FAQs
If you have a question about the Ancient Language Institute or our class offerings, take a look below. We might have already answered it. If this doesn’t help, head over to our Contact page and reach out. We’re always happy to talk!
If you want to read more about our team, check out the About page. And if you want to read about ancient languages and language pedagogy, check out our blog.
Credits and Accreditation
No. We do, however, have partnerships with institutions that grant college credit for some of our courses. Let us know if this might be relevant to you!
We do have partnerships with institutions that grant college credit for some of our courses. Further, if you are a current or future graduate student hoping to get language credit for a master’s or a PhD program, you do not necessarily need an official transcript from an accredited institution in order to get your language credit. We would be happy to talk with anyone from your institution about our courses – there is a chance that they would be willing to grant you credit for our courses. This has worked for some of our students in the past.
Often, PhD programs simply care about competency or making sure that you can pass a competency exam. If this is what your program is concerned with, we can most certainly help you with that! We have been reliably able to take students from zero knowledge of an ancient language to deep reading proficiency and competence in speaking. Our students in graduate school elsewhere have done great on their competency exams.
Yes. While most students don’t need something like this, and thus a certificate isn’t a standard part of taking an ALI class, some of our students have requested such a thing. If proof of successful completion of an ALI class or classes would be helpful for you, we would be happy to issue you a letter on ALI letterhead to show to your institution. There is no charge associated with this. Just ask!
Classes at ALI
Our pedagogical approach is focused around the Direct Method of language learning and exposure to comprehensible input. What this means is that we attempt to keep to a minimum any extended explanations of grammar or vocabulary memorization drills. Our students want to learn to read ancient texts, so instead of endlessly dissecting the target language, we get our students actively using the language as soon as possible, so that they’re building their reading skills from day one.
Practically, what this looks like:
Every student gets access to a variety of tools to help them absorb new vocabulary and grammar concepts. We employ audio, images, video, and composition exercises as much as possible, so that students are encountering their target language in the way it is meant to be encountered – as meaningful communication.
Students also read through carefully constructed readers that gradually expose them to new concepts and words over time, in the context of a comprehensible and compelling narrative.
Once a week, your class meets with your ALI professor over Zoom to discuss the readings and exercises you’ve been doing, to ask questions, and most important – practice the language! Our professors actually speak in the target language as much as possible, and we encourage our students to speak in it as much as possible as well. Obviously no one learns an ancient language nowadays just in order to converse, but we’re big advocates of speaking ancient languages as living languages because of the way that speaking helps students improve their own reading proficiency.
If you sign up for a class, you’ll get access to all of this – it just depends on which language you want to learn! Take a look at our Beginner Latin, Beginner Ancient Greek, Beginner Biblical Hebrew, and Beginner Old English classes.
If you sign up for an ALI class, you should be ready to spend 1.5 hours in class over Zoom, once per week. Additionally, you should spend 4-6 hours per week reading and studying with your course materials.
Students come to us because they want to gain proficiency in ancient languages. We look for the teachers who can best help them do this. Therefore, the highest-priority criteria when we hire a teacher at ALI are:
A) The teacher can speak and read the language that they will teach with an exceptionally high level of proficiency, and
B) That the teacher is skilled in the art of teaching.
We love our teachers and are very confident in them. They are listed here on our About page, with bios so you can read all about them.
No. Here’s why: For one, trying to speak a new language, in front of strangers, over Zoom, is nerve-wracking enough for some people. To record them doing it is an added layer of nervousness we do not want to impose on anybody. Further, your weekly class meeting is the only time every week that you are guaranteed to be interacting in real-time with other people while using your target language. There’s no substitute for that experience of real-time active use, and we want to make sure all of our students are having that experience. Watching a recording simply cannot replace being present for class.
Most courses have multiple sections, so if you know you won’t be able to make it to your normal section, let us know! We will be happy to switch you into a different section for the week. Just make sure you give us as much notice as possible.
If something comes up and you’re not able to join an alternative section for that week, email your teacher to see if there’s any extra self-study you can do. If you’d like to schedule an hour of time to go through the material you missed, you’re welcome to do so as well. Make-up sessions cost $95/hr. Just email us and we’ll get you squared away.
Scheduling, Payment, and Refunds
Our classes generally meet once a week for 1.5 hours. They are scheduled between the hours of 4am – 6pm PDT (7am – 9pm EDT), on Mondays – Saturdays. We do not run classes on Sundays.
We pre-select section meeting times based on a variety of factors, including:
- Most popular and most requested class times in past terms
- Teacher availability
- Variety of morning, midday, and afternoon times for each course
When you go to sign up, you will be able to see how many seats remain in each section. We cap adult classes at 12 students; classes for kids are capped at 10 students.
Synchronous class sessions are an integral part of our courses. Our Fall, Spring, and Summer classes are fourteen weeks long and meet once a week for 1.5 hours.
Latin classes for kids (elementary – high school) run on an academic year schedule (Sept. – June) and meet once a week for one hour. You’ll certainly want to be present for your class meetings.
That said, while the time difference can make things tricky, we have had students in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North and South America taking classes with us all at the same time (not all of those students were in the exact same class session, but we certainly have had many multi-continental classes).
When you go to sign up for a class, you’ll be able to see all the available sections for that course. Please note that by default all of our timing is listed in Pacific (San Francisco) Time.
All of our classes come with a Happiness Guarantee. This means that if, after the first class session, you’re not satisfied or you find that our approach just doesn’t work for you, just let us know and we’ll give you a full refund, no questions asked. And if something comes up after the 2nd or 3rd classes – no worries! We can give pro rata refunds before the 4th class. We are not able to give refunds after the 4th class.
Adult classes (Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, and Old English) run on trimesters of 14 weeks:
- Spring (January – April)
- Summer (May – August)
- Fall (September – December)
Latin for Kids classes run on a year-long schedule (September – June).
For a full list of dates, check out ALI’s detailed academic calendar.
One-on-one Tutorials (Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, and Old English) do not need to follow the academic calendar. They can begin and end at any time.