Author: Elizabeth Weise

Are their wait pools for Mandarin immersion programs across the country? In San Francisco we’re usually able to get most families who sign up in, though they often have to wait until the actual start of school, which is pretty harrowing. Down the peninsula, the Mandarin programs are routinely full, I’m told. What happens in…

A report from the 2010 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Conference, by the helpful folks at the Mandarin Center. This year’s ACTFL conference had a record attendance of 7,200 participants.  Only six years ago Chinese was not heavily represented, but this year Chinese presentations accounted for close to 20% of the…

American Councils for International Education is pleased to announce that the application for the Intensive Summer Language Institutes has been posted online. This program provides fully funded fellowships for U.S. classroom teachers to spend six weeks overseas studying intermediate and advanced-level Arabic and Chinese in Egypt and Mainland China. The Intensive Summer Language Institutes are…

Yu Ming Charter School is a tuition-free Mandarin immersion public charter school which will open in Fall 2011 in the East Bay. Yu Ming Charter School’s mission is to: Provide an academically rigorous college preparatory program (K-8) Graduate bilingual students via two-way dual immersion in Mandarin Chinese and English Nurture intellectual curiosity and international perspective…

  Beyond Linguistic Proficiency Students as Linguists and Ambassadors By Jeff Wang “If you want one year of prosperity, then grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, then grow trees. But if you want 100 years of prosperity, then you grow people.” Quoting a Chinese proverb, US President Barack Obama offered this toast…

Mandarin for kindergartners planned for Dist. 67 By Donald Liebenson Special to the Tribune Yesterday at 12:06 p.m. Lake Forest School District 67 could become the latest among a small group of public schools in the country with a Mandarin immersion program starting in kindergarten. If there’s enough interest from parents, an English-Mandarin program would…

Proposed Mandarin Immersion Pilot – Grades K & 1 for 2011-12 Lake Forest School District 67 is exploring the option of offering one dual-language (English/Mandarin) kindergarten class and one first grade class beginning this coming fall. The program will offer half-day instruction in English and half-day instruction in Mandarin through fourth grade.  There has been…