Languages of Rhode Island
--Language and Country Projects--

The Languages of RI Project was completed by the graduate students of the M.Ed. in TESL Program at Rhode Island College. Over the past 3-4 years, our graduate students have been developing informational PowerPoints to aid RI teachers in understanding the distance students are traveling from their native languages and countries to English in the United States. In the cases of high incidence languages sometimes multiple Powerpoints were done.

Each short language Powerpoint (12 slides) consists of:

1. Background information about the language; it's varieties, where it is spoken, it's orthography and structure
2. Information about common problems a speaker of that language would have when learning English; natural errors they might make and
3. Cross-cultural communication style; aspects to be aware of (greeting, touching and other taboos) when conversing with a speaker of that language.

Each short country Powerpoint (12 slides) consists of:

1. Background information including the country's location, literacy rates, poverty levels, political turmoil or stability that exists, etc.
2. Information about educational opportunities found in the country (schooling available, grade level configurations, curriculum, typical classroom setting, teacher qualifications, etc.)
3. Information about the attitudes or views towards English and English speakers.

Please remember that these were done by graduate students, not specialists in each language and country. While we made every effort to use reputable sources which we have cited, should you find errors of fact, please contact Dr. Nancy Cloud, at [email protected]; (401)456-8789

Languages and Countries of Africa

Afrikaans

Akan

Amharic

Bambara

Cape Verdean

Ewe

Fulah

Grebo

Hassaniya

Igbo

Kpelle

Kru

Kunama

Mandigo

Nigerian Swahili
Tigre
Tigrinya
Twi
Wolof
Yoruba

Burundi

Cape Verde

Ethiopia

Gambia

Ghana

Liberia

Malawi

Nigeria

Senegal

South Africa

Tanzania

Languages and Countries of Asia

Bengali
Cambodian (Khmer)
Cebuano
Chinese
Filipino
Gayo
Gujarati
Hindi
Hmong
Indonesian
Japanese
Kashmiri
Kazakh
Laotian
Malay
Marathi
Nepali
Punjabi
Sindhi
Sinhala
Tagalog
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Urdu
Vietnamese

Azerbaijan

Cambodia

China

India

Japan

Laos

Philippines

South Korea

Thailand

Turkey

Languages and Countries of Central America

K'iche

Spanish

Belize

Costa Rica

El Salvador

Guatemala

Mexico

Nicaragua

Panama

Languages and Countries of Europe

Albanian
Armenian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Croatian
French
German
Greek
Italian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Serbian
Slovene
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukranian