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Bangla Summer School

Intensive Courses in Spoken and Written Bengali

Each summer the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University in cooperation with the Chair of South Asian Studies at Warsaw University and the Institute of Asian Studies at Charles University, Prague organises an intensive language course in Bengali.

In the beginners' course, participants acquire speaking, reading, and writing skills and develop listening comprehension. They acquire basic grammar and vocabulary. Much emphasis is also placed on correct pronunciation.

In the advanced course the participants' communicative skills are deepened, grammatical knowledge is consolidated, and vocabulary is expanded. Special emphasis is placed on practising the selected grammatical topics, reading complex texts, and developing the participants' listening comprehension. Listening exercises (comprising of film clips, TV programmes, radio broadcasts, poetry, and conversations) and advanced readings are designed to deepen the participants' communicative skills and provide confidence in grammatical subtleties. Special emphasis is also placed on correct pronunciation.

Participants with no prior knowledge of the Bengali script are asked to familiarise themselves with the characters in advance using the following textbooks: Hanne Ruth Thompson, Bengali: A Comprehensive Grammar. Routledge, London, 2010. or: W. L. Smith. Bengali Reference Grammar (Stockholm Oriental Textbook Series, No. 1.). Stockholm: Association of Oriental Studies, Stockholm University, 1997.

The course consists of a total of 37 lessons of 90 minutes each. Classes are taking place Mondays to Fridays from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (3 classes/day) and Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (2 classes).

Accompanying program:
• Movie evening, films, tv program, and music
• Meeting Bengali Students, doctoral candidates, and native speakers
• Cooking classes with simple Bengali dishes
• Sightseeing