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Modern Languages and Cultures
The Modern Languages and Cultures Department offers a B.A. degree, a minor, and service courses to cadets with foreign language requirements. The department teaches basic to advanced courses in Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, and Spanish languages, literatures, and cultures.
Beginning to intermediate courses are designed to enable students to speak and understand as well as to read and write a foreign language with an acceptable degree of proficiency while developing their cultural competency. Advanced courses are designed to enhance the students’ linguistic skills and to introduce them to texts and other sources that familiarize them with the history, thought, civilization, and culture of the countries or areas where the foreign language is spoken.
Aside from meeting the needs of our own majors and minors, the Modern Languages and Cultures Department offers elementary, intermediate, and upper-division courses to students of departments that have foreign language requirements and to students who choose language courses as electives.
The Modern Languages and Cultures Department, perhaps to a greater extent than any other department on post, enhances, facilitates, and helps implement the symbiotic goal of the Institute to increase international opportunities for cadets in order to allow them to function more effectively in an increasingly internationalized planet.
Degrees and Programs
Major(s): Modern Languages and Cultures
Degree(s): Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
Concentration(s)/Minor(s):
- Arabic
- Chinese
- French
- Spanish
To graduate with honors in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures a cadet must be a modern language major, have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0 in courses taken in the major (exclusive of subjects taken in the 4th Class year), and have permission of the department head.
Cadets must complete ML 498 and ML 499 and produce a thesis which is written in the student's major foreign language, as appropriate.
The thesis must achieve a language ranking of "Advanced-High" and adhere to MLA specifications.
Modern Languages and Cultures in the News
Find out more about the department's cadets and faculty in recent VMI news.
VMI Holds Retrospective of German Program, Celebrates Sunnen’s Retirement
A gathering of department members, both past and present, was held recently to observe the ending of the program and reminisce about the professors who taught German at the Institute since J.T.L. Preston in 1839.
Chinese Language Teachers Gather at VMI
杏吧Pro hosted the spring 2026 Workshop of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Virginia (CLTA-VA) April 11.