HNDI 1010

Hindi 1010 - Beginning Hindi I

This course was first offered at CU in the Fall 2006 and will be offered again in the Fall 2007. This is the syllabus from last fall semester. For questions, feel free to contact the instructor.

Instructor:

Christine Everaert (Christine.Everaert@colorado.edu; office: Eaton Humanities 225)

Classes:

There are 5 classes a week, every day one fifty-minute class

Course objectives:

• Getting acquainted with the Devanagari script and all its peculiarities (11 vowels, 33 consonants and an extensive collection of ligatures).
• To acquire basic vocabulary and grammatical structures.
• To develop communicative skills for basic conversation.
• To translate simple sentences and texts from Hindi to English and from English to Hindi, with special attention for cultural elements incorporated in the texts.

Required materials:

McGREGOR, R.S. 1995. Outline of Hindi Grammar, Third Edition Revised and Enlarged. Oxford.
McGREGOR, R.S. 1997. The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary. Delhi: OUP.

OR

PARIKH, S.S. & Plukker, D.F. 1996. Hindi - Transliterated Hindi - English Dictionary. Delhi: Allied Publishers Limited.
CD-ROM: EuroTalk, Talk now! Learn Hindi - Beginning Level

If students wish to buy an English-Hindi dictionary, I recommend:

KAPOOR, B. 1999. Practical English-Hindi Dictionary. Delhi: Prabhat Prakashan.

Class attendance and preparations:

Class attendance is mandatory. You must prepare for every class. If you come to class without preparations, you will be allowed to attend the class, but you will not be allowed to participate actively. Preparations will be corrected collectively in class and all the grammatical elements that occur in those sentences will be analyzed and explained further.

Unexcused absence or coming to class without preparation will not be penalized up to three times; however, each further unexcused absence or unprepared attendance will result in a loss of 3% of the final grade. More than six absences or unprepared attendances per year will result in failing the course.

Notes will be handed out to you, but it is advisable that you take notes yourself as well.

Grading and evaluation:

• Exams: 35%
• Class participation and preparation: 20%
• Assignments and papers: 15%
• CD-Rom and conversational classes: 10%
• Tests: 20%

Assignments and exam policy:

Any assignment should be handed in on the due date. Handing in one calendar day late will result in loss of 2% of the grade; assignments more than one day late will not be accepted and as a consequence, you will not be credited for that assignment.

In case of attested illness on the day the assignment was set, you should come to see me as soon as you get back to class. You will be given the full number of days to complete the assignment, counted from the day you received the assignment. In case of unexcused absence, you are expected to hand in the assignment without delay on the due date.

As Hindi is a modern language, there will be a written and oral examination, because both writing-skills and skills in reading/pronunciation (and to a lesser extent, conversation) have to be evaluated. No make-up exams will be given, other than in exceptional circumstances. If absence from the exam is unavoidable, you should inform me at the earliest opportunity.

Individual accommodations:

If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner. For further information, please consult the website http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices/ or contact 303-492-8671, Willard 322.

Problems and questions:

Classes are highly interactive: you will be able and encouraged to ask any questions you want to ask. Often, if a question or problem arises, you will not be the only one in class with this question. You can benefit from each other’s questions. However, if you do encounter problems which cannot be dealt with in class, do not hesitate to visit us during office hours or contact us by e-mail.

Goals:

In the first semester, the emphasis will be on mastering the script, pronunciation and basic grammatical elements and structures. In this semester, 10 hours will be spent on mastering the script, 26 hours will go to translating texts from Hindi to English and explaining grammar, 21 hours will be spent on translating from English into Hindi with special attention going to the different grammatical peculiarities and 18 hours will go to listening and conversational exercises. The importance of conversation will become more significant in level 2. In the first semester of the first level, script, pronunciation and basic grammar are the majors.

By the end of the Hindi 1010 course, the students will master the script and pronunciation, as well as the basic grammar, i.e. declension of nouns and adjectives, elementary syntactic structures and the main verb tenses (Present, Imperfect, Imperative). They will have collected a basic vocabulary.