Author: Elizabeth Weise

By Elizabeth Weise, MIPC The Denver Language School has cojones. There’s just no other way to put it. On August 12 they started an entirely new school with 240 students, a little more than half in Spanish immersion and a little less than half in Mandarin immersion. And no English during the school day. None.…

The first meeting of the MIPC for the 2010-2011 school year went very well indeed. It began with a brisk sale of MIPC character placemats, t-shirts and hoodies created by JOES parent Elizabeth Olson (all available on our website as well.) Jose Ortega Elementary hosted our meeting – special thanks to principal JoLynn Washington who…

This is from a parent at Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Lincoln has long had Cantonese immersion students from Alice Fong Yu (K-8) and West Portal (K-5) feeding into it. Here are some of what they learned worked and didn’t work. It’s a useful bit of information as the newer (read: most of us)…

Another look at one of two new Mandarin immersion schools in British Columbia. This in the fun-to-say town of Coquitlam (Co-kwheet-lum), Coast Salish for “red fish up the river” (ie salmon.) ======== The Tri-City News – News Back to school, plenty of change Maillard middle school principal Andrew Graham welcomes back students Tuesday morning to…

Mandarin programs grow in B.C. schools Last Updated: Tuesday, September 7, 2010 | 11:41 AM PT B.C.’s first Mandarin language programs for kindergarten and Grade 1 students are being launched in Coquitlam and Burnaby, adding to the range of programs offered in the Vancouver area. Walton Elementary School in the Coquitlam School District launched its…

This is an interesting article as it talks about how one of the oldest and largest immersion systems in North America – French in Canada – works, and how they’re now starting to think about Mandarin. Benefits of learning a new language early By Manisha Krishnan, North Shore News Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/life/Benefits+learning+language+early/3484578/story.html#ixzz0yo798iEs Bilingualism is a…

So I shelled out $75 for this dictionary and it arrived at my local bookstore today. AND THERE’S NO PINYIN IN THE ENGLISH SIDE! It’s useless, or at least 50% useless! (the Mandarin-English side grudgingly gives pinyin for main words, but not for many compounds and examples) So your kid says “Mama, how do you…