindi learning assignments with one of the EWLI Conversation Partners.

Presently, Renu Kumar and Mohan Singh are conversation partners at EWLI.

Hindi / Urdu On-site classes

East West Language Institute conducts on-site University credit classes for Brown University, Rutgers University and the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) in Delhi.

Intensive courses have also been conducted in Lucknow, Pune, and Bangalore. If your organization or group is interested in hosting an on-site class, please contact the Director for more details. We may be able to customize a course for your specific needs.

It is occasionally possible for us to cater to individuals who want Hindi instruction in their home. This will be a much more expensive option for individuals, since the time and cost of transportation both coming and going from our facilities in Said'ul'ajaib will be chargeable. Also, scheduling considerations often prohibit it, but when there is such a possibility, as when a teacher has an afternoon without any regular students, we are open to considering it. Contact the Director with such requests.

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