Alongside opportunities for students to study abroad, there are also numerous options within the United States that enable students to learn a foreign language within an intensive environment. These programs, many taking place during the summer semester, can help students grow their knowledge of their language(s) of choice in addition to the culture surrounding them. Depending on the program, they can additionally give students anywhere from a semester to an academic year’s worth of advancement.   

Emma Clute is a FLAS recipient who used her Fellowship to participate in Middlebury College’s summer Language Immersion Program during the summer of 2025. Middlebury’s Language Immersion Program is known for their Language Pledge, requiring students to only speak the language they study for the duration of the program. This includes outside of the classroom and during extracurricular activities. As a Linguistics and Spanish major and Russian minor who plans on pursuing a career in translation with the State Department, Emma is a student who has copious experience studying languages and takes it seriously. This is what she thought of her Middlebury experience. 

What made you decide to study at Middlebury versus studying abroad?  
When I started learning Russian, I realized that it was a lot harder than Spanish. I knew if I wanted to get good at it, I would need to do an immersion program. I previously studied abroad in Spain, but I already knew a high level of Spanish at the time. I wanted something more language-heavy for Russian as opposed to also being in the culture, just because my Russian wasn't good enough to go abroad. So that's why I applied to FLAS to do a Russian program.  
I had a few other (U.S.) options I was considering, but Middlebury was the only one that did the language pledge, where you had to always speak Russian. I really believe in the immersion learning approach and previously tried to mimic that myself by trying to only speak Spanish at the time I was in high school. I also thought that it was important for an intensive program because you could use what you learned in class, you’d always speak the language, and you’d be forced to learn how to communicate important things you might not learn in a classroom by speaking outside of lectures. 

What sort of activities did the program offer to further your language immersion outside of language lectures? 
There were also topical lectures that you could go to. One was about the relationship between Russia and the U.S over the course of history. They had a lot of politics ones. There were also movie nights that we went to. They were all contemporary popular Russian movies. One was about a famous Russian band; another was an adaptation of The Master and Margarita. They also had the director of that movie come and speak to us. A famous Russian poet even came and did an exhibition of her work. Additionally, there were a lot of clubs that met every week. There was an arts and crafts club, a curse words club, a slang club, and more. Some of them were less related to the language, like tennis and soccer, but you still learned cool vocab. The biggest clubs were choir and theater. Overall, there were a ton of things to do. But there’s also a ton of homework, though, so you really couldn't do it all. 
 

How did it feel to go from one of the largest public universities in the U.S. to a much smaller private college for the summer? Was there any sort of “culture shock”? 
Yeah, it was kind of weird! I realized that I'm glad I was only there for the summer, just because Middlebury was so small. Part of that was the program itself. You saw the same people all the time. But it was in a very small town (Middlebury) and wasn't like a big city at all. If you didn't have a car, you couldn't really get anywhere, which, for the purpose of the program, is fine. But I think it was kind of shocking, and I couldn’t believe people were here for the whole year. There's nothing to do. But I think it worked being in a smaller group. We all had to eat lunch and dinner at the same time. For example, the Russian school ate together. This puts you with the same people so you made friends quicker than I think you would have if it was a bigger campus.  

What was a memorable experience you had during your Russian immersion? 
There were these events held three times a week called Russian Tea, which were in the basement of the dorm where the Russian school was. They were staffed by ‘bilinguals’, who were basically the RAs. They weren’t really our age, like five, ten years above us, but they would facilitate things like the clubs and would communicate with the faculty. And so, they would put on these events. I remember there was this one Monday where I was super exhausted from my classes, but then I just ended up at that Russian Tea for four hours. I think it was from 9 to 11. But then I was just walking with a friend all around campus and didn’t get to bed until like 2 a.m. This was towards the end of the program. But that moment was when I realized I could truly speak in Russian, because we were talking about drama that had happened without using English. I could actively engage in fun conversations about things that were relevant to me, which was something I couldn’t do before with Russian. 

What advice would you give to students who are interested in a summer language program, but may be turned away by something like the Language Pledge (having to only speak in their language of study)? 
If it's a serious thing that's deterring someone, I would say that there are many programs that don't require it. I know Indiana in Bloomington doesn't require that. Going abroad to a country, a lot of people still speak English outside of the classroom. So, there are other ways, but I would also say, consider why you're turned off by the Language Pledge. It was super intimidating, and I will say they were very strict about it. But I think at the end of the day, it helped. Towards week six out of eight, I was pretty exhausted of only being able to speak in Russian, but I wouldn't change the experience. 

In what ways did your time at Middlebury or being a FLAS recipient advance your career goals or future? 
I think because I want to be a translator, I knew my level of Russian just had to be better. I had to see it in context of hearing not only how my classmates that are also English speakers speak, but how native speakers speak. All but one the professors were native Russian speakers. I think just being in that kind of environment exposed me to the language in a way that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise, and I think you need that to be a translator. Even if you're translating from a non-native language to English, you still need to know how real people speak it and not just know the language itself.