The Canadian Summer Institute of Linguistics is a training school offering an introductory course in descriptive, structural linguistics. The curriculum includes phonetics, phonemics, morphology, syntax, and a series of lectures on related field problems. Each of the five divisions is given the equivalent of 55 classroom hours, an hour a day, five days a week, over an 11 week period.

The overall aim is to prepare the student for field work, especially in areas where no, or very little, linguistic work has been done. For this reason the emphasis in phonetics is on hearing, reproduction, and transcription. This is done in small drill groups with each student receiving as much individual help as possible. Sections are usually limited to eight students per instructor. The instructors take the students through the range of possibilities of speech sounds, explaining with diagrams and demonstrations the manner in which such sounds are made.