Middlebury Chinese School

[Meng Lelan]

This is a summary of the Middlebury Chinese School which I attended July and August 2012. The nine week program is for undergrads and the six week program is for graduate students. I attended the six week graduate program but did get to observe the undergrads in action. Middlebury is located in Vermont, an hour’s drive south of Burlington. This is a very small town with a population of 8000. The campus is a 15 minute walk from the downtown area.

When you arrive you will be given a placement test if you are an undergraduate in the 9 week program. This will determine your final placement in the program.

Language Pledge

You sign this on the first day of classes. First year students work with a modified version of the Language Pledge. They use Chinese as much as possible in the beginning but are allowed to use English for clarification. Actually many of them by the midpoint of the program had enough conversational ability that they almost all completely ditched the English and went 100% in Chinese.

I will say that I was amazed that the Language Pledge actually does work. After decades of Language Battles (that is, Chinese natives refusing to speak Chinese with the non-Chinese and this does occur with many Chinese language teachers I have encountered in the past), I came in expecting that the Chinese native speakers would wage Language Battles, in other words, just not use Chinese all the time with the non-native speakers. Astoundingly, they all took to the pledge like a duck to water. Every one of them – teachers, students, support staff, graduate students, etc. One time I was observing a teacher teaching the second year class and he said “ok” in English when approving a student response and he kind of stopped himself and said “hao” in Chinese and went on with the lesson. Even the teachers and students in first year Chinese adhered perfectly to the pledge. If I was ever told there were infractions, really I don’t think I would have ever believed it. It was amazing (to me) to get emails and texts in Chinese like this was a normal thing to do.

Now, they do exempt administrative matters from the pledge --- for example, tech support, disability office, custodial matters, but they do try to have you do this through Chinese speaking student aides who will take your request in Chinese and get the administrative matter done.

However, administration does get very goofy in their attempts to “police the pledge”. There was a poster in the dining workers area (and I think I wasn’t supposed to see it) that listed things they could say to the Chinese School diners like “ni hao!” “haochi bu haochi?”, etc etc . To me it is completely daft to be thinking the dining room staff would even care, but they are all English monolinguals and they are all aware of the Language Pledge and will do everything they can not to detract from the Pledge.

Almost every newsletter we got on Fridays in the cafeteria had some administrator complaint that someone was overheard saying a non Chinese word and that this is not appropriate and this must be stopped etc etc, this got to the point where I called the newsletter “Whine and Dine”.

Dorms

Everyone must live in a dorm. No exceptions. You cannot bring spouses, friends, family if you are a student. If spouses, friends, and family can speak Chinese, you can bring them to your dorm for a visit but not to live or stay there. Faculty also live in the dorms. Almost none of the dorms are air conditioned so bring a fan. Nights can be chilly so bring a blanket. The language pledge is enforced in the dorms in all areas. Most rooms are single rooms. Many dorms have a kitchen where you can prepare snacks and meals. The showers were a pain as water tended to puddle everywhere outside the shower stall itself so be careful. They won’t honor any special room or dorm requests unless you have a disability or medical problem. If you have a disability I highly recommend Meeker House as it is very disability friendly. They try to shove older grad students into Voter House which is extremely disability hostile – for example there are no strobe fire alarms, and some suites have a spiral staircase which could be dangerous to those with mobility impairments. Undergraduates generally live in Forrest Hall. Dorms are separated by language. An entire dorm will be Chinese only; another dorm will be French only, etc. Your key card will give access to only Chinese speaking areas. By the way get a lanyard to put your room key and your building access card, both of them, on the lanyard as it is such inconvenience to always be fishing out a key and access card for every building you enter. Laundry was a pain for grad students as their dorms did not have laundry rooms so we had to trudge 10-15 minutes out to Forrest Hall to do the laundry. I know a lot of students who chose to wash laundry in the communal bathrooms and hung them up to dry.

Tuition and Fees

You will find this information posted on the website for Middlebury. Generally the 9 week session is about $9000 and the 6 week session is about $6000. The tuition includes classes, room and board, as well as fees. You will likely need to buy your own textbooks when you get there. I would estimate about $50 or so per week for spending money. Scholarships are really a tricky matter here. A decade ago STARTALK gave a lot of money to cover Chinese School tuition but in recent years the Chinese language students have fewer options for scholarship money. The financial aid application for Middlebury is simple and quick to do, so just do it online and see how much aid they offer you and at the same time apply for any other financial aid that you are aware of, for example, I applied for financial aid through a professional teaching organization for which I do a lot of editorial work and that helped with some $$$.

Level 1 and 2

As a master’s student I was required to observe several hours of Level 1 and 2 classes. I have to say I was absolutely amazed by how much Chinese language teaching quality and standards have skyrocketed in the last 20 years. Now, the disclaimer here is the students who choose to come here are exceptional, that is, they have the time, money, motivation and resources to come here to take first and second year Chinese. They for the most part are what I call Young Whippersnappers (college students in their twenties) though there were a couple of students in their 60s and 70s. They have four to five hours of classes a day. There is also one-to-one in the afternoons for first year students and what that is a teacher pairs up with a student for supplemental individualized practice. Classes in the morning are like this – a large group of about 15 students convene to learn vocabulary and sentence structures. Then a small group of students – about four or so – convene for oral practice of vocabulary and sentence structures under instructor guidance. The large group convenes again for writing and reading instruction. There is a huge emphasis on sentence patterns and structures. I almost think that 90% of the instruction is all about sentence patterns and structures. I did see how the Level 1 students went from zero level to being able to function to the point where 99.99% of all classroom instruction and out of class life could be conducted entirely in Chinese, although they did receive English versions of the weekly school newsletter and announcements.

I was astounded at how much material the Level 1 were covering that I myself did not receive instruction until I was in Level 3 or even Level 4 Chinese classes decades ago. To cite an example, I was amazed when an older student in the first year class came up to me and began to converse with me in Chinese about the hearing aids I was wearing and about how he now needs to see a doctor to get a pair when he finishes the program. When I started out over twenty years ago, at that time I don’t think I would have been able to work up any conversation at all. I think because at Middlebury they learn so many different strategies to help engage in conversation and clarification.

Then again I have to wonder how much they are really going to retain after nine intensive weeks of this campus, when they go home to the Real World that is going to be a problem they themselves will have to address in their own ways. Even classes at their home schools are not going to be any match for Middlebury.

Level 3 and 4

I did not observe very many hours of this. The format of Level 3 and 4 is about the same as Level 1 and 2 – the 大班 of about 30 students in a lecture and a 小班 with about six students in a session. They were using Taiwan Today, Anything Goes, generally textbooks that are very heavy on vocabulary and grammar. In fact I observed both textbooks and curriculum were very heavy on vocabulary, sentence structures, and grammar and at the same time disappointingly little on culture, history, especially literature (modern and classical). I don’t think I would have enjoyed this curriculum at all. Then again I was totally spoiled by my third and fourth year Chinese courses in CET Beijing where we totally got into all kinds of Chinese literature readings so maybe this is just my problem…

Graduate School

Middlebury has a master’s in Chinese Pedagogy program where you can get a masters degree in four summers at Middlebury or two summers at Middlebury and a year in between at Monterrey. All your classes will be in Chinese only although some teachers choose some readings in English and some teachers let you write a long paper in English. Each summer you take a linguistics class, a pedagogy class, and a culture class. The pedagogy class was stellar, the linguistics class was an easy class (probably because I took linguistics when I was a grad student in deaf education), but I did not like the culture class at all. This was a Chinese cinema class and I did not like the teaching style at all. You would watch the movie first then discuss its implications instead of the other way around which would have helped me a lot to understand the movie itself.

The pedagogy class had a review of various textbooks on the market now. We reviewed mostly new publications that I was not even aware of and we reviewed what makes a good Chinese language textbook and a good Chinese curriculum. We reviewed a very impressive new textbook set for intro Chinese by Kubler and we were told the textbook for intermediate is supposed to come out next year. We commented on how the Chinese textbook market has really exploded but really good ones that are research based are something we have to always be looking for.

By the way the teaching practicum is required for the last summer of your masters program.

Some Issues

There were a few problems that I had with the Middlebury program.

My biggest complaint is how the PR (Public Relations) and Marketing are so busy polishing up the All Important Image of the Language Schools, they are everywhere. First day of class you have to sign permission for them to film and photograph to no end whatsoever the fun classes and activities you will be doing. Then they will take all that and craft next year’s marketing campaign. You notice how everyone’s all smiling and having fun in all that PR stuff like the website and brochures and in some very ornate surroundings (truth of the matter is classroom space at Middlebury is so tight that they had to carve dorm rooms and dining halls into teaching areas). I got irritated when a camera crew barged into my Chinese pedagogy class and started filming my oral report. They were dangling over my head some kind of fur coated microphone which I initially thought was a dead cat. Then they starting fanning out all over the classroom taking pictures of anything that looked like Chinese writing and took close up pictures of a classmate’s notes in Chinese on an open laptop. I did not feel that was an appropriate thing for them to do and almost reached over to slap shut her laptop over the Prying PR’s fancy and expensive camera. And you can’t do anything about those PRs because like I said, you have to sign permission. Then I got irritated again when I was starting my wushu performance at China Night when I was blinded by a big photo camera flash from the ubiquitous Prying PR. If you choose to perform for China Night be aware it will be videotaped and photographed, so if you don’t want that then don’t perform.

Another issue is the entire program is heavily auditory – oral. The whole summer I kept thinking rmalpha would have gone insane at Middlebury, well I almost did myself. This program will never be 100% accessible to the hearing impaired no matter the heroic efforts of the Disability Office. There was a blind student in the French school and from what I know she was happy with her experience because the heavily auditory-oral nature of the program was likely appropriate for her. Class discussions are very auditory-oral meaning I had to speechread for hours and hours on end and that was pretty bad. Most teachers are from mainland and I have always had trouble understanding mainland speakers but rarely ever have trouble understanding Taiwan speakers (I believe this has something to do with how I speechread and how I use whatever auditory information I can get, but I am not going to go into great detail here). So I had positive experiences in the pedagogy class that was taught by a professor from Taiwan.

Conversation in the cafeteria is really challenging what with the din and background noise there is and trying to speechread mouths full of food. They make announcements over the din of classes and cafeterias. The curriculum in levels 1 through 4 are very demanding on auditory-oral skills from what I saw and I cannot really see anyway they could modify the curriculum to concentrate just on reading and writing. Even reading and writing demanded a lot of auditory-oral information through discussions, demonstrations, and so forth. So if you have auditory challenge concerns you need to be very very careful choosing this program.

My Thoughts

If I did Chinese all over again, I would have chosen to do first year Chinese at Middlebury then start fanning out to other countries (Taiwan, mainland etc) for second, third, and fourth year Chinese. Middlebury’s strength is certainly not in Chinese literature, culture, arts, and history so this may be a deal breaker for some students. Chinese language pedagogy is basically where Middlebury stands out. If you want to learn the language then this may be an option. Just keep in mind that this is a very contrived environment where they place a Chinese bubble in the middle of Middlebury which is a very Anglo, rural community. This would be okay for first year beginners but probably not appropriate for levels higher than second year. Just understand your weekends will be spent at the farmers market (you have got to get a loaf of bread from Good Companion Bakery! They truck them in fresh and piping hot at the crack of dawn. My East European genes wept with joy at such fine bread) or hiking the mountains or something like that, certainly not visiting the Great Wall of China or Tian Tan or any place that would tie in with your Chinese language study.

They do allow you ten years to finish the masters program. Meaning you do not have to attend every summer for four years. At any rate, I do not think I will be returning to Middlebury for a few years because I want to go to Taiwan to study for a summer at some point before resuming the masters at Middlebury and also finish out the blind rehab license program in which I am currently enrolled here in Texas.

So that’s it then, hopefully I covered almost everything you need to know.

[msittig]

Have you sent a link to this post to the people who run Middlebury Chinese? I'm sure they would love this sort of feedback.

[Meng Lelan]

Oh, the Prying PR will find this link soon enough on their own power.

[abcdefg]

Thanks for the write-up. Might have been a good place for me in my 20's, Sounds like they have some excellent teaching methods. Plus they provide a nurturing "bubble" for those who can't go abroad.

But for now I'll stick with what I'm doing in China. I'm fortunate to have the luxury of prolonged immersion plus a wide variety of interesting real life input.

[Meng Lelan]

I think your method is quite ideal, abcdefg.

[rmpalpha]

Thanks for mentioning me in your commentary, Meng Lelan

I'll probably write up my experiences in Taiwan this summer and post them on these forums soon. The thought of having to speechread for hours in a non-native language makes me tired already - I can't imagine what that would be like.

[Meng Lelan]

And I am not even sure you would want to try it. The whole time I was at Middlebury I was thinking "What would rmalpha do about this!!!???!!!".

I am hoping to see your Taiwan write up too as I am hoping to go to Taiwan either in 2013 or 2014, actually 2014 is more possible than 2013 since I want to finish out the blind rehab certificate as fast as I can.

[Meng Lelan]

So, I filled out a survey sent out by the Prying PR and for that I got a lousy Middlebury tshirt in the mail today - the one proclaiming "Life doesn't come with subtitles".　In English, what else! That PR slogan is emblazoned everywhere at the summer language schools. The PR doesn't seem to know that the Disabilities Office had to tell the Chinese School to make Chinese subtitles accessible to me. And when the Chinese School couldn't find Chinese subtitles they had to find English subtitles.

I am going to write Middlebury a letter telling them it is time to dump the "life doesn't come with subtitles" 口號。

Then I bet the Prying PR will come up with "life doesn't come with interpreters" and some deaf will come along asking for Chinese sign language interpreters, then what will they do.

[Crystalavender]

Meng Lelan, thank you for your detailed description of the middlebury program. I will be attending the 6 week MA program this summer at middlebury. Will I have to take a placement test when I get there for the MA program? Also, how did you get to campus from Burlington airport? Did you have a single room during your stay last summer?

[Meng Lelan]

No placement test for you, because if you got in already, that means they looked at the tests you have already taken to show your proficiency level. I am guessing you took the OPI, the WPT given by the ACTFL or the HSK. From Burlington Airport there are private cars and shuttles to Middlebury. The trip takes about an hour and will cost $75 or so. Less if you are sharing the ride with others also going to Middlebury. Yes, the grad students all have single rooms but the dorms they get do not have air conditioning and you will have to buy an electric fan and yes Vermont summers have been hotter (!) than Texas summers, at least when I was there last year. Do you know what classes you will be taking yet?

[Crystalavender]

I haven't heard anything besides the acceptance letter and financial aid. When would they tell me my classes? How many students were in the Chinese MA program last year? When I had the OPI with Wu Laoshi he mentioned how young I was. I'm 23, so I'm wondering if there are other people around my age doing the program or if they are all older.

[Meng Lelan]

That's the problem with Middlebury, they tend to be very last minute with details like what classes will be available. Last year I tried checking the website but they never updated it with the masters classes to be offered. Then in May (I think) we got an email listing the classes to be offered and we emailed back our course selections. There are 30 students in the program. Many of them will be G1 (first ever summer program), a few will be G2 and G3 (second and third summer), and maybe five or so will be in their last summer. Many are native Chinese from their late twenties to early fifties. About five or six are non Chinese in their mid to late twenties.

[Crystalavender]

Are the courses that I'm suppose to take over the four years not already set? In your previous posts, you mentioned that you had to take a linguistics, pedagogy, and culture class. I was hoping that I could take a language class like Advanced Chinese 1 or 2 to brush up on my chinese. Is that possible, do you think that's necessary?

[Meng Lelan]

Middlebury graduate school more or less rotates through a series of about fifteen or so courses in literature, linguistics, and pedagogy. Maybe eight or so will be offered in any given summer. No two summers are exactly the same. You are not required to attend four consecutive summers but you are given ten years to finish all coursework. A language class like Advanced Chinese 1 or 2 is not going to count towards your master's degree at Middlebury. Then again why do you need brushing up on your Chinese when you already have OPI scores high enough to get into the Middlebury master's program? The summer graduate program with the three classes will take up your time 24/7 and very unlikely you will have time or be allowed to take fourth or fifth year Chinese or something like that in your "free time".

[Crystalavender]

I'm only worried because my writing is not very good. The OPI and another assessment that I took only assessed reading comprehension and listening. Did you have to do a lot of writing last year?

[Meng Lelan]

Oh, you didn't take the WPI for the writing assessment? I thought that was required to get into Middlebury or maybe that changed. Well, in today's times almost everyone types Chinese into some device using pinyin so maybe now it is less important to remember how to handwrite the characters. Even the native Chinese there did 99% of their writing on some PC or iPad or whatever. As for amount of writing, depends on the class. Yang Laoshi taught Chinese cinema and women in Chinese literature last summer and she is notorious for requiring insane amounts of writing, like a paper every single week. She did offer the option of writing papers in English but I rejected that option because this was supposed to be immersion schooling! For the linguistics class, almost no writing at all, basically all we had to do was do a ppt presentation and a final exam.

[Crystalavender]

The courses for the summer 2013 session finally came out online.

CHNS 6501A: Tchng Chinese as For Lang

CHNS 6510A: Introduction to Chinese Lings

CHNS 6550A: CSL Research & Implications

CHNS 6580A: Topics in Chinese Culture

CHNS 6607A: Phonetics

CHNS 6610A: Chinese Pragmatics

CHNS 6618A: Sociolinguistics

CHNS 6650A: Chinese Cinema

Any suggestions?

[Meng Lelan]

Don't take Chinese Cinema it was a killer class. Hopefully Ceclila Chang is teaching "Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language", she is amazing, you must take her class! The linguistics class is really easy so take that (well, it was easy for me because I minored in linguistics in my undergraduate years). You will spend a lot of time listening to the linguistics professor tell stories and your classmates will be competing to come up with the most knockout powerpoint presententation of all time. Actually many of them practically copied their powerpoint presentation right out of the linguistics textbook. I see the course offerings as usual are not very imaginative, that is why I am not interested in returning to Middlebury again. Be sure to keep us posted during and after your adventures at Middlebury.

[Crystalavender]

So they finally sent us the course descriptions and selection forms. Unfortunately Cecilia Chang is not one of the teachers for the MA program this summer. The professors they have are Yuling Yang, Wenhao Diao, Yu Zhang, and Shi Feng.

The courses that I'm thinking of taking are:

Intro to linguistics - Yuling Yang

Principles and practices of teaching chinese as a foreign language - Wenhao Diao

Topics in Chinese culture - Yu Zhang

Any thoughts or comments for either the courses or professors?

[Meng Lelan]

Not a good thing that Cecila Chang isn't coming back this summer. She was stellar. Shi Feng, I had him for linguistics last summer and I don't feel like I got anything out of that class. The other professors, I don't know them. Maybe someone here in Chinese Forums knows them and can advise you.