Learning resource
Khmer at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute
Khmer at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute is an intensive summer course in Khmer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[1] It compresses a full year of language study into eight weeks.[1]
About the resource
The course is part of the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), run by the Wisconsin Intensive Summer Language Institutes (WISLI).[2] SEASSI teaches less commonly taught languages and trains their teachers in language teaching. Its classes are built around proficiency, so that students learn to use the language with confidence in real situations, and it serves heritage-language learners and the multilingual needs of local communities.[3]
Khmer is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. More than one million people also speak it in Thailand and in Vietnam, and in Cambodia minority communities, among them the Cham, widely use it as a second language.[4] A large Cambodian American community has lived in the United States since the late 1970s.[4]
Contents
Classes run at every level, from beginners to students seeking advanced skills. A typical day combines a morning lecture, conversation with an instructor and the study of culture, followed by afternoon practice with classmates, alongside co-curricular activities.[1][2] The course has been taught online and in person. In 2021 the institute ran from June 14 to August 6.[1][2]