In this introductory course students begin to develop basic listening and reading comprehension, as well as oral and written Hindi communication skills. There is an introduction to recognising and pronouncing the sounds used in spoken Hindi and learning the characters used in written and spoken Hindi. Students also will have the opportunity to learn a range of common sentence patterns and read and write basic sentences which allow them to write and speak about a range of everyday situations. Conversational situations covered in the course include, meeting and greeting, describing things around you, going to cafes and restaurants, and shopping. Studying in this course will also allow you to understand how cultural issues such as respect shown in relation to age, gender and religion influence how Hindi is spoken.

In this course students can further develop their listening and reading comprehension skills and oral and written communication skills. Students can learn how stress and intonation are used in Hindi to emphasis and clarify what is being said. There will be opportunities to learn a range of basic structures, including all the main tenses, which allow learners to understand and speak about a range of situations related to their own everyday life. Contexts covered include, talking about likes and dislikes, pass times and occupations, days of the week, telling time, and topics such as talking about the weather. Studying in this course will also allow you to appreciate issues such as the cultural importance of family relationships.

This course introduces the advanced beginner level of Hindi listening and reading comprehension skills and spoken and written communication skills. Students will be made aware of the ways in which Hindi vocabulary reflects shared traditions drawn from different sources such as Urdu and Sanskrit languages. Sentence constructions covered allow students to talk about not only when events occur but also different ways to describe how events occur. The course also covers, complex sentences with more than one clause, and talking about how actions can occur, be done, or be caused to be done. Conversational contexts covered include, talking about rural and urban life, development and the challenges for young people in finding employment in India. You can also learn about the celebration of religious festivals and the performance of rituals and the central role of wedding celebrations in Indian life.

This course completes the development of the advanced beginner level of Hindi listening and reading comprehension skills and spoken and written communication skills. In relation to vocabulary you gain familiarity with how Hindi uses different ranges of words for the same idea according to the context in which people are speaking. Sentence constructions include looking at how to express ideas like one action happening while another is occurring, describing how actions are performed in different contexts, such as when narrating an account of events, and distinguishing between the active and passive modes of expression. Conversational contexts covered include talking about the Hindi film industry, travel inside and outside India and the role that Hindi plays in education. Cultural contexts described include, the importance of song, dance and music in Hindi cinema and pressures of life in modern Indian cities such as Mumbai.

This course introduces the intermediate level of Hindi listening and reading comprehension skills and spoken and written communication skills. Vocabulary skills are deepened by exploring compound noun formation in words of Sanskrit and Urdu origin in Hindi. Students will learn how Hindi speakers use a range of variant forms alongside standard Hindi in their speech and the ways in which this forms part of how Hindi speakers express identity. The skills needed to read and understand long and complex Hindi sentences are developed through reading a variety of text genres such as film and news magazine articles and a selection of modern Hindi short stories. Cultural contexts covered in the texts include topics such as, the Hindi film industry, caste and community identities, memories of India’s gaining independence, and coming of age in India and the impact of change in India.

This course completes the development of the intermediate level of Hindi listening and reading comprehension skills and spoken and written communication skills. Through the study of the selected texts students also deepen their understanding of how the use words drawn from Urdu and Sanskrit in Hindi are characteristic of different genres of Hindi texts. Students will also have opportunities to examine how different authors and genres employ a range of variant forms of grammar and how this impacts on understanding and analyzing a range of Hindi texts. Genres studied may include, spoken and recorded interviews, popular broadcast media and film related materials. Literary texts covered may include short stores from leading Hindi authors such Prem Chand and Upendranath Ashk and contemporary Hindi authors.