Graduate Language Intensive

Graduate Language Intensive (GLI) is a 1-credit summer course that provides incoming graduate students with a linguistic, cultural and academic foundation for advanced study. It connects students across all disciplines and introduces you to academic culture in the United States.

GLI supports multilingual and international students in expanding English-language skills in preparation for writing, critique, presentations, understanding lectures and advanced readings, and other grad-school communication work. This is not a traditional language class—we draw all course materials from academic fields and interests surrounding your graduate study at RISD.

We offer the course both virtually and in person. Either option provides one credit and both conclude with a final gathering of all GLI students.

The virtual option runs July 8–August 2 and consists of twice-weekly live Zoom sessions, individual meetings with the instructor, and independent and interactive coursework via Canvas, our course management platform. The weekly time commitment is approximately 10 hours.

The in-person option runs August 19–23 at the Center for Arts & Language’s office in Fleet Library. It consists of five immersive days of lessons, daily assignments, meetings with the instructor and visits to campus resources.

GLI is taught by Maya Krinsky and Maria Thompson from RISD’s Center for Arts & Language, which fosters linguistic efficacy and agency across written, spoken, visual and multilingual forms.