Teaching’
HUF focuses on enhancing South Asia content in the K-12 classroom
The Hindi Urdu Flagship convened a workshop on April 28th aimed at enhancing awareness of South Asia and Hindi-Urdu at the K-12 level. The workshop, entitled Presenting South Asia through the Traditions of Hindi and Urdu, brought together many K-12 social studies teachers and administrators to discuss the specific question, “How can Hindi and Urdu resources make a contribution to students’ understanding of world culture and literature?”
HUF hosts national workshop on Hindi-Urdu pedagogy
The Hindi Urdu Flagship recently convened a workshop for university and K-12 teachers of Hindi and Urdu. The workshop featured some informal lectures on pedagogical strategies from HUF’s teaching faculty, a roundtable discussion on pressing issues in the Hindi-Urdu classroom, and a wonderful guest lecture by Prof. Shamim Hanfi on some highlights in the tangled modern history of Hindi and Urdu.
Rajesh Kumar: a career in Hindi education
HUF director Rupert Snell recently interviewed Rajesh Kumar, an experienced Hindi teacher who has taught in a wide variety of settings. Topics discussed include Kumar’s childhood and education, his work in India, and his experience teaching Hindi in Russia. The interview should provide excellent listening comprehension practice for intermediate Hindi students.
HUF revamps Hindi slideshow series
The Hindi Urdu Flagship has just relaunched Dr. Jishnu Shankar‘s Hindi slideshow series. Now named Presenting Hindi, the series features a redesigned interface and new presentations (with more to come). The series covers a broad range of fundamental grammatical features and ‘topic-specific’ language categories such as health, economics, and politics. Each presentation makes use of real-world Hindi cultivated from current Hindi periodicals and print advertising; a number also incorporate video material from Bollywood films and Indian television.
HUF to host teacher training workshop
At the beginning of each year, the Hindi Urdu Flagship holds a workshop on teaching South Asian Languages to undergraduate students. The primary purpose of this workshop is to train our new TAs, but it also provides an excellent opportunity for a general exchange of views on language teaching, and we encourage anyone involved in South Asian language teaching at UT to attend. The schedule includes a useful session on the use of Blackboard (the full schedule is listed below). The workshop will be held on Monday, August 22nd from 2-5pm in the Meyerson Conference Room (WCH 4.118).
HUF Lecturer nominated for Language Teaching Award
Shahnaz Hassan, the Hindi Urdu Flagship’s principal lecturer in Urdu, has been nominated for the first-ever Texas Foreign Language Teaching Excellence Award. Students submitted nominations late last fall based on teachers’ commitment, knowledge, passion, and ability to challenge. The award program is an initiative of the Texas Language Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
