Mandarin speaks to a growing audience

By Mitchell Landsberg
Times Staff Writer

November 26, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO — Bursting in from recess, 15 children take their seats and face the woman they know as Teacher Yang.

"What day is this?" she asks, in Mandarin Chinese.

"Confucius' birthday!" the fifth-graders shout in Chinese.

"Why do we celebrate Confucius' birthday?" FOR THE RECORD:
Teaching Mandarin: Captions accompanying a story in Sunday's Section A about the growing number of American schools that offer Mandarin Chinese instruction gave incorrect names for two students at the Chinese American International School in San Francisco. Karina Koo was misspelled as Katrina Koom and Sophie Go was misidentified as Siena Belda. —
"Because he's the greatest teacher in the history of China!" exclaims a brown-haired girl with decidedly European features. She too is speaking Mandarin.

English is rarely heard in Lisa Yang's class at the Chinese American International School, despite the fact that few students are native speakers of Mandarin and fewer than half come from families with Chinese ancestry. At a time when the United States is frantically trying to increase the ranks of students in "critical languages" such as Mandarin, students here are ahead of the curve — way ahead.

Founded 25 years ago, this small private school in San Francisco's Hayes Valley does what few other American schools do: It produces fully fluent speakers of Mandarin Chinese, by far the most commonly spoken language in the world.

"In the early days — probably up until 10 years ago — we were considered experimental, kind of 'out there,' " said Betty Shon, head of finance for the school, which runs from preschool through eighth grade. "I'd get questions like, 'What kind of parents want their kids to learn Chinese?' Now, there's just no question. We get families who relocate to the Bay Area just so their kids can go to the school."

Mandarin Chinese, the official language of the People's Republic of China and the most common of numerous Chinese dialects, is suddenly hot in American schools. With China poised to become the world's leading economy sometime this century, public and private schools are scrambling to add Mandarin to their roster of foreign languages or expand Chinese programs already in place. By some estimates, as many as 50,000 children nationwide are taking Mandarin in school.

"I think we would have to characterize what's happening with the expansion of Chinese programs right now as an explosion," said Marty Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

"It really is almost unprecedented…. People are looking at China as a force to be reckoned with…. And to ensure that the U.S. has the ability to conduct trade, to sell our goods, and to work with the Chinese, certainly having an understanding of Chinese language and culture is an advantage."

The drive to develop Chinese-language programs has not been without its bumps. A shortage of trained, credentialed teachers has made it difficult for some schools to join the race. (With some exceptions, public schools require teachers to be credentialed, while private schools do not.) When schools do get teachers, they often recruit them straight from China — a recipe for a cacophonous culture clash.

Robert Liu, who taught in China before coming to Venice High School, remembers his first two years in an American classroom with the benefit of hindsight. It was not an easy adjustment, he said. In China, "respect is the No. 1 thing. Students respect their teachers," he said. Liu found a different paradigm here, where respect must be earned and teachers spend much of their time maintaining order.

"You have to quiet them down and find different activities to attract them or they will lose attention," he said.

Liu stuck it out and revamped his teaching style, and Venice supported him (although a few of his students complain that his teaching style is still a bit too static for their taste). But plenty of Chinese teachers wash out after their first year, leaving behind bewildered students and chastened administrators.

The Chinese American International School, which is known familiarly by its abbreviation, CAIS, has avoided many of the problems with foreign teaching styles by insisting that teachers who come from China, no matter how experienced, work as teachers aides before they get a classroom of their own.

"If you take a teacher from mainland China or from Taiwan, without support, without acculturation, most likely they're going to fail," said Kevin Chang, the elementary school director at CAIS.

It also helps that class sizes at CAIS are small — the largest have 20 students, and most have fewer. Of course, all of this comes at a price: Tuition is $17,200 to $18,000 a year. Nearly a quarter of the student body receives some financial aid.

Spreading the words

With his school's success as a model, CAIS headmaster Andrew Corcoran has been working with the Chinese government to improve training of teachers who are sent to the United States. Many come as part of a Chinese government program called Hanban, which is sort of a cross between the Peace Corps and Teach for America, the volunteer teacher program. Hanban sends Mandarin teachers throughout the world and pays their salaries as they share their knowledge of Chinese language and culture.

Corcoran said that of 30 Hanban teachers sent to the United States last year, 27 went home without having their contracts renewed for a second year. Their teaching style was too out of sync with American culture. "They've never worked in a place where they didn't stand on a podium in front of 60 or 70 students," Corcoran said. "My fear is that if these teachers are not successful, then the support for teaching Chinese will wane, because people will say, 'Well, we tried it but it didn't work.' "

Corcoran said Hanban officials were sufficiently concerned to invite him last summer to China, where he helped train this year's class of America-bound teachers.

A Hanban official confirmed that American educators were sought to help with training, but otherwise disputed Corcoran's account. In an e-mail from Beijing, Zhou Jie, who is in charge of U.S. volunteers, insisted that there had not been "any bad feedback" from either the teachers or their American host schools. She said that only seven teachers had been dispatched to the United States in 2005, and four of them were retained for another year. Forty-one volunteers have been sent so far this year, and about 60 more will be coming, Zhou said. The volunteers "are of high adaptability and [have a] strong sense of responsibility," she said.

Still, to the extent that there are problems, they are the problems of success — too much, too fast.

There is no definitive accounting of the number of Mandarin programs in American schools. But the Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages estimates that the number of students in Mandarin classes in public secondary schools has risen from about 5,000 six years ago to as many as 50,000 today, a tenfold increase. The U.S. Department of Education puts the number at about half that.

Whichever is correct, the number is expected to continue rising. Pressure and encouragement are coming from far-flung sources, including the White House, the Chinese government and the College Board, which is offering an Advanced Placement test in Mandarin for the first time next year.

In January, President Bush proposed $57 million in federal spending to encourage the teaching of languages considered critical to national security, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In announcing the plan, the administration noted that, in contrast to the relatively paltry number of Americans learning Mandarin, "more than 200 million children in China are studying English."

Spanish heads the class

Today, 85% of the foreign-language enrollment in the United States is in Spanish, according to Abbott, of the Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Next comes French, followed by a smattering of Italian and German. Russian, Japanese and Mandarin trail.

Parental pressure helped push Chicago to launch the largest Chinese-language program in the U.S. — classes in 28 schools that reach 6,000 students from kindergarten to 12th grade. "We're so lucky to have parents who are going to fight for this," said Bob Davis, director of Chinese-language instruction for the Chicago Public Schools.

And when Mark Brooks, director of the private Pilgrim School in Los Angeles, proposed making Mandarin a required course for all seventh-graders this year, parents embraced it. "We're trying to give educations to children for jobs that haven't even been created yet…. Parents get that."

Still, Chinese classes have a distinctly regional cast. Chicago has the most ambitious program, although Portland, Ore., has announced plans for a Mandarin program that would take children from kindergarten through college. The Bay Area, with its large, deeply rooted Chinese American population, is another leader.

Aside from the Chinese immigrant communities in the San Gabriel Valley, Southern California has generally lagged. The Los Angeles Unified School District offers Mandarin at two of its 60 high schools.

Gay Yuen, a professor of education at Cal State L.A., runs a program that grants credentials to Mandarin teachers and has been working with schools to encourage the expansion of Chinese instruction. She has been frustrated by the relative lack of interest.

"I think there's still a lot of conservatism in our area," Yuen said.

There wasn't a lot of interest in Mandarin in San Francisco, either, when CAIS was founded in September 1981 by a former San Francisco County supervisor, Carol Ruth Silver. She had adopted a child from Taiwan and realized there was nowhere he could attend school in his native language. The first class had four students and one teacher.

Today, roughly 400 children are enrolled. The school teaches half the day in English and half in Chinese, and from preschool on, students in the Chinese classes hear only Mandarin from their teachers. Students learn subjects such as math, science and social studies in both languages.

One of the biggest problems students face is what to do after they leave CAIS, since their Chinese abilities are beyond those of the most advanced high school classes. Some attend after-school classes at CAIS; others move on to other languages but often return to Chinese in college.

Mandarin, with its lack of a phonetic alphabet and thousands of distinct characters, is considered a relatively difficult language to learn. But "if it's hard, they don't know it's hard," said Christie Chessen, who has a daughter in second grade and a son in kindergarten at CAIS. She speaks no Chinese herself. Her children's idea of fun, she said, is to practice writing Chinese characters. She constantly finds herself thinking, "Oh my God, my kid is doing something that I will never in my lifetime be able to do."

Little baby can learn as early as 14 month!

Watch this.




Amazing, isn't it?

Little girls can read chinese words

Found a video on YouTube:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHKs44QnkZI




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyaxoiDdW8g

[Teach-Baby-Chinese] Online Chinese Talking Flashcards

http://www.yellowbridge.com/general/signin.php

YellowBridge is an online Chinese Language Learning Website. It
provides the free Online Chinese Talking Flashcards.

ABC News: As China Grows, More U.S. Schools Teach Mandarin

BROOKLINE, Mass., Nov. 21, 2005 — At the Driscoll public schools in Brookline, Mass., the kindergartners already know more Chinese than most Americans will learn in a lifetime.

The second graders can string sentences together, and the eighth graders are nearly fluent. In this school system, learning Mandarin is mandatory.

Carol Schraft, principal of the Michael Driscoll School, said the goal is to "educate children for the world as it's going to be — not of the world we're living in now."

Economists predict that by the time these five year olds enter the job market, China will be the world's second-largest economy.

"If we want to be doing business in China, we are going to need students who can function in Chinese and understand Chinese culture," said Vivian Stewart, vice president of the Asia Society.

School districts from Philadelphia to Portland, Ore., are now adding Mandarin programs.

"I'm not really sure what I want to be when I grow up, but I figure Chinese will keep me more prepared for whatever it is," said eighth grader Samsun Knight.

Next fall the College Board will offer Chinese advanced placement tests for the first time. Employment agencies report a surge in demand for Mandarin speaking babysitters from parents who want their children to start learning young.

The Driscoll teachers like to tell their students that if they learn Chinese, they will be able to communicate with nearly a third of the world's population — the seven percent who speak English, and the 18 percent who speak Mandarin.

Huajing Maske, a teacher in the Driscoll school system, says for students who learn the language, "the younger the better because they are not intimidated by it."

Second grader Hannah McGan agrees.

"Is Chinese hard? Sort of," she said. "Once you start and then it's easier and easier."

The challenge for schools now is to find good instructors. Until more Americans master Mandarin, there will not be many people who are qualified to teach it.

ABC News' Nancy Weiner filed this report for "World News Tonight."

[Teach-Baby-Chinese] Re: Most Common Used Chinese Words

--- In Teach-Baby-Chinese@yahoogroups.com, "Teach-Baby-Chinese"
<teachbabychinese@...> wrote:
>
> This is a useful web page.
>
> Yung-Fong Tang collects information about how many
> Chinese characters should be taught in elementry school.
>
> http://people.netscape.com/ftang/chineselearning/howmanychinese.html
>

This is now a broken link. I will try to find an alternate link.

[Teach-Baby-Chinese] Should I learn Cantonese or Mandarin?

The short answer is Mandarin, because people who speak Cantonese are
learning Mandarin, but not vice versa. Mandarin is spoken by majority
of the Chinese population. It's the official language of China,
Taiwan, and one of the official languages in Singapore. Cantonese is
spoken by people in Hong Kong and southern part of China.

How to teach children read chinese (in Chinese)

A good article:

http://www.yunxue.cn/edu/shizi_youer.htm

Next Big Thing for These Pupils Is Chinese Language Schooling

New York City, NY, USA ( The New York Sun ) Monday, March 20, 2006
By DEBORAH KOLBEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun

What do a growing number of grade school students have in common with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs? They all realize that China is the next big thing.

Just blocks from Wall Street, students at Manhattan's newest private school, Claremont Preparatory, are busy sharpening their Chinese language skills.

All fifth-graders are assigned Chinese names like "little dragon" and "autumn color" and are required to study Mandarin. This year, the school's sixth- and seventh-graders also opted for Chinese over French and Spanish.

The school, which opened in September inside a grandiose old bank building on Broad Street, serves the children of bankers and other professionals.

"People who speak Chinese in the business world are getting the jobs quicker," the head of Claremont, Shari Silverstein, said. "The Chinese economy and Chinese culture is becoming so prevalent and so strong and we do our best to prepare students for high school and college and then the world in general."

A growing number of schools in New York and across the country are also getting on board.

Some of the city's public schools started offering Chinese in the 1980s, although at the time Japanese was seen as the language of the future. Now, 18 city high schools offer Cantonese or Mandarin.

In September, the College of Staten Island High School for International Studies opened in partnership with the Asia Society. In addition to studying Chinese, students have started a Web log exchange with their peers in Shenzhen, China.

In Chinatown, the Shuang Wen School is dedicated to teaching in both Mandarin and English. Shuang Wen, meaning "dual language," opened in 1998 and its students include Senator Kerry's niece. The chief executive of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, has pumped more than $500,000 into the school's budget.

Over the past several years, other schools that offer Chinese have opened up around the city. The Dual Language and Asian Studies High School opened on Grand Street in 2003. It requires all students to study four years of Mandarin. Classes are taught in both Chinese and English.

The city's Department of Education is looking to expand its Chinese teaching program but is having difficulty finding enough certified teachers, according to a spokeswoman, Kelly Devers.

That could soon change: Under a bill sponsored by Senators Lieberman and Alexander, $1.3 billion in federal funds would be funneled into providing Chinese language instruction in American schools over five years. In January, President Bush announced a $114 million initiative to boost the number of American students learning "critical need" foreign languages like Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi.

Cynthia Bing, the admissions director for the Parents League, a nonprofit organization on the Upper East Side that helps guide families through the private school admissions process, said more parents are now inquiring about Chinese language programs. She said elite boarding schools like Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., are aggressively pushing their Chinese instruction and offer students the opportunity to spend a year studying in China.

Earlier this month, the National Association of Independent Schools announced an agreement with a Chinese government-funded organization that will allow nine school chiefs to travel to China to interview Chinese teachers looking to come to America. The organization, Hanban, will pay for the trip and for the teacher salaries during the first year.

Trevor Day School on the Upper East Side is now in talks to add Chinese classes. In the meantime, about eight students spend their free time studying the language with one of the admissions officers. The new head of the school, Pamela Clarke, started a Chinese program at her last school in Minnesota.

"More people in the world speak Mandarin than anything else," Ms. Clarke said. "And we want our kids to be ready to live in the whole world."

Learn Chinese using Flashcard

I play with my daughter every morning with the Chinese word flashcards. She loves it.  She particularly likes to collect cards including foods or animals. 

She is now 3 year old.  She can recognize around 30 chinese characters:
爸媽爺奶牛妹姊飯麵書
雨狗貓魚兔水可樂子大
小睡田豬馬羊哥弟吃車

I think that showing some flashcard every day is a good way to learn.

---

Brings words and photos together (easily) with
PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail.

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