By Holly Dayton ’13, Contributor
From international programs to those right in Ohio’s backyard, some CCDS students spent a full month of their summer practicing and growing more proficient in either French or Spanish. Will Duncan ’11, Nicky Niedermeier ’12, Meg Lazarus ’13, and Brian McSwiggen ’14 all spent four weeks speaking another language almost exclusively during immersion programs.
Will Duncan went to Spain this summer, and said he “had a wonderful time.” But total Spanish immersion was no vacation. He stayed with a Spanish family for three weeks, spending one touring Spain and visiting landmarks. His favorite landmark was the La Segrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona. Duncan went to Spain through Dartmouth’s Rassias program with a group of twenty other kids. He had class every day for three hours in the morning, and then was at liberty to do what he wanted.
“It was scary at the start, sitting down the first night with my Spanish family and realizing what the next weeks would be like,” Duncan said. On the whole, he really enjoyed the program and would “most definitely” recommend it to anyone seeking a summer language program.
Nicky Niedermeier had a very positive experience as well, though his program was vastly different. Niedermeier didn’t have to go to France to practice his French; he went to the the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy (MMLA for short) at Oberlin College in Ohio. Students in this program stay in Oberlin’s dorms so they are always on campus. Niedermeier said that there were about 52 people in the program, but only five in his class. The MMLA program includes one main class and weekly electives such as hand bells, origami, and Niedermeier’s favorite: cooking. He has been taking French for the past six years, so the immersion program wasn’t hard, just different. Niedermeier said the classes he took were “less about grades and more about understanding the language,” which he liked. His favorite part of the whole program was meeting new people from different areas of the country.
Meg Lazarus also did the MMLA program, but she took Spanish. Lazarus found it a little harder to speak Spanish “all the time: at meals, in the dorms, and in class.” She said that there were 40 students in her session, and six in her class. She said her favorite part of the experience was “meeting people from different cultures and having teachers from all around the world: Columbia, Spain and Venezuela.” Lazarus tried to meet as many of the people in her group as possible, but it was “difficult to get to know everyone on campus.” Looking back, Lazarus said her Spanish “definitely improved” and would sincerely recommend the MMLA program as a great four week language experience.
Brian McSwiggen followed a different course of language study this summer, taking the Lac du Bois French program provided by Concordia College. Students spend four weeks lakeside in Minnesota in a typical summer camp atmosphere with two classes a day. After main classes, McSwiggen also took a weekly elective. He said there were 90 people at Lac du Bois, which means Lake of the Forest in French. There was one major difference between McSwiggen’s summer experience and the others; he didn’t have to speak French all the time. Even though he didn’t have full immersion, he was encouraged to speak just French. Though it is a different experience, McSwiggen “absolutely” recommends this program to others.
A common factor in all of the immersion programs is the length; all of them lasted four weeks. Meg Lazarus said this long length is vital: “Complete immersion is the only way to really learn a foreign language.”
Photo Courtesy of http://www.mfhughes.com/travel/photos_barcelona.htm
