Intermediate Kurdish 2010
Fall Semester, 2011
Middle Tennessee States University
Instructor: Deniz Ekici
Office Hours: 104 Midgett Hall, by appointment
Email: dekici@mtsu.edu
Course Overview
Hûn bi xêr hatin pola Kurdî ya Navîn- Welcome to the Intermediate Kurdish class. The
Intermediate Kurdish class is designed to build on students’ knowledge of Kurdish
acquired during the previous levels through learning new vocabulary, idioms and
more complex grammatical structures.
Course Objectives:
The main focus for the Intermediate Kurdish course will be on the Kurdish grammar
as well as communication activities in functional and situational contexts with the
aim of helping students acquire language abilities they need to communicate at a
more complex level. The emphasis will be on four skills of reading, writing, listening
and speaking using grammatical structures of fundamental Kurdish. During the
semester we will cover such grammar topics as the past participles, conditionals,
diminutives, the causative, the passive voice, the past continuous tense, the present
perfect tense, the past perfect tense and so forth.
Upon the completion of this course students will be able to express situations, give
instructions and explanations, communicate opinions and narrate and comprehend
stories.
Course Materials
The course materials include textbooks, audio-visual materials, and authentic texts
such as newspapers and short stories. We will be using the interactive KurmanjiKurdish DVD-Rom developed by myself with the assistance of the Critical Languages
Program at the University of Arizona. We will also be using my Kurmanji-Kurdish
Reader published by Dunwoody Press.
In addition, there will be handouts from other Kurdish language materials to
complement the above-mentioned sources. You will also be provided with a few
websites where you can find audio-visual sources in Kurdish for language learning
purposes.
Student Evaluation
The overall semester grade breaks down this way:
1. Quizzes 20%
After each topic there will be quizzes on every Thursday throughout the semester.
These quizzes will be taken in the classroom. There will also be 4 oral quizzes.
2. Homework 20%
After each topic you will be assigned homework.
3. Attendance 30%
The importance of attendance for a language class cannot be overemphasized.
Therefore, class attendance is mandatory. Absences will hurt your progress in the
language and will most definitely affect your grade. Therefore, it is imperative that
you attend to and participate in each class. This is a language class where you learn
and practice your language abilities, so remember if you don’t use it you lose it.
4. Exams 30%
There will be a midterm and a final exam each with 15%.
Good luck!!!