Special Subject Curriculum Development: Online Immersion German Oral Communication Class

The goal of the special subject, Online Immersion German Oral Communication, to be taught during MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP), is to enhance undergraduate education by furthering students’ opportunity to engage with and practice the most difficult of the second language skills, spontaneous speech. The subject will address students’ expressed need for additional and more refined practice with spoken German at the intermediate level and is a key step in our revamping of the German curriculum in MIT Global Languages. This innovative subject will combine communication strategies in German with tasks and activities in an immersive online learning environment. It thus incorporates a novel teaching and learning model into the German program in the context of newly adopted web technologies such as Zoom and Canvas, which were implemented since Spring 2020.