The African Studies Center offers courses in several African languages. Also, the African Studies Center collaborates with the Department of Africa & African American Studies at Harvard University. Those interested in a language not offered at their own institution should make arrangements for cross- registration with the African Language Director. Students benefit from learning in small numbers from native speakers and language specialists in a comfortable environment with emphasis on their communicative and functional proficiency. African languages may be used to satisfy both undergraduate and graduate language requirements. The core of regularly offered languages can be studies through the third-year advanced level.
What makes the BU African Language Program unique?
All our African languages are four-skill courses leading toward proficiency in oral expression, listening comprehension, reading, writing, and cultural understanding that approximate native speakers' competence. Our language courses are taught using the communicative teaching approach with various electronic and digital supports. While the focus of the course is generally on a particular variety, students also learn important features of related dialects of the language to be able to communicate effectively in both urban and rural environments in target language countries.
Our African Language Program is also the first in the country to recognize the old tradition of writing some African languages with modified Arabic scripts generally referred to as Ajami. We now teach both the Latin-based script and Ajami script in our three regularly offered languages (Wolof, Pular-Fuuta Jalon, and Hausa). Besides the oral proficiency that students taking our languages develop, they will be among the first American students and scholars to develop formal literacy skills in Ajami, a new unchartered terrain of human knowledge with various implications on the fields of African history, anthropology, culture, and religion, among others. All students interested in language courses are advised to consult with the Center's African Language Director to verify the current offerings.
African Language Program Director
Boston University
African Studies Center
232 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
(617) 353-7305 Contact: Fallou Ngom
Faculty Fallou Ngom, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of African Language Program Zoliswa O. Mali, Clinical Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Teaching Department, Coordinator of Southern African Languages Judith Mmari, Lecturer, Kiswahili
