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The Polish program gives you access to the language and culture of the one of the largest European countries. The geostrategic and economic importance of Poland is on the rise in recent years given the volatile situation inside the European Union and its even more troublesome relations with Russia. Our program furthermore enables you to study the vast Polish diaspora in the United States, Ireland, Great Britain, and Germany. In addition, studying Polish greatly facilitates the acquisition of related Slavic languages such as Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, or Czech.
If you are a heritage speaker from Polish community or their friend/partner/spouse, it goes without saying that our classes would give you a deeper understanding of the culture and the necessary background for a richer participation in this heritage community.
All our classes are rooted in cutting-edge methodology, they are geared toward achieving concrete proficiency benchmarks giving our students tangible real-life skills. The lead instructor is an accomplished author specializing in the nexus of language and culture as well as certified language tester and interpreter. Our classes are focused on:
The combination of the aforementioned majors with our minor or classes have lead our students into the following typical career paths:
Unexpectedly, many of our alumni end up in medical school. They claim that the kind of humanistic knowledge that they gain in our program help them being admitted into these schools.
One of the hallmarks of our program is startling success of our students in securing prestigious national fellowships, such as Fulbright and NSEP giving them an opportunity to spend time abroad while being instrumental in their securing coveted positions in government agencies, academia, and industry.
Both our individual classes and the minor constitute a perfect complement to various majors giving our students a competitive advantage of the expertise in a lesser known cultures and their language. Historically, most our students came from:
A large presence of Polish heritage community in the Valley of the Sun gives our students an excellent opportunity to immerse themselves into these cultures by visiting stores, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, etc. and attending heritage festivals. Even after several weeks of instructions our students will be able to test their skills locally by greeting heritage speakers, ordering, asking simple questions, etc.
Please contact Danko.Sipka@asu.edu with any questions about the program. We greatly look forward to discussing the program with you and hopefully having you in our classes!
Sipka's research interests include lexicography, lexicology, linguistic anthropology, lexical and inflectional morphology, computational linguistics, and computer-assisted learning.
The SILC Attaches Club is a club that brings all languages and cultures from SILC together. People are able to learn about different cultures in a fun way when studying a language. Understanding different cultures is such an important attribute to have, and it is one you can obtain through SILC Attaches. This club creates community events, outreach projects, and plans fun get-togethers.
Arizona State University's Critical Languages Institute is a national training institute for less commonly taught languages, offering summer intensive courses and study-abroad programs around the world. CLI instruction in Arizona and abroad is practically focused and proficiency-based. Students not only study a language, but learn to live that language.
Our program maintains exceptionally strong ties with Polish community in the Valley of the Sun. For example, annual Polish festival [http://www.polishfestivalaz.org/] offers an excellent opportunity for the students to get a taste of regional music, dance, and food. But our links go beyond sheer fun. Polish community, Polish honorary consulate in Phoenix [http://arizonaconsularcorps.org/poland.php] and consulate general in Los Angeles [http://losangeles.msz.gov.pl/en/] are very strong supporters of our Polish program having donated nearly $30,000, which were used to establish a Polish library collection, teach classes, and send students to summer programs in Poland.
One of the hallmarks of our program is startling success of our students in securing prestigious national fellowships, such as Fulbright and NSEP giving them an opportunity to spend time abroad while being instrumental in their securing coveted positions in government agencies, academia, and industry.
A summer, semester, or year-long study abroad program can be organized individually, in which case the credit is processed through the Study Abroad Office. If you are pursuing this option, make sure to consult with the program coordinator [Danko.Sipka@asu.edu] and the Study Abroad Office. Additionally, you can use one of the existing summer abroad programs at the Critical Languages Institute.