Purpose

The primary goals of the Gerry Tobin Irish Language School are to teach the Irish language and to spread its use as a living language.

To further these goals, the school offers instruction to children and adults ranging from beginer to advanced classes. Beginning and intermediate instruction focuses on pronunciation and grammar while advanced classes focus on developing litereracy and conversational skills through the study of various subjects written in Irish.

For advanced students and native speakers, the school provides forums to converse with other competant speakers of the language to keep conversational skills sharp and lively.

Our advanced students participate in the only ongoing program of Irish Studies available in North America through the medium of the Irish language. We have workshops on such subjects as variations in dialect in Irish editions of the Bible, the Irish singing tradition, comparative linguistics, and Irish literature. We also have certain special-interest activities such as our Irish Language Video Committee, and we are continuing to build our school's 'virtual community' of Irish language communication and conversation on the internet.