If you see a random assortment of people marching around campus behind a man carrying a long stick, rest assured. It is only French and Italian Professor John Rassias up to his old tricks.
The procession is part of today's graduation exercises for Rassias' Accelerated Language Program, an intense, 10-day session of language instruction.
More than 100 people participated in classes, drills and cultural immersion in French, Spanish, Italian, German or Japanese during the first of two summer sessions which concludes today.
The program utilizes the Rassias Method, a world-renowned approach to teaching foreign languages that emphasizes verbal and audio repetition. Rassias developed his method at the College.
Karl Foose, a dentist in his late 50s from West Palm Beach, Fla., said he decided to attend ALPS to prove wrong all those who said he could not learn a language.
As Denise Vargas '94, a Spanish drill instructor, approached Foose in class, he replied timidly, overcoming what he described as a lifelong fear. "This is something that I've been told all my life I couldn't do, and it's going to take a little time," Foose said.
"I plan on coming back for another session if I can master what I have learned so far," Foose said in a later interview.
ALPS student Jennifer Smith, who is pursuing a Masters Degree in public health at Hunter College in New York City, said she thinks knowing Spanish will be a great boon to her career. "I feel that the number of people who speak Spanish is so large, it would be beneficial to my work," she said. "I would also be interested in working in health in South America."
Peter St. John, otherwise known as "Pedro," a Spanish teacher from Burr Burton Seminary in Manchester, Vt. is spending his sixth summer with the ALPS program teaching Spanish. "We keep looking at each other and thinking, 'How could things have gone so smoothly?'" he said of this year's successful program.
"I think the program is one of the most exciting, effective and fun things going on in foreign language," St. John said.
St. John, who also instructs Outward Bound, a wilderness adventure program, finds similarities between his two interests. "I think of [ALPS] as Outward Bound for language students. [Rassias] calls it Club Med for masochists."
Despite the hard work and long hours, many who have participated in the program as teachers, teaching assistants and students say they have found the experience valuable.
"It's as much an experience for us as it is for them," Vargas said. "We learn a lot from them and they learn from being here, because many of them are teachers and for ten days they become students. It changes their perspective on learning."
"In 10 days it's amazing how much Spanish you can pick up," Mary Gegerias, a French Professor at Pine Manor College in Massachusetts said. "Obviously it works."
For Gegerias, learning Spanish has meant familiarizing herself with learning a new language, an experience she hopes will help her own introductory language teaching.
Gegerias is a member of the Dartmouth/Dana Collaborative Project which brings scholars from liberal arts colleges all over the country here to learn innovative and exciting ways to teach language and culture. The project is in its fifth year.
As part of the program, which lasts from June 21 to August 12, participants have a chance to take a language session with ALPS students. While some scholars choose a new language, others took the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with a language they learned some time back.
Warren Ashby, a professor of German at Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla. is learning Spanish for the second time, taking advantage of what she calls a "more effective method than the way I learned it 25 years ago."
The next session, which begins Sunday, July 11 will offer English as a second language, Chinese, Russian, Spanish and French.
