They don't call it immersion study for nothing.
If learning a foreign language over the course of a year is a gradual walk along the sloping bottom of a swimming pool, learning each day the words and phrases you'll need to go a little deeper into the language and culture of another land, studying a language at Middlebury College's famed language schools is being thrown feet first into the deep end.
Evan Burchard, who spent nine weeks studying Japanese at Middlebury in summer 2005, doesn't minimize the difficulty of that kind of immersion study, but there's no doubt that it was the right choice for him. "I think it was probably the best decision I ever made for my education," says Evan, who aspires to participate in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program after graduation. JET is a government-operated program that recruits non-Japanese individuals for foreign language teaching and counseling positions at schools and companies in Japan.
A music major with minors in both computer science and Asian studies, Evan was able to take the summer course at Middlebury through gifts to the Allegheny College Center for Experiential Learning from Robert "Mike" Glenn '57 and Cordelia Glenn '58 and George Strong '49.
Students at Middlebury's intensive language programs take a pledge to speak, listen, read, and write in the language of study—and only in the language of study—for the course of the program. (Exceptions are made for emergencies.)
"Going into the situation, I had about a twenty-word vocabulary in the language," Evan explains. But that quickly changed. "I lived and ate meals with about twenty-five Japanese teachers every day," he says, a cultural experience that was heightened further by studying Japanese with students from other countries. "There were students from Korea, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia, Canada, and England, as well as Americans." Students also spanned all ages, from college students to men and women near retirement age and beyond.
Two to four hours of homework a night was the norm, but even breaks spent with other students were another opportunity to exercise newly won language skills.
In addition to acquiring a good grounding in conversational Japanese, Evan found his Middlebury experience had a few surprises to offer him. One of his classmates was a Grammy Award-winning violinist, and Evan had the opportunity to sing in a concert at Middlebury that she played in as well.
"The teachers and students had a wide range of backgrounds," he says. "The director and assistant director of the school were knowledgeable in educational technology and music, respectively. I really appreciated some of our conversations. Also, getting to know someone as you are learning a language is a very interesting experience, because a lot of times it felt as if the other students and I were slowly constructing our identities and personalities."
Were there any other surprises, beyond learning that what seems quite impossible at first is something you can not only accomplish but enjoy? Evan answers with a smile: "How good octopus can be."
