Saint Michael's offers eight languages:

• Ancient Greek
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Latin
• Russian
• Spanish

At the beginning and low-intermediate levels, languages are taught in the following sequences:

French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish are taught intensively in two 5-credit semesters.   

Ancient Greek and Latin are each taught in two 4-credit semesters.  

How to decide what language to study?     

Some students think that they should study the same language that they studied in high school.  Others decide that a new and perhaps very different language is a better choice.  Certainly, for students who were not satisfied with their language study in high school, a different language might offer a welcome new start.   We do, however, ask students to take the Saint Michael's College Proficiency Assessment in the language they studied in high school. They can then use the score they received on this assessment to make an informed choice about which language(s) to study at Saint Michael's. 

We offer eight languages at Saint Michael's; students can study any one of them in order to demonstrate proficiency.  

For those students who might want to try a new language but are worried about whether some languages are more difficult than others, we have a solution.  Our proficiency expectations are adjusted according to the difficulty levels of those languages that native speakers of English find most challenging.  So, students can try a new language without worrying that it will be too hard to reach proficiency in that language.   For instance, the unique writing system of Japanese presents a different challenge than is presented by French or Spanish.  Thus, our proficiency expectations are more modest in Japanese or Russian than in the more commonly taught languages. 

To see some sample syllabi from a number of languages taught at Saint Michael's, see the Modern Language courses page: http://academics.smcvt.edu/modernlang_courses/