Seminars
APRI seminars:
- are intensive, online, and offered at two levels.
- are designed for optimal access and effectiveness.
- include comprehensive, guided, self-study components that allow for differentiated instruction.
- allow participants to focus on resources within their disciplines.
- feature synchronous online sessions with experienced instructors.
- use English as the language of instruction, with materials and texts in the target language.
APRI: READING SKILLS FOR THE REAL WORLD
Foundational Reading Seminars
Online, June 9 – June 27, 2025
Foundational Reading Seminars are for participants with limited or no prior knowledge to gain the skills necessary to succeed in Reading for Research Seminars.
By participating in these seminars, you will:
- develop fundamental knowledge of grammar and syntax.
- acquire vocabulary that includes academic and some discipline-specific content.
- move beyond sentence-level comprehension to the ability to understand cohesive, organized discourse.
Summer 2025 offerings: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Persian, Spanish, & Turkish.
Registration fee: $1,500. UChicago PhD students should contact their Dean of Students for information about registration fees.
Registration deadline: Monday, May 26, 2025.
Reading for Research Seminars
Online, July 7 – Aug 15, 2025
Reading for Research Seminars develop the skills needed to work with academic texts for participants who already have strong reading abilities in the language.
By participating in these seminars, you will:
- work intensively with academic texts in your discipline.
- analytically read and synthesize key points, arguments, and supporting details for integration into scholarly work.
- draw inferences and infer author intent.
- gain facility with discipline-specific conventions and vocabulary.
- become familiar with journals and other key sources of secondary literature in your field.
- produce idiomatic translations of brief excerpts when quoting or citing texts.
Summer 2025 offerings: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, Spanish, & Turkish.
Registration fee: $1,500. UChicago PhD students should contact their Dean of Students for information about registration fees. Master’s students can learn about our Fellowships for Master’s Students.
Registration deadline: Monday, May 26, 2025.
View our Language Offerings for more information on upcoming seminars.
Seminars and Prerequisites
| Language | Prerequisite for Foundational Reading Seminars | Prerequisite for Reading for Research Seminars |
|---|---|---|
| French, German, Italian, Spanish | None | Ability to read sentence-level discourse about everyday, personal topics (approximately 2 years of study) |
| Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Persian, Russian, Turkish | Ability to read sentence-level discourse about everyday, personal topics (approximately 2 years of study) | Ability to read cohesive, organized discourse about personal and some academic and professional topics (approximately 3 years of study) |
*All participants must possess a bachelor’s degree from an accredited four-year institution. Online placement tests will be administered to all participants in any seminar with a prerequisite. Not all seminars in the table above are offered every summer; view our Language Offerings for current information.
APRI seminars focus solely on reading ability. Looking for a four-skills language course? Visit UChicago’s Summer Language Institute.
Applications for Summer 2025 are now open! Apply now