Students study language through a combination of classroom instruction, residential living arrangements, and organized cultural activities. Two or three semesters of instruction in a language are offered during a single summer. The institute is housed on the Pitzer College campus, which also hosts a wide range of summer programs for international students. American students learning foreign languages thus have opportunities to live with and learn from native speakers. The Claremont Summer Languages Institute is open to non-Claremont students as well.
Students are in class for four hours of class per day, plus labs and a host of cultural activities.
Everyone signs a formal pledge to use only the language they are studying as their means of communication during the entire session . Faculty live on campus and take their meals with the students. Middlebury believes that this approach results in language acquisition which is the equivalent of at least a year of study in a more traditional academic setting. Student tutors receive special training, work closely with professors in the languages, and work with individual students and in groups. Language House has been revitalized to better integrate the goals and interactions of several language and international studies programs and resources with the functioning of language house.