African language teaching and research with emphasis on Swahili

The mission of the Department of Language and Communication Studies (ISK) at the University of Science and Technology (NTNU) at Dragvoll in Trondheim, Norway, is to teach Swahili and to carry out research on the language at the same time. This goal is also the objective of many teaching departments around the world. Other African languages are also the objects of research in our department. The picture that emerges is of a department committed to research into a range of African languages and this reflects the diversity of the continent of Africa. This paper however places emphasis on Swahili teaching and research. It takes the view that the goals of Swahili teaching are to impart to the student not only the mechanisms of Swahili grammatical structure but also to inform him or her about the points of contrast between Swahili and other languages, e.g. Indo-European languages. The paper, therefore, gives a brief overview of the Swahili teaching in Trondheim. If the Year of African Languages is to be meaningful, then the peculiarities or authenticities of African language structures ought to be emphasized more and more by language teachers.