Welcome to the French School!
Bienvenue à l'École française!
Click here to access the French School website(cliquez ici pour accéder au site web de l'École française)
Every summer since 1916, the French School has created an intensive French-speaking environment inside and outside the classroom, during the day and—once you begin to dream in French—at night. We offer courses from the beginning level, for students who have never studied French, through the Doctor of Modern Languages degree. Each level has its own challenges, but all partake of the special Middlebury experience. The key to that experience is the famous engagement d'honneur, or Language Pledge, which requires students to speak only the language they are studying.
As its name implies, the engagement requires of students a concentration rarely found even in the countries where French is spoken. Indeed, many tell us they learned more French in six or seven weeks of structured and constant language use at the French School than they did during a much longer period abroad.
The willingness to sign the engagement is also a guarantee that all who apply are truly serious about their course of study and their personal motivation. This allows us to build a community of dedicated teachers and learners, and create the special atmosphere that is the hallmark of language study at Middlebury.
Our goal is quite simply the communicative competence that informs any community. Beyond dedication and lots of hard work, we have no specific or unique Middlebury method or materials. We prefer to bring together faculty who are specialists at what they do and the most motivated language students to be found anywhere, and then help the magic happen.
The French School curriculum includes courses in language, literature, civilization, linguistics and language teaching pedagogy. In the same way we look for variety and mix in our teaching and teaching methods, the faculty and curriculum regularly represent the variety of venues in which French is used: Paris but also other regions of France, France but also francophone areas like Africa, Quebec, and the Caribbean.
Our preference for diversity extends outside the classroom as well, in the many co-curricular activities that are offered or that spring up in response to student interest: lectures, films and plays, the choir and the cabaret, drawing and painting, sports like soccer and tennis, and hiking in the magnificent Vermont setting. All in French, of course. Says Director Aline Germain-Rutherford, "It is exactly here, in the interweaving of academic and cultural programs, that one finds the unique, exceptional essence of Middlebury College."
In the intensive language program, students are placed according to their proficiency as demonstrated by the online placement test. The first three levels emphasize language skills, moving progressively toward greater personal empowerment in the language and real communicative competence. While oral proficiency improves dramatically in our French-only atmosphere, we emphasize all four skills: speaking but also listening, reading but also writing. At the fourth level, we combine intensive work in advanced grammar and composition with two courses in literature and/or civilization.
Students enrolled at the graduate level usually attend in order to obtain the M.A. in French, but we also admit a number of non-degree students. The M.A. may be obtained in a series of summers (one of which can be completed in our new program hosted by the University of Poitiers, France), or through a summer followed by an academic year at the School in France. We continue to emphasize language proficiency as the sine qua non of acceptable performance, but graduate students also select from a broad array of courses in linguistics, literature, civilization and pedagogy.
Graduate students interested in completing their master’s degree in one calendar year can choose to go abroad following a six-week summer session on the Vermont campus and study at the Sorbonne through the School in France. The program offers enough flexibility to allow students to prepare for admission to the best Ph.D. programs, teaching careers in the U.S., or careers in the private and non-profit sectors. At the Université de Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle, students may choose among courses in French literature, linguistics, didactics/pedagogy, cinema, and theater. At the Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne, students may choose among courses in French literature, linguistics, French history, history of French music.
The Middlebury College School in Paris was founded in 1949 as a graduate program in Paris where Middlebury College French School students could continue and finish their MA degree. In the 1960s, as Middlebury College undergraduate students began to show interest in going abroad, the program was expanded to fulfill their needs.
Middlebury offers three options for undergraduates in France: in Paris, Bordeaux and Poitiers, respectively about 3 hours and 1 ½ hours by train from Paris. In Paris, undergraduate students may study French literature, comparative literature, linguistics, history, theater, film, musicology and music, art history, geography, economics, political science and international relations, psychology, philosophy, and religion. Middlebury College's partners in Paris include Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris IV - Sorbonne, Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po), Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Institut Catholique de Paris, or Ecole Normale de Musique. Special arrangements can be made to study at other Parisian institutions (Ecole Normale Supérieure and EHESS, for instance).
In Bordeaux and in Poitiers, students enroll directly at the Université de Bordeaux and Poitiers. In Bordeaux, students are enrolled at the the Université de Bordeaux 3 (French literature, comparative literature, linguistics, history, theater, film, music, art history, archeology, geography, and philosophy). They may take some classes at Sciences Po Bordeaux (political science, history, and economics). Special arrangements can be made to study at other branches of the Université de Bordeaux, at Bordeaux 2 in psychology, for instance. Students can enroll in virtually all disciplines in Poitiers, including science and math.