Asian Language Instruction

[Anonymous]

Judi,

Can you also tell me how i can take LAUSD classes in Cantonese and/or Korean? Is there a website with this information? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Language Classes

The classes start January 7, but I'm sure you could call the number and ask if there are still spots available.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I'll call around and find out.

[Anonymous]

There is an institution in Studio City called Osaka Sangyo University of Los Angeles (OSULA). It offers high school-level Japanese language classes with the credits transferable to a student's home high school. In addition, there is a two-week summer program where students fly to Osaka, stay with Japanese families and attend various progams. Both programs have a reasonable cost.

Both of my sons attended the two-week programs in Osaka, which were very rewarding. My older son, in fact, is now studying Japanese at Pierce College with the intent of transferring to Cal State LA and majoring in Japanese.

The website is http://www.osula.com.

[Anonymous]

For U.S. teen in China, it pays to speak the lingo

By Ching-Ching Ni, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 1, 2008

Kyle Rothstein stands out in a sea of Chinese faces not because he is an American teenager with curly red hair and clear blue eyes, but because he speaks Chinese. Fluent Chinese.

The visual and verbal double take is the handiwork of his father, Jay Rothstein, a prescient American businessman who put Kyle in a bilingual English-Mandarin school in San Francisco when he was 5. The elder Rothstein had read that if you don't learn to speak a foreign language by that age, you never really get it.

"I knew it wasn't going to be easy," said Rothstein, who at the time was traveling to China on business several times a year. "There were times when he was crying every day, asking, 'I am not Chinese -- why do I have to learn Chinese?' "

But the benefits soon became obvious. By the time he was 12, Kyle had met two American presidents, hobnobbed with countless Chinese dignitaries and appeared on four Chinese TV shows. Now 17, Kyle is living in China's most cosmopolitan city, finishing school and starring in a soon-to-be-released feature film, "Milk and Fashion," about an American kid growing up in China. His father is the producer.

"I rebelled at first, but now I am grateful that my dad pushed me," Kyle, a reedy teenager with Shirley Temple locks and a relatively reserved temperament more befitting an honor student than a budding actor, said as he sat in the cafeteria of his Shanghai high school. "Everything about me has changed because of the Chinese language. It's opened up so many doors that other people don't have."

Rothstein, a single dad who acknowledges that he has raised his son much like a stereotypical stage mom, says it was all part of his plan to give the boy the best possible preparation for the future.

"I wanted to give him a good life, to do distinguished things," said Rothstein, who gained custody of his son after he and his wife divorced when Kyle was 6; she visits about twice a year. "Now college admissions officers are interested in him and saying, 'He has such an exotic resume -- we want him.' They want international kids. It's a global world."

More Americans than ever are waking up to the possibility that Chinese is the language of the future. With China's fast rise as an economic powerhouse, the language, once considered obscure and difficult to learn, is being embraced by parents looking to give their children a leg up in the global economy.

In 2000, about 5,000 American elementary and secondary schoolchildren studied Chinese. Today, the number is as much as 10 times that, according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The College Board offered Advanced Placement exams in Mandarin Chinese for the first time last year, and more than 3,000 high school students took the test.

When Kyle enrolled in San Francisco's Chinese American International School, the oldest Chinese bilingual elementary school in the country, there were few others like him.

Rothstein, not a Chinese speaker himself, was unable to offer many after-school opportunities for his son to practice his conversation skills, so he found a way to turn strangers into teachers.

"We would go to tourist sites like Fisherman's Wharf or Golden Gate Bridge and have a race to look for visiting Chinese delegations," Rothstein said, referring to group tours from China. "When we found them, I would walk up to them and say, 'Hey, I found this kid on the street. He only speaks Chinese. Can you talk to him? Find out what he likes to eat? Can you take him back to China?' "

The reaction was usually the same: "What? How? Wow!" Then everybody would have a good laugh as the visitors marveled at the little redheaded American boy speaking their mother tongue.

Word spread, and soon Kyle became a kind of unofficial cultural ambassador and a must-see personality.

When the first President Bush visited San Francisco's Chinatown, organizers made sure he met Kyle. " 'So this is the kid everybody's talking about,' " Rothstein recalled the elder Bush saying. In 1998, the Rothsteins joined the delegation accompanying President Clinton on his trip to China.

Kyle and his father, a consultant who helped U.S. businesses set up shop in China and then switched mostly to the movie business, moved to Shanghai in 2003.

Chinese isn't the only thing that makes Kyle different. As a child, he took ballet and ballroom dancing classes. He has performed with the San Francisco Ballet Company and recently appeared in "The White Countess," starring Ralph Fiennes.

"Going to ballet instead of playing soccer, that's a bit of a bummer," Kyle said, who was eyeing the field where his friends played a game while he was showing a reporter around his school recently.

Most of his friends are expats because he finds that cultural differences make it difficult to get very close to his Chinese friends. For one thing, they study a great deal and don't have as much time to hang out. And Kyle says he knows so much more about Chinese pop culture than they do about America.

"I know [pop star] Jay Chou and [boy band] F4; they know basic stars like 50 Cent, but they don't know who the Foo Fighters are," Kyle said. "If I say Mike Myers, they don't know who that is. But if I say Austin Powers, that funny British guy in the movie, they might know the face."

To his teachers in China, Kyle is not only an anomaly but also a role model, and not just for foreigners.

"He's the first typical American high school student we put into the normal Chinese class," said Sally Zhang, the vice principal of Jin Cai High School. "The Chinese students feel amazed. Most Chinese parents think learning English is very important. Now they see even foreign students can speak such good Chinese. So they know we should pay more attention to the Chinese language."

Although the popularity of Chinese is growing among nonnative speakers, the number learning it pales in comparison with the number studying English, now being learned by an estimated 200 million Chinese. To these Chinese, English is a tougher nut to crack. That's why they appreciate making friends with foreigners such as Kyle and hope there will be more of them in the future.

"We tried to speak English to him, but our English is so bad," said Shi Jun, 17, one of Kyle's pals. "Then we realized his Chinese was so good. We could communicate so much better."

[email protected]

[Anonymous]

Learning Chinese a humbling experience

How do you say, 'I'm lost'? Mastery of Mandarin eludes our intrepid writer but she enjoys a rich experience studying in Beijing.

By Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
06:03 PM PDT, January 04, 2008

She packed her bags for China to study Mandarin, or Putonghua. What she discovered was about more than words.

Beijing, China

An old Chinese proverb sums up the three months I spent studying Mandarin in Beijing: To suffer and learn, one pays a high price, but a fool can't learn any other way.

The famously difficult Chinese language could make a fool out of anyone. Standard Chinese, known as Mandarin or Putonghua, has tens of thousands of characters, many taking more than 20 strokes to write, and a transliteration system called Pinyin that expresses Chinese words in the 26-letter Latin alphabet of English.

Further complicating matters, Mandarin is a tonal language, meaning that the same Pinyin word has four definitions depending on the intonation.

More than 20% of the world's population speaks Chinese. But while studying it last year at Beijing Language and Culture University, I often wondered how Chinese children ever learn it. Generally, I felt like a child, or at least deeply humbled. But on those rare occasions when I could read a sign or tell a cashier I didn't have any small change, I felt like Alexander the Great at the gates of Persepolis.

You don't learn Chinese in three months -- or at least I didn't. Basic Chinese at the Monterey-based Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center is a 63-week course. But spending a semester in BLCU's short-term, accelerated program struck me as a good way of getting to know Beijing, which had proved elusive on my first visit 10 years ago, chiefly because I couldn't communicate.

BLCU specializes in teaching Chinese to overseas students. But there were many other schools in Beijing to consider because the demand for Chinese language training is growing exponentially. The Chinese Ministry of Education estimates that 40 million people around the world studied the language last year. Moreover, China's popularity among American exchange students increased 90% between 2002 and 2004, and 35% more in 2007.

A Chinese professor at my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, recommended BLCU, a state-approved institution founded in 1962 in the leafy university district of Beijing. It was the right choice for me, as it turned out. It's near the academic powerhouses of Peking and Tsinghua universities, and it is well-known to taxi drivers.

The school has a student body of about 15,000, a third from China studying to become Chinese teachers or preparing for careers that require a foreign language. Like American college students, Chinese undergraduates at BLCU play sports, party and call home to ask their parents for money.

The rest of the students come from more than 120 countries around the world and generally pay their own way. They have to hit the books hard just to keep up in accelerated Chinese class, where the approach is known as stuffed duck.

Inside the ivory tower

When I arrived here, I thought I would enjoy class from 8 to noon every weekday morning and spend the rest of the time tooling around Beijing.

I could easily have found an apartment off campus, but that required a residence permit from the local police. So I got a single in a dorm, figuring that living like an undergraduate at age 52 would be the worst indignity I would have to endure.

I had it all backward.

The campus, which occupies most of a city block close to the heart of Haidian District around Wudaokou subway station, is an Oriental ivory tower, surrounded by walls with gates locked at midnight (though pub crawlers are admitted after that with a little pleading). It was the dreary end of a Beijing winter when I arrived, so all I noticed at first was that BLCU had everything a student could need: ATMs, a library, bookstore, post office, conference center, market, hair salon, copy shop and gymnasium with Olympic-size pool.

Besides the cafeteria, which serves hot Chinese meals on penitentiary-style aluminum trays for about 25 cents an entree, there are several small restaurants specializing in foreign cuisine (though my taste buds told me that everything came from the same kitchen). I favored the LaVita Café, where I studied in the morning and drank a lot of coffee. The Muslim restaurant near the basketball courts was by far the most popular, chiefly for its delicious flat bread cooked on a round ceramic oven by a big, vicious-looking baker wielding a long wooden paddle.

Scattered around campus are 17 dorms, a few new high-rises but mostly two-story, gray brick buildings, vintage 1980 or so, inevitably fronted by a parking lot full of dilapidated bicycles. My dorm was No. 13, near the west gate, with a front desk manned 24/7 by staff members who knew but mostly refused to speak English.

My room, which cost about $400 a month, was on the second floor and far more comfortable than I had expected.

Its walls bore Scotch-tape marks from previous occupants. It had a mini-refrigerator, Internet hookup (for $20 more a month), a hard single bed, a card-operated telephone and a television. (The TV showed only state-sponsored CCTV news in English and a Korean-language station that aired reruns of "CSI: Miami" nightly, with Korean subtitles.) The private bath had an unenclosed shower dispensing water hot enough to make instant noodles.

About once a week, a washer in the faucet handle broke so I couldn't stop hot water from gushing out of the shower. By the time the plumber came, the whole room was a steam-filled sauna. And though the heating system was powerful, it was centrally operated. When I started to sweat, I asked a floor attendant how to turn it off. She rolled her eyes and, with the disdain of an upperclassman, said, "Open a window."

Most foreign students furnished their dorm rooms from the campus Friendly Store, stocking goods as varied as bean paste and blow dryers, the latter priced at just $6 because they were manufactured in India, I was told.

But wanting to make my dorm room a place I could come home to, I took a cab to the IKEA on the Fourth Ring Road (which is just like IKEAs everywhere) and visited the Panjiayuan antiques and flea market on the southeastern side of town one Sunday morning. I could never have carried everything I wanted to buy but came away with some treasures: a bubble-shaded ceramic lamp in the shape of a Ming Dynasty courtesan, a hand-painted scroll of Chinese men and caged birds, and a kitschy mantel clock faced with a cheerful picture of Chairman Mao.

Instruction begins

Then the academic semester began with a placement test, given in a spartan classroom to about a dozen primarily English-speaking students. Students were grouped according to their mother tongue, with young Korean speakers dominating by a wide margin.

Instruction at BLCU starts in the students' first languages, progressing after about a month to an all-Chinese learning environment.

I sharpened my pencils and prepared for the worst. But first, the teacher asked those of us who had never studied Chinese to raise our hands and said, "You know nothing. You can go."

So I joined the most ignorant class in BLCU's accelerated Chinese program, and my status never changed.

A month into the semester, I did so poorly on a practice test that it finally dawned on me I needed to study at least four hours a day to enjoy and benefit from class. I did all the exercises in my textbooks and made flashcards with Chinese characters on one side and Pinyin on the other.

(To be continued)

[Anonymous]

The only thing I didn't do to get ahead was to hook up with a language partner, though native English speakers like me were in such hot demand that Chinese students occasionally tailed me across campus working up the courage to suggest we team up for English-Mandarin conversation.

Soon I was doing better, and my classmates noticed.

They were a wonderfully mixed and motley crew from all the corners of the world where people are realizing that their futures may be inevitably tied up with China.

I spoke French with Joelle, a tall young woman born in the Republic of Congo and educated in Poland. Roger, from Brazil, planned to study with a Chinese martial-arts master.

Michael was an E.M. Forster-esque Englishman, between jobs in Asia. Tatyana came from Vladivostok and spoke only Russian, so she used a dictionary to translate the teacher's English into her mother tongue.

Mohammed, from Egypt, had to contradict people who assumed he had a harem, and we all thought that Shinji, a Korean with a sociology degree from the University of Chicago and a build like Superman, worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

There were only two other students from the U.S., one a Chinese American girl who wasn't sure whether she wanted to be a writer or a dentist, the other a thirtysomething New Yorker whose excellence at Chinese quickly made him the class favorite. When our teacher struggled to explain the nuances of Mandarin in English, Jacob stepped in to assist her.

We were given three textbooks on Chinese grammar, listening and speaking. Three teachers -- laoshi in Mandarin -- rotated with them. In China, the teaching profession is still highly revered. Anyway, I revered my instructors, especially Wu laoshi, a thin, bespectacled woman in her 30s with an unfulfilled yen to see the world.

On a bench near my dorm, she prepped me for my role as laoshi in a skit my class reluctantly performed at the spring talent show. Later, we commiserated about some of my fellow students' perpetual tardiness and obvious failure to prepare.

I told Wu laoshi not to worry, bie zhaoji in Chinese. Our class was full of oddballs.

She didn't know that word, but when I explained, I got a good laugh out of her.

Squeaking past midterms

BLCU cleared out during Golden Week, the big spring holiday in China. I went to Tibet but got back in time to prepare for midterms. We were graded on a 100-point scale, with no curve.

I came very close to flunking.

Never mind. Winter yielded to spring, with translucent skies and lilacs by the post office.

Every morning I woke up to the rubber-soled footfall of the security force running in a phalanx past my window. I grabbed coffee at LaVita and went to class. My attendance was sterling even if my grades were not.

Every afternoon, I studied hard and even learned a little Mandarin I'll probably forget.

But I won't ever forget watching Chinese boys in droopy shorts play basketball, chatting with Wu laoshi on a bench, eating hot flat bread from the Muslim restaurant, and the smell of Chinese lilacs.

By Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
06:03 PM PDT, January 04, 2008
[email protected]

[Anonymous]

I have designed the lesson plan incorporating cardboard, play dough, and Chinese map. Students will mold China's topography according to the map and label it. After wards, use TPRS (Teaching Language Through Reading and Storytelling) technique to implement stories using the content knowledge of China's topography.

Please see the attachment.

[Anonymous]

(Continue)

Here is the assignment sheet.

[Anonymous]

Here is another lesson plan that I have implemented to teach Chinese language through history and skits.

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

The LAUSD board adopted on 10/28/2008 a world languages initiative. The complete text and the vote are attached (4 members voted for it, 1 abstained, and 2 were absent).

The proposal begins:

"Whereas, The Governing Board of the Los Angeles Unified School District is committed to offering a world class education that equips all of its students with skills to meet the demands of the 21st Century;

"Whereas, In order to globally compete in the 21st Century, today’s students need to develop linguistic and cultural literacy and functional proficiency in one or more world languages;

"Whereas, The nature of our global economy requires 21st Century skills to include language proficiency in strategic languages and less commonly-taught languages such as Mandarin, Korean Arabic, Farsi and Hindi/Urdu...."

It pledges to have the superintendent report on progress on the initiative due in spring 2009, work with the Shanghai school district, and:

"2008-2009
Each Local District will review their current World Languages and Cultures programs (e.g.
Mandarin, Spanish, Korean, etc.) and develop strategies to increase PreK-12 opportunities for
studying languages other than English. This includes developing increased proficiency in a
heritage language.

"Local Districts will explore Mandarin, Spanish, and other World Languages, including
enrichment courses and programs for preK-12 students. Special emphasis will be placed on
expanding dual language programs and additional language learning opportunities in elementary and middle schools...."

"Beginning 2009-2010
Each year, Local Districts will collaborate with their respective schools and school communities
to create and implement new world languages and cultures programs at current and future sites
as well as early education centers....."

Have those of you teaching in LAUSD noticed any of this starting to happen?

[Anonymous]

Cheng & Tsui has provided Asian language and cultural materials to students around the world since 1979. To celebrate their 30th anniversary, they want to know how learning an Asian language affected your life.

Tell them your story by sending in a video or essay by June 1st. Judges will review all submissions and winners will be announced on June 12th.

Visit http://www.cheng-tsui.com/mylife to read the official rules, review judging criteria, and enter the contest. Winners will win a $100 Visa gift card or Cheng & Tsui gift certificate and each of the runner-ups will receive a $25 Cheng & Tsui gift certificate.

[clay dube]

The Chinese government, through its office of Chinese language promotion (Hanban) has been providing teachers to Los Angeles area schools for a few years. Here's a 2008 article about one of them who is now back in China. David Pierson, the LA Times reporter who shadowed him, is now a correspondent based in Beijing.
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/mar/01/local/me-teacher1

The possibility of Hanban support for a Confucius Classroom in Hacienda La Puente stimulated a lot of debate there. Ching-ching Ni, the reporter, was born in China and did some great reporting for the Times from China.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/04/local/la-me-confucius-school4-2010apr04
The debate was originally covered in local Chinese language newspapers:
http://worldjournal.com/view/full_news/6472670/article-%E6%8A%97%E8%AD%B0%E5%B1%85%E6%B0%91%EF%BC%9A%E8%A6%81%E7%BE%8E%E5%9C%8B%E4%B8%8D%E8%A6%81%E5%85%B1%E7%94%A2?instance=m1b

Daily Show piece on the Hacienda La Puente controversy:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-7-2010/socialism-studies

edited by Clay Dube on 3/10/2011

[Anonymous]

I teach Japanese in South Bay area, but i can find out for you. Where do you live? How far can you travel? Let me know all your situation when i see you next Tuesday.

[Anonymous]

I used to use the Japan Foundation Library a lot.

Here goes the catalog of their DVD and VHS:
http://www.jpf.go.jp/jfla/lib_catalog.html

There are many VHS and DVD in English explaining Shintoism, manners and famous cities, etc.

When you look for any specific books and story-cards (perfect for elementary/Junior high students), just call them or e-mail them re what type of materials you are looking for, they will be able to help you and ship the package to your school site or your house free. (If you are a teacher, you can get the membership card.) But you need to return it to them with your own money on time.
Nihongo Library: [email protected]

Last year I used their 'Japan Foundation' library in Japan, they helped me search for almost anything re Japan and the culture. I asked them to look for a Japanese song regarding bathing, they came out a several songs and sites in internet. They even pulled out some articles from government white papers. I am sure that the Japan Foundation in LA could do something similar to that. Call them up and find out.

Also they offer various classroom grants available, if you are planning some events or materials re Japan:
Mrs. Makiko Watanabe could help you guide you to the right person or department. <213-621-2267

[Author]

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