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

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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

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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: être, avoir, 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

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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

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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)