Offered:

  • Every term throughout the year.

Description:

  • Our Hindi 300: Conversational Hindi course is specifically designed for adults (and children over 10 yrs) who have completed the first year Introductory Hindi 101-104 and Intermediate Hindi 201-204 courses and who wish to continue their language learning through conversational practice and learning additional advanced grammar. It is also for those who already understand basic Hindi grammar, can read and write Devanāgarī, and who simply wish to practice speaking in Hindi.

  • Conversational Hindi 300 meets all year during school Terms on Fridays from 6:00-7:30pm. 2022 Term 4 classes begin on Friday 21 October 2022 and run for eight successive weeks, with the last class of the Term held on Friday 9 December 2022. Our Conversational Hindi course will be held in the same time slot each Term.

  • Conversational Hindi 300 focuses on conversational practice but also includes reading and writing short stories and dialogues in Devanāgarī (देवनागरी) script, learning vocabulary for specific scenarios (e.g. cooking, shopping, travel, going to the bank, etc.), Hindi songs and ghazals, more advanced dialogues, and continued grammar instruction.

Date & Time:

  • Conversational Hindi 300 meets all year during school Terms on Fridays from 6:00-7:30pm.

  • 2022 Term 4 classes begin on Friday 21 October 2022 and run for eight successive weeks, with the last class of the Term held on Friday 9 December 2022.

  • Our Conversational Hindi course will be held in the same time slot each Term.

Time Zone equivalents:

for live-streaming Zoom Sessions from New Zealand

  • Honolulu, Hawai’i: begins Thu 20 Oct 7:00-8:30pm

  • US Pacific: begins Thu 20 Oct 10:00-11:30pm

  • US Eastern: begins Fri 21 Oct 1:00-2:30am

  • London, UK: begins Fri 21 Oct 6:00-7:30am

  • Paris, France: begins Fri 21 Oct 7:00-8:30am

  • New Delhi, India: begins Fri 21 Oct 10:30am-12:00pm

  • Bangkok, Thailand: begins Fri 21 Oct 12:00-1:30pm

  • Singapore: begins Fri 21 Oct 1:00-2:30pm

  • Sydney, Australia: begins Fri 21 Oct 4:00-5:30pm

Meet our Instructor:

Executive Director, Senior Lecturer Dr Todd Nachowitz, PhD

Dr Todd Nachowitz, PhD, is the Founder and Executive Director of EarthDiverse. Todd is a Hamilton-based lecturer, anthropologist, environmentalist and diversity educator. He previously taught in Religious Studies at the University of Waikato, teaching courses on Comparative Religion and Religious Fundamentalism & Extremism. Todd holds a Masters Degree in Development Anthropology from Syracuse University in upstate New York (1991) and a PhD from the University of Waikato (2015) in Political Science and Public Policy where he completed his thesis on diversity governance and the Indian diaspora in New Zealand.

Prior to settling in New Zealand in 1995, Todd lived and worked in the United States, India, Pakistan and Nepal. He spent 11 years in South Asia as the Academic Director for university study-abroad programmes in Varanasi, India (for the University of Wisconsin-Madison); Lahore, Pakistan (for the University of California-Berkeley); and Kathmandu, Nepal (for School for International Training, based in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA) focusing on language, culture and religion.

Todd speaks Hindi and Urdu, and is a specialist in comparative world religions and the history, religions, languages and cultures of South Asia. He also currently teaches our Hindi and Urdu language courses and the Religious Diversity courses at EarthDiverse.

Location:

All in-person classes are held at the EarthDiverse Centre located at 401 Anglesea Street, Hamilton Central, Hamilton (located just north of the Hamilton Central Bus Station) (entrance is located on the left side of the building, see map below). Those looking for parking for our evening classes can park just in front of the building in any of the available car parks. Daytime parking can be found in our dedicated car parks, or free 2-hour on-street daytime parking can be found just in front of Anglesea Street.
Location

Distance Learning:

This course has distance-learning options for those unable to attend the live class sessions in Hamilton. Students have three options for attending our courses once they have registered:

  • Attend in-person classes in our Hamilton classrooms at the regularly scheduled day and time.

  • Attend our live on-line classroom sessions via Zoom at the regular scheduled day and time.

  • Watch the live-recorded class sessions at your leisure, at a time, day and place more suited to your schedule.

Distance-Learning options:

  • In addition to our in-person classes in Hamilton, our courses offer distance learning options for those unable to attend classes in-person. Live-streamed Hamilton classes are available via free Zoom software for those living outside the Waikato. Live-streaming allows you to participate fully in your own learning, ask questions of the instructor and participate fully in the same way as if you were in the physical classroom.

  • Those unable to attend the scheduled date and time of the actual class sessions, or those who need to miss a class or two due to previous engagements or unexpected illness, can watch any or all of the live-recorded video sessions on their computers, laptops, tablets or mobile devices and study at their own pace and in their own time.

  • Detailed instructions on how to access our distance learning components will be sent after completing your registration. There are no additional fees for this service. However, distance learners will need access to a desktop or laptop computer with a good quality web-camera (tablet devices and mobile phones can also access our live-streamed classes), a built-in microphone (most modern laptops have built-in microphones) or a headset with a microphone. You will also need to download and install the free Zoom software on your computer or device. Those accessing the video recordings will be able to do so with a simple web browser on any device.

Pricing options:

All prices in New Zealand dollars. Unwaged includes students, seniors and retirees.

Course curriculum:

Week by week new material will be posted throughout the duration of the course. Video recordings of each weekly session will be posted here after 1-2 days after each class.

    1. EarthDiverse Introductory Hindi textbook

    2. EarthDiverse Zoom instructions

    1. 20221021 T4.1 Hindi 300 class notes

    2. 20221021 T4.1 Hindi 300 video

    1. 20221028 T4.2 Hindi 300 PDF

    2. 20221028 T4.2 Hindi 300 video

    1. 20221104 T4.3 Hindi 300 class notes

    2. 20221104 T4.3 Hindi 300 video

    1. चतुर बीरबल: "Clever Birbal" story

    2. 20221111 T4.4 Hindi 300 class notes

    3. 20221111 T4.4 Hindi 300 video

    1. 20221118 T4.5 Hindi 300 video

    2. 20221118 T4.5 Hindi 300 class notes

About this course

  • $150.00
  • 21 lessons
  • 11.5 hours of video content

Notes:

  • Those who cannot make the class meeting day and time either in-person or via live Zoom sessions may consider accessing this course through the weekly recorded video sessions. Class videos are posted within 24 hours of each live class session and are available for your own personal learning session on a day and time of your choosing.

Materials:

  • A Hindi textbook is included in the course fees. This is posted on the course webpage and is available once you have registered for the course. You will only require a pen or pencil, a notebook for taking your own class notes, and a loose-leaf binder. Any notes that our instructor writes on the class whiteboard will be posted as a digital PDF to the course webpage so that you can print these out at home and add them to your own notebook.

Prerequisites:

Prerequisites for this Course:

  • Completion of the Introductory series of Hindi 101-104 and Intermediate Hindi 201-204

  • No prerequisites if you are already familiar with the Devanāgarī script and are familiarity with Intermediate Hindi grammar or spoken Hindi.

Students reviews:

Testimonials: