The Middlebury Language Schools are language schools administered by Middlebury College. The programs comprise undergraduate and graduate instruction in 11 languages during six-, seven-, or eight-week summer sessions. The Schools enroll approximately 1,500 students every summer. The pedagogical approach of the programs relies on immersion-based instruction and acquisition. All students in the Language Schools must sign and abide by Middlebury College's "Language Pledge", a pledge to use their target language exclusively during the duration of their time at the School. Undergraduate instruction is offered in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Additionally, graduate-level instruction is offered in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. The Language Schools also offer a Doctor of Modern Languagesdegree, currently unique to Middlebury. Middlebury announced that it will launch a pilot School of Abenaki in 2020.
Founding and expansion
In 1915, the School of German was founded as the first of Middlebury Language Schools. The most recent School, the Middlebury School of Korean, was established in the summer of 2015. Middlebury Language Schools have historically all been conducted at the College's campus in Middlebury, Vermont. In the summer of 2009 the College opened a satellite campus at Mills College in Oakland, California, to accommodate growth in the enrollments in several of the schools. In the summer of 2020, Middlebury will no longer operate on Mills College but will instead operate at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont.
Language instruction
All of the eleven Middlebury Language Schools use an immersion-based approach to language instruction and acquisition. The Schools also stress cultural instruction in addition to pure language instruction. Students in all of the Language Schools are required to sign the "Language Pledge." The Pledge, which has been in continuous use since the 1920s and is a registered trademark of Middlebury College, reads:
In signing this Language Pledge, I agree to use ______________ as my only language of communication while attending the Middlebury Language Schools. I understand that failure to comply with this Pledge may result in my expulsion from the School without credit or refund.
The focus on immersion learning and the exclusive use of the target language allows the Schools to offer the equivalent of a year of language instruction in either six-, seven-, or eight-week summer sessions.
Graduate study
Eight of Middlebury's summer schools — Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and Spanish — offer graduate programs in addition to the undergraduate component. These are completed during six-week summer sessions, with an option of combining the sessions with overseas study. The graduate degree most often conferred is the Master of Arts. The MA in French, German, Italian, and Spanish require one summer on the Middlebury campus. A second summer is required for the MA in Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.
Middlebury offers a Doctor of Modern Languages degree. Unique to Middlebury, the D.M.L. prepares teacher-scholars in two modern foreign languages, helping them develop as teachers of second-language acquisition, literature, linguistics, and language pedagogy.
