Academic Program
The Language Tutorial
In the Language Tutorial, students study foreign languages and translate them into English, compare them with each other and with English, and learn something of the nature of languages in general and of their own in particular. A tutorial has one tutor and 13 to 16 students. Tutorials meet three times per week.
Freshman Language: Ancient Greek
The Freshman Language Tutorial involves the thoughtful study of ancient Greek grammar, along with an ongoing examination of English grammar and reflection on more general questions of how language works. The year culminates in the translation of a substantial portion of Plato's Meno, but passages from other Freshman Seminar readings are read as well, such as the Republic and Aristotle's Ethics and Physics. By the end of the freshman year, students are expected to have enough Greek to be able to translate with the help of a lexicon and notes to the texts. An important goal of the language tutorial is the improvement of student writing. At least five papers are required during the course of the year, and students meet individually with their language tutor for paper conferences to discuss problems in syntax, thought, organization, and style.
Sophomore Language: Ancient Greek, Logic, English Poetry
In the first semester, students translate selections from a Sophocles tragedy or Homer's epics, and selections from the Septuagint or the Greek New Testament. In the second, they study logic, at least one Shakespeare play, and English lyric poetry. Through careful translation, students learn to see the subtleties and intricacies of the text. They inquire into the meaning of the work and examine details of grammar and syntax, meter, and imagery. They also reflect on the activity of translation itself.
Junior Language: French
In Junior language tutorial, students turn to French. As with ancient Greek, mastery is not the goal. Rather, students endeavor to learn enough French to read chosen authors (including Racine, Pascal, Descartes and Rousseau) in the original. In doing so, students continue the inquiry into language that began in the freshman year. The college has chosen French as the second foreign language that students are required to study, both because it is an uninflected language (as opposed to Greek) and because it is possible even for beginners to acquire in eight weeks a sufficient grasp of grammar to translate and discuss intelligently selections of great rhetorical, dramatic, and philosophic power. As writers working to improve clarity and precision students hone word choice, sentence construction, and organization. In the second semester, they translate Racine or Moliere.
Senior Language: French Poetry, Poetry and Prose
The Senior language tutorial, like the language tutorials of the preceding years, is the visible presence in the Program of the liberal arts of the trivium: logic, grammar, and rhetoric. In the senior year, rhetoric is given priority over the other two: the texts read are always literary texts and usually poetic ones. While readings vary between campuses and from year to year, a typical schedule of readings might include Rimbaud, Valéry, or Baudelaire; English and American poetry of the 19th and 20th century; or a lyrical prose writer such as Proust. Some tutors assign one or more modern novels. During the course of the year, each student usually writes five or six medium-length papers on topics assigned from the class materials.