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Center for Accelerated Language Acquisition

Competencies

CALA courses foster a “whole language” classroom environment wherein students and the instructor constantly communicate with each other in real time.  Participants are exposed to grammar naturally in a communicative context rather than “taught grammar points” explicitly.  The listing below is intended to provide a general sense of the grammar and competencies treated in our asynchonous online telecourses for American Sign Language (ASL), Mandarin (Chinese), French, Spanish, and Tamil.

American Sign Language (ASL) Telecourse

  • Alphabet
  • Greetings
  • Colors
  • Numbers 1-20
  • Parts of the Body
  • House and home
  • Family and relationships
  • Everyday vocabulary (e.g., stand, sit, walk, give, take, dances, slowly, quickly, boy, girl, chair, table, thank you, you’re welcome, floor, money, pen, book, apple, shirt, I win, how, what, how many)
  • Positive and negative emotional expressions
  • Recounting a story using there is, wants, goes to
  • Comprehension questions

Chinese (Mandarin) Telecourse

With a primacy on oral communication, the writing system of Chinese Parts 1-2 is NOT covered

  • Common vocabulary
  • Expressions of positve and negative emotion
  • Subject pronouns
  • Positive and negative forms of verbs
  • Interrogative pronouns and responses to oral questions
  • Introduction of adjectives
  • Numbers 1-24
  • Overview of numerous Chinese cultural practices
  • More complex sentence structure
  • Comprehension and personal questions

French Telecourse

  • Comprehension and production of all parts of speech from various domains of high-frequency vocabulary (e.g., places, parts of the body, the family, the home, the classroom, clothing, colors, numbers 1-20, and transportation)
  • Regular verbs: present tense and infinitive form
  • Irregular verbs: êtreavoir, vouloir, and aller
  • Adjective/article agreement
  • Direct/indirect object pronouns
  • Basic conversational greetings
  • Numbers 1 through 1 million
  • Comprehension and personal questions
  • Positive and negative emotional expressions
  • Present and imperfect tenses for regular and irregular verbs
  • Spatial and temporal prepositions
  • Describing the weather
  • Days of the week and the date
  • Months of the year and the seasons
  • Telling time
  • Geography of France and surrounding countries
  • Describing oneself

Spanish Telecourse

  • Comprehension and production of all parts of speech from various domains of high-frequency vocabulary (e.g., places, parts of the body, the family, the home, the classroom, clothing, colors, numbers 1-20, and transportation)
  • Regular verbs: present tense and infinitive form
  • Irregular verbs: dar, estar, gustar, haber, ir, ser, and tener
  • Adjective/article agreement
  • Direct/indirect object pronouns
  • Basic conversational greetings
  • Numbers 1 through 1 million
  • Comprehension and personal questions
  • Positive and negative emotional expressions
  • Introduction to preterite and imperfect tenses for regular and irregular verbs
  • Spatial and temporal prepositions
  • Describing the weather
  • Days of the week
  • Months of the year and the seasons
  • Telling time
  • Geography of Central America
  • Describing oneself

Tamil Telecourse

With a primacy on oral communication, the writing system Tamil Part 1 is NOT covered.

  • Common vocabulary
  • Expressions of positve and negative emotion
  • Subject pronouns
  • Positive and negative forms of verbs
  • Interrogative pronouns and responses to oral questions
  • Introduction of adjectives
  • Numbers 1-10
  • Cultural practices (e.g., music, dance, food, and poetry) of Tamil Nadu (Southern India)

Contact Us

Center for Accelerated Language Acquisition (CALA) 
c/o Shelley Thomas
Middle Tennessee State University
Honors Box 267
Murfreesboro, TN 37132 


Shelley Thomas, Ph.D.
CALA Director
shelley.thomas@mtsu.edu

Brian Roberts, M.A.T.
CALA Associate Director
brian.roberts@mtsu.edu