Blended Learning: MARI
6. Dezember 2018, von ASW
The COPIUS consortium will be offering a blended learning course (an e-learning course and a workshop) on Mari in the spring and summer of 2019. From 11 February to 7 June, the University of Vienna will offer a Meadow Mari e-learning course geared at beginners. Subsequently, the University of Turku will hold a workshop on Hill Mari from 10 to 14 June for graduates of the e-learning course and students with equivalent prior knowledge of Meadow Mari. If you are interested in participating in any of these activities (the e-learning course, the work shop, or both), please inform Jeremy Bradley (jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at) as soon as possible. Please include the following information in your e-mail: name, university, knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet, knowledge of Mari, and if you intend to participate in both the e-learning course and the workshop. For Hamburg specific questions or more information, please contact Josefina Budzisch.
Aims of the course
The e-learning course will constitute an introduction to the modern Meadow Mari standard language (Cyrillic script, phonetics, morphology, syntax). The course will enable students to read, understand and translate modern texts with the help of a dictionary, and will convey basic communication skills.
The workshop in Turku will focus on the second literary standard of Mari, Hill Mari, and present it in contrast to Meadow Mari, illustrating the similarities and differences between the two standard languages. Thematic lectures will also be held at this workshop. Further information on the workshop will follow over the coming months.
Textbook, learning material
All learning materials we will use in our course are, or will be, available electronically under an open license. This means that you can have printed copies of our textbooks made at a local copy shop, or simply use electronic copies.
For the e-learning course, we will be using the textbook Оҥай марий йылме: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Mari Language (omj.mari-language.com) in conjunction with newly recorded audio-visual materials and online exercises created specifically for the course in cooperation with Mari native speakers. The English-language textbook is geared to the needs of autodidactic learners.
For the summer workshop, we will be using the textbook Reading Hill Mari Through Meadow Mari (rhm.mari-language.com) in conjunction with other materials.
Methods of teaching
During the e-learning course, students will be provided with a learning schedule and should prepare the individual chapters of the textbook autodidactically in accordance with it. Homework assignments should be sent to the teacher on a regular basis. In addition, we will be holding a video conference every Friday at 14:00 CET (15:00 EET) in which you can ask the teacher for additional explanations and participate in joint revisions. Participation in the video conference is, however, not obligatory to graduate from our course.
The language of tuition at both the e-learning course and the summer workshop will be English, though you can interact with your teachers and submit your assignments in other languages as well if you wish.