RSA Students Touting The Benefits Of Learning Mandarin Chinese

UPDATED: 7:30 pm PST March 9, 2011

REDDING, Calif. — Redding School of the Arts has offered a Mandarin Chinese Immersion program for four years. They offer the program at their campus at 3500 Tamarac Drive in Redding.It’s a voluntary program where kids spend their day learning their regular curriculum, half in English and half in Mandarin Chinese. The language is one of the hardest for Westerners to learn, but Mike Dressel who teaches his 3rd grade class Mandarin says his kids don’t think so.“Kids don’t even realize it’s difficult,” says Dressel. “So, as a young person they don’t have that awareness yet that this is supposed to be hard.”Studies show that learning a second language early enhances a student’s intellectual development and can help their memory and critical thinking skills.What makes Mandarin difficult is learning the four different tones and its unusual rhythm. Eight-year-old Carson Wayman who has been in the program since kindergarten says, “If you’re saying a sentence and you get the tone wrong and if you’re talking to a Chinese person they could mistake the word for a different word and it wouldn’t make sense.”

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