Beginners taking the appropriate introductory courses already start miles behind in the semester-long race to an A, and the grading proposal would only further widen this gap.

At one point or another, most Middlebury students will walk up the stairs in Proctor Dining Hall and sit down for lunch in the Redfield Dining Room. There, they’ll take off their coats and backpacks, sit down at one of the round tables, and immerse themselves in an experiential part of the college’s robust foreign language learning curriculum. For five days a week, Language Tables are open and bustling amid the midday lunch rush, with eight core languages and the occasional Swahili or ASL table running each week. 

Explore what problem-based learning is, how it differs from project-based learning, and why it is such a powerful fit for engaging learners with real-world sustainability issues in the language classroom.

The Hidatsa language is in a state of emergency. Only an estimated 65 people speak it fluently. But one instructor at United Tribes Technical College is working to change that and save her native language.