उच्च हिंदी पाठ्यक्रम: A Course in Advanced Hindi

About the Book This book is designed to serve as a foundation for a competency-based course in Advanced Hindi for students of Hindi as a Second Language. It is also appropriate or those generally interested in such aspects of language control as intensive reading of authentic textual materials of literary significance, oral production (involving situational conversation, oral presentation, and simultaneous translation), and structured writing using thematic vocabulary. Such aspects of a competency-based language course as advanced listening comprehension and rapid non-intensive reading can be strengthened with the use of supplemen-tary materials in conjunction with this textbook. Attention drawn in this book to the structural strategies of the more productive constructions and expressions, as well as derivational devices and collocation constraints peculiar to authentic Hindi texts, should also be helpful in enhancing these skills.

About the Author Dr. Sheela Verma, Ph. D., is a Lecturer in the Department of South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S. She has taught courses in English at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, and in Hindi at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, U.S.A. Her research areas include Pedagogical Grammar of Hindi, Structure of Magahi, and Magahi Folklore.

Her publications include The Structure of the Magahi Verb, 1985 (Menorah), Magahi Bhasha Kiwi Kriya Sanrachanaa Kea Bhashayaigyanik Adhyayan, 1985 (Sahitya Bhawan), and Madhyavarta Hindi Paathyapustak (a textbook in Intermediate Hindi, with a full set of video tapes), 1984, revised 1986 (University of Wisconsin South Asia Center).

Preface This is a textbook for a comprehensive course in Advanced Hindi. An ascended version with additional materials for various sections of -.-e book is being worked on. This book is designed to serve as the mandating for a competency-based course. As such, it has several:-proponents to provide for the various requisite language skills, -a-newly reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The reading part of course will be divided into two sections-- Intensive Reading and Intensive Reading. The book includes suitable texts for -Pensive reading, along with glossaries and grammatical lanations and exercises. The selections for intensive reading are unmodified original texts so as to expose the students to inhentic Hindi. They should provide for the necessary transition an intermediate level textbook to an advanced textbook. The: saris provide for most of the words in texts but not all of so as to encourage the students to try and deduce the -earnings from the contexts, and also to use a dictionary when absolute necessary. For the non-intensive part of the course, eliminatory materials will be chosen and assigned in a structured way.

This book also provides material for teaching and improving speaking proficiency. It does so by including three kinds of oral materials, namely Situational Conversation, Oral Presentation on assigned topics, and Simultaneous Oral Translation.

The section on writing in this course is in addition to whatever ten exercises may be necessary as part of the intensive reading exits. It is designed to provide students with thematically :2-zed specialized vocabulary on the basis of which they can 7.7: coherent paragraphs on those themes in free composition.

Format-related writing (such as personal and professional letters, applications, and the like) will also be assigned.

Listening is an extremely important skill which also needs to start and learned in a structured way. Audio-visual materials, :- without scripts, should be used as part of a course so tried as to provide for extensive listening exposure to varied materials (talks, dialogues, songs, and TV or movie segments) and for the testing of listening comprehension.

In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge the cooperation of those friends and colleagues who have helped in one way or another to make this textbook possible. My participation in the preparation and teaching of a special competency-based course in Advanced Hindi in the summer of 1986 with Professor Mahindra Verma and Dr. Narendra Sinha provided a number of ideas and materials which have been incorporated here. Consultation with Professor Yamuna Kachru has resulted in the inclusion of the play "Ande ke Chilke" and the story "Mard" with her glossaries. The pre-final version of the book was looked at and commented on by Professor Peter E. Hook. I have benefitted from all these suggestions but I alone am responsible for whatever shortcomings are still there and are in need of further improvement. All those students of mine on whom most of these materials were tried in class and who gave me helpful feedback are deserving of my gratitude. Special mention must, however, be made of Randal Alain Everts, who spared me a lot of legwork by running to the library for the needed reference materials. I have appreciated Mithilesh Mishra's suggestions in regard to some textual questions.

Griffith A. Chaussee and later Mika Fukuda's contributions have been absolutely invaluable in that in spite of various academic and personal concerns, they undertook the typing of the manuscript and have done such a beautiful job. Mika Fukuda also took care to make page and line format adjustments wherever necessary to make the final product more consistent and aesthetically pleasing. The Department of South Asian Studies has been very supportive of this project. I am extremely grateful to Professor David Knipe for his encouragement, to Professor Joseph Elder for his support, and to Sharon Dickson for her ungrudging cooperation.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages