Guidelines for Students

1. Process

Learning a language in a Directed Independent Language Study program differs significantly from learning a foreign language in a traditional classroom setting. It is central to your success in the program that you understand what is expected of you in an independent learning environment. The degree to which you will succeed depends entirely on how motivated and committed you remain throughout the study process.

You are your own teacher. Real progress in the language depends on you - on your attitude and the quality of your participation in the Practice Sessions with the Language Partner; on your self-discipline and your study habits; on the amount of time you will spend daily on studying the language materials.

The Language Partner (LP) in a DILS program is not a ‘teacher’ as the term is usually understood in other instructional contexts. You should not expect to be ‘taught’ as you would be in a traditional academic course. The purpose of the Practice Session with the Language Partner is to review and practice the material you studied on your own and to give you the opportunity to absorb to the maximum the linguistic and cultural particularities of the language your are studying. A goal of a DILS program is to assist you to rapidly gain a sense of comfort using the target language and to sensitize you to the ways in which language and culture inherently intermesh. To ensure the process, you will be expected to attend all Practice Sessions and to be properly prepared for each Session.

Your LP will keep a weekly record of your performance in the Practice Session. You may ask the DILS Director at any time to see your record.

There will always be a final evaluation at the end of the semester. The evaluation will consist of an approximately 25 – 30 to minute oral examination. A language instructor from another institution who specializes in the language of your study will administer the final evaluation. Scheduling of the evaluation is arranged in advance. There will be no makeup finals.

Although language study in the DILS program does not carry course credit, a notification of your language study will be made in your transcript and you will receive a Certificate.

You will be asked to hand on a weekly Report of your study experience indicating your progress. Your comments are an important part of your self-evaluation, and will help us identify and address problems or concerns.

2. Study Procedures

Work with Audio

Work with audio, and when available video materials is essential in independent language study. Consistent and repeated practice with the audio/video materials will help you in your progress to achieve efficient communication in the language you are studying.

Twenty to thirty minutes of daily work with the audio/video materials should be considered the minimum. Audio work requires intensive concentration and it is sustained usually only for frequent short periods of time in order to be effective. Do not try to concentrate the audio work into a few long sessions a week; instead, it should be spread evenly over the entire week.

As you do your audio work, try to repeat what you hear out loud. It is difficult to learn to speak by listening only. Learning to speak a language requires speaking aloud. Try to duplicate precisely the utterance you hear. Think of yourself as an actor learning to play a character role as you attempt to copy what you hear. Remember that sentence melody, rhythm, stress, and cadence are as important as the pronunciation of individual sounds or words.

Work with Text

Read the introduction of your textbook carefully (and the introduction to student manual if there is one), since most authors include basic information about how the text shouls be used. You are responsible for studying the grammar presented in the text on your own.

Work with the Language Partner

Remember that your Language Partner is not expected to function as a teacher; he or she does not give quizzes or exams, assign grades and give grammatical explanations. The Language Partner will expect from you thorough mastery of the language features you study in each lesson. The Language Partner will use only the target language during the Practice Session and will use the language at a conversational pace.

Avoid asking your Language Partner for grammatical explanations and linguistic insights. Explanations, which would have to be in English, take time away from the target language learning process, and require the LP to fulfill a role for which he or she is not expected to be trained. You must study the material on your own, even if there is a point of grammar that you do not fully understand for a while.

If you have a question about grammar, check your text carefully. Ask yourself if your question is really critical for mastering the material at hand. Many of your questions will be answered as you assimilate the material and begin to speak the language. It is recommended that you acquire a basic grammar book in addition to the required study materials. You will find suggestions of grammar books in the ‘Fact Sheets’ you will receive at the beginning of your language program.

Practice session

Language training in DILS takes place entirely in the target language. This will allow you to develop the habit of thinking in the target language rather than translate from your dominant language. The Practice Sessions with your native speaker are your most valuable opportunity to enter the world of the new language, and implicitly of the new culture you are studying.

If your Language Partner seems to speak too fast for you, do not ask him or her to slow down. You need to develop your comprehension skills and train yourself to understand speech delivered at a conversational pace. If you have problems understanding your LP, and have difficulty communicating during the Session, review your learning strategies and reflect on what gives you the greatest difficulty; you may want to ask yourself some of the following questions:

Are you spending too much time studying the material visually and insufficient time practicing with the audio/multimedia materials?
Do you have your book(s) open much of the time while working with the audio/video components?
Are you concentrating on learning single words or idioms rather than on conversational utterances in context?

Awareness of your language study habits will help you considerably in evaluating and revising your learning strategies.

You will be expected to use the target language in the Practice Sessions: engage in dialogues, ask questions, do role-play; these activities will allow you to manipulate the structures of the language, to experiment, and to learn to create with the language. You will eventually acquire proficiency to communicate appropriately in a broad variety of contexts. Your LP will guide you in these activities. Your LP will also be correcting your pronunciation and your sentence structure.

Evaluation

The outside examiner who will evaluate your language performance will be a qualified instructor of the language you are studying from another institution. For the most part, you will be tested by a certified ACTFL examiner (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages). In case of examiners who are not certified by ACTFL, they will be provided appropriate information about the ACTFL guidelines in order to administer the final exam.

The examiner will give you professional feedback on your progress in the language of your study and will inform you of the level and quality of your performance in the language.

Conclusion

It is critical that you master all the material in the lesson before attending your Practice Session with the Language Partner. A cursory reading of your textbook will definitely not accomplish this. In order for the language to become assimilated, you will have to practice with the audio/video material frequently, until listening to the language and speaking it become natural to you. When you can understand; when you can respond without much hesitation or prompting, you have begun to internalize the language.

The number of hours per week devoted to language practice will most likely determine your success in assimilating the language. Proficiency is directly dependent on regularity and frequency of practice. You must devote time to your language practice on a daily basis. Only with patient and regular practice will you be able to attain your objective of spontaneous and comprehensible language use.

You will be expected to find ways to engage with the language and its culture outside your Practice Sessions. You should locate newspapers, periodicals, music, and other artifacts; work extensively with online materials; explore opportunities that will maximize your contact with the language. If you have friends who speak the language; if you are aware of communities in your area where the language is spoken, try out your newly acquired skills. Seek out others who speak the language you are studying; be enterprising and start a conversation group.

Interested students should contact the DILS Director at DILS@miami.edu