Arizona State University is offering Critical Languages Institute’s (CLI) summer intensive language programs. ASU's application for 2022 is now open and they are offering courses in 14 less-commonly-taught languages: Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Hebrew, Indonesian, Kazakh, Macedonian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Tatar, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek. High-quality and low-cost language training is crucial to preparing the next generation of scholars and practitioners. Find our announcement on funding here.
For the past two years, we have held our language programs online. CLI served more students than ever before and both internal and independent proficiency testing demonstrated that these students made substantial gains in fluency and comprehension. This is a reflection not only of their focus and determination, but of the dedication, energy, and creativity of our CLI faculty.
The achievements of our students and faculty, especially in such challenging and often devastating times, has reaffirmed our belief in the importance of providing these language-learning opportunities. (You can hear some of our 2020 students, as well as our 2019 students, discuss their CLI experiences on our website: https://melikian.asu.edu/cli.) In 2022, we look to safely return to in-person instruction on ASU’s Tempe campus and at our study-abroad locations. ASU currently mandates facial coverings in classrooms and other meeting spaces and many in our campus community are pushing for additional public health measures.
Classes at CLI meet 4 four hours a day, 5 days a week and students earn from 8 to 13 transferable credit hours. Experienced native-speaker faculty, small classes sizes, and a focus on communication all play a role in fostering student success; speaking proficiency exit testing has demonstrated that participants make substantial gains in comprehension and fluency. Internal testing at the end of our 7- or 8-week first-year programs showed that nearly 60% of first-year students were able to communicate at the intermediate level or better.
Thanks to a full tuition waiver from ASU for all CLI students and generous scholarship programs, CLI makes intensive language study and study abroad accessible to participants of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We will once again offer over 20 Title VIII fellowships to current and incoming graduate students. This prestigious award program provides up to $10,000 in funding for the study of the languages of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We also offer Project GO scholarships for ROTC students taking Russian or Indonesian and Melikian Center Awards Program scholarships, open to all applicants for any of the CLI languages. In 2021, over 65% of CLI students had either merit- or need-based funding.
In the coming weeks, we will hold multiple Zoom information sessions on the CLI program and available funding. The first info session will be held on Wednesday, October 6, 12pm MST/3pm EDT. The Zoom link: https://asu.zoom.us/j/2701366602
Upcoming sessions will be scheduled soon and listed on our CLI 2022 updates page.
We hope you share our message with your students and that they will be able to join us for a Zoom info session. If not, they can always contact us at cli@asu.edu to ask questions or set up a meeting.