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Not surprisingly, one of the most popular student clubs on the Middlebury Institute campus is a club dedicated to the love of languages. BUILD, or Beyond yoUrself In Language Development, was founded by a group of students in 2009 with the idea of spreading that love of languages by offering free beginning-level classes in any language MIIS students wanted to teach. The program simultaneously offers the student instructors the opportunity to hone their teaching skills in an informal, low-pressure environment.

The club has continued to grow and mature in its offerings and this fall it will be offering 29 courses in 12 different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Persian, Portuguese and Spanish. Students from the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Teaching Foreign Language (TFL) degree programs have always shared their skills with other students who might have more knowledge of the language than of teaching, but this year the club leaders decided to formalize the teacher training element of the program.

“Some BUILD teachers have never taught before, and we feel that providing adequate teacher support would alleviate their apprehension and uncertainty about teaching a language class,” says then-club president Stephanie Olivia Loiselle MATFL ’14. Stephanie explains, “We have an incredibly rich cultural and linguistic diversity on campus, and the last thing we would want is lack of teaching experience to get in the way of sharing language.”

For More Information

Jason Warburg
jwarburg@middlebury.edu
831.647.3156

Eva Gudbergsdottir
eva@middlebury.edu
831.647.6606