U.S. schools introduce teaching in the in the complex Mandarin & language as early as kindergarten as commerce grows

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Dear All,

Please take look at below article....interesting info.

> Paper: Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA)
> Message: U.S. schools introduce teaching in the
> complex Mandarin&language as early as kindergarten
> as commerce grows
> Author: Julia Silverman
> THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
> Date: January 2, 2006
> Section: National
> Page: A6
>
> PORTLAND, Ore. -- Twenty-four young faces in the
> kindergarten class at Woodstock Elementary School
> watch intently as their teacher holds up a
> construction paper cut-out of a large red circle,
> and waits for them to identify the shape.Piece of
> cake for a roomful of savvy 5-year-olds, except that
> teacher Shin Yen is looking for the shape's name in
> Mandarin Chinese. It's the world's most widely
> spoken language, but one that's just beginning to
> surface in U.S. classrooms, especially at the
> elementary level.
>
>
> "Yuan," her students chant, without missing a beat.
>
>
> A triangle comes next, and they call out,
> "San-Jiao." Then a square -- "Zheng-fangxing" -- and
> so on down the line.
>
>
> The Woodstock class is on the front lines of a U.S.
> government-backed effort to get more students
> learning Mandarin, a nod to China's emergence as a
> global superpower of the unfolding century.
>
>
> So far, the number of students nationwide who take
> Mandarin is minuscule -- about 24,000, most of them
> in high school. That compares with the 3 million or
> so who study Spanish, the most popular language in
> the nation's schools, with French and German next.
>
>
> But a number of urban school districts have launched
> Mandarin programs, including Chicago, Philadelphia,
> Houston and Boston.
>
>
> High schools across the country were asked by The
> College Board's world language initiative whether
> they'd consider adding Advanced Placement courses in
> Italian, Russian, Japanese and Chinese -- and the
> organization was amazed at the results, said Tom
> Matts, initiative director.
>
>
> Fifty schools in the 2003 survey said they'd offer
> the Russian option, about 175 said Japanese and 240
> Italian.
>
>
> "And for Chinese, it was 2,400, 10 times the number
> of any of the other three," Matts said. "We had no
> idea there was such an incredible interest out
> there. Of all the new AP courses, certainly Chinese
> shows the most promise for growth."
>
>
> In the U.S. Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee
> is considering a proposal to allocate $1.3 billion
> to boost Chinese language and culture classes in
> public school, and China, too, is doing its part,
> said Michael Levine, education director at The Asia
> Society in New York City. China's education ministry
> has formed partnerships with states and other
> countries to boost teacher exchanges and training.
>
>
> The Oregon program, though, is the first in the
> country to track students from kindergarten to
> college. The school district and the University of
> Oregon won a $700,000 grant from the Defense
> Department for the program this fall.
>
>
> The idea is for students to move from the Portland
> school system to the university, where scholarships
> will be offered to students who will take a standard
> college curriculum taught largely in Chinese.
> Students can also opt to spend their junior year
> abroad, studying at Nanjing University in China.
>
>
> The goal, organizers say, is for the program to be a
> model that other schools and universities can
> duplicate, and for students to emerge ready for the
> work force, with a native fluency in Chinese.
>
>
> Eight years ago, when the Woodstock program began,
> the majority of students were of Asian descent,
> Woodstock principal Mary Patterson said, many of
> them adopted daughters whose parents wanted them to
> feel some kind of connection to their native
> country. Now the program is increasingly mixed
> ethnically, she said; for the first time this year,
> the program had a waiting list.
>
>
> It's long been accepted that the younger a child is,
> the easier it is to introduce them to a second
> language, said Patterson.
>
>
> In September, most of Yen's 24 students couldn't
> speak a single word of Mandarin, one of the most
> difficult languages to learn. But three months
> later, the students were singing songs in Mandarin,
> laboriously printing Chinese characters and
> following Yen's instructions, delivered in Mandarin,
> with no need for any English translation, jumping up
> to impersonate trees, mountains and frogs at her
> command.
>
>
> Teaching begins slowly, Yen said, with repetition of
> about 20 to 25 Chinese characters, since Mandarin
> has no alphabet, just 3,500 base characters that are
> then combined to form other words. Each year,
> students learn about 150 characters, she said, via
> constant repetition and memorization.
>
>
> By the time they get to fourth grade, students are
> relatively fluent; Lily Rappaport, 9, said she
> sometimes dreams in Mandarin, after five years in
> the program. Being in the program has its
> disadvantages, she said; her parents can't be much
> help with her homework, for one.
>
>
> "I am the only one in my family who really speaks
> it," she said. "I have to figure it out by myself."
>
>
> In the higher grade levels, students at Woodstock
> take not just language-learning classes but also
> math and science courses that are taught in
> Mandarin.
>
>
> In Jessica Bucknam's fourth-grade math class,
> students answer her questions on graphing and
> remainders in easy, practiced Chinese. She mixes in
> some language learning with the math as well, asking
> students whether a wrong answer needs a smiley face
> or a frown next to it and waiting for their answer
> in Chinese.
>
>
> Yen and Bucknam are both native Mandarin speakers,
> but finding teachers for the program is among the
> greatest challenges, Patterson said.
>
>
> Education officials should try for more teacher
> exchanges with China, he said, and consider
> alternative certification programs for some of the
> many Chinese speakers who live in the United States
> but are not licensed as teachers. Distance learning
> could also help bring Chinese language courses to
> students in more rural school districts, he said.
>
>
> "There are great big multiples of kids who are
> studying the European languages, but when we think
> about our economy, and the new markets we are
> expanding into, it is time to recalibrate some of
> our attention," said Levine, of the Asia Society.
>
> Author: Julia Silverman
> THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
> Section: National
> Page: A6
>
> Copyright (c) 2006, Daily Breeze, All Rights
> Reserved

[Anonymous]

This article is very interesting. It is great to see how much publicity and acknowledgment the Chinese Language is receiving in our schools nationwide. I think this idea is rapidly becoming apparent in out schools. More schools are becoming aware of the value that our students will have in the future learning Chinese. It is great to continue to share ideas in a forum setting or newspaper setting to let people become more aware of the interest of Chinese as well as ideas to incorporate it into our curriculum. Thanks for sharing this article

[Anonymous]

What an interesting article! As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am a huge advocate of introducing a foreign language as early as Kindergarten. It makes so much more since to have a student learn another language in their early years of development! I babysit a family who has a student at Point Vicente, he is in third grade and constantly...I mean constantly...talks about the Chinese language he is learning in school. He saw a paper I had with Chinese translations and knew how to pronounce most of the words! I think this is an awesome depiction of the effect that this program is having on our students!

[Anonymous]

Just more proof that China and Chinese are becoming more and more center stage. It inspires me to keep up with my studies of Chinese and also makes me nervous that I might be behind if I don't learn the language!

[Author]

Posts