LangMedia is an open-access, award-winning repository of language-learning resources with a special focus on less-commonly taught languages (LCTLs) created and managed by the Five College Center for World Languages.

A group of smiling people in an office space with wooden doors behind them

The Five College Center for World Languages, a program of the Five College Consortium – the higher education consortium of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst – offers courses in LCTLs to students at the five campuses. Since 1991, the Center has helped more than 5,000 students study over 60 languages through our innovative Supervised Independent and Mentored language programs. 

LangMedia is a crucial part of the Center’s pedagogy and an important resource for language learners around the world. The site includes course syllabi and thousands of authentic recordings in almost 50 languages; and a library of tips and tools to help anyone become a more effective language learner. All LangMedia content is free and publicly available, and almost all is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license so that language teachers and learners everywhere can use and adapt the materials to suit their learning environment and goals.

Originally developed in the late 1990s, LangMedia has received generous support from the National Security Education Program, the U.S. Department of Education, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Davis Educational Foundation, and multiple Five College resources. The site received the 2005 Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching Editors’ Choice Award for Overall Exemplary Online Learning Resource, and in 2021 was cited in Teaching Language Online: A Guide for Designing, Developing, and Delivering Online, Blended, and Flipped Language Courses as a resource demonstrating the “communicative and social aspects of language,” and “bring[ing] the language to life” for learners. 

Today, LangMedia serves as a primary resource for the Center's students, conversation partners, and teaching assistants, and is used across our 293 courses as well as by language learners from more than 190 countries.

We hope you will find something here to inspire your language-learning journey.

Janna R. White
Director, Five College Center for World Languages