Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Middlebury College Creates Online Language Academy

Middlebury, the college with renowned foreign language programs, has expanded its offerings with a new online education program for pre-collegiate students called Middlebury Interactive Languages.

Middlebury, located in Vermont, will work in partnership with K12, an online education company based in Herndon, Virginia. It will also expand the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy, a language immersion summer program for middle and high school students.

"The partnership between Middlebury and K12 will expand access to high-quality language learning at a critical juncture," said Ronald D. Liebowitz, president, Middlebury C. "At a time when foreign language opportunities for primary and secondary school students in this country are declining, the need and demand for high-quality language learning is growing exponentially. Learning foreign languages and cultures has never been more important to our nation's global competitiveness."

Beginner French and Spanish for high school students will be offered late summer 2010. The courses will feature animation, music, videos and instructional games aimed at immersing students in new languages. Students will be assigned interactive, student-to-student virtual collaboration assignments, Middlebury said.

The courses are aimed at students who currently have no access to foreign language instruction. But teachers will also be able use the materials to supplement teaching in a regular classroom.

The new partnership will also lead to the expansion of the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy, an immersion summer program for students in grades 8-12, which provides instruction in Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Spanish through four-week residential sessions on four campuses: Green Mountain College in Vermont; Oberlin College in Ohio; Pomona College in California and a site run in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Massachusetts.

For more info on the Middlebury programs see http://www.middlebury.edu/mil/ .