Middle school students choose to pursue either French or Spanish daily and they also continue their Latin instruction of 100 minutes per week.
Local high school curricula influence the use of texts chosen for all three languages in the middle school program. In French and Spanish, students continue to explore the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing and incorporate the study of more complex grammatical and syntactical structures. Latin classes focus on grammar translation with a particular emphasis on syntax and word derivation.
Course objectives at the middle school level focus on vocabulary acquisition, grammatical knowledge, and communicative proficiency in the areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing, as well as on increasing insight into the cultures and communities where the language is used.
Middle school students also have the opportunity to study Mandarin as one of their Exploratory classes. This class introduces students to the basics of Mandarin Chinese, including painting characters with traditional ink.