The guys at Mandarin Companion, my favorite easy-to-read Chinese novel publisher, have started a podcast called “You Can Learn Chinese.” Mostly it’s language-geek kind of stuff about Chinese, learning Chinese and teaching Chinese. I.e. the kind of stuff I love but which might not be for everyone. But they’ve got one episode in which they…

From Scientific American Crucial point: Just as having stronger muscles allows you to lift weights with less effort, increased gray matter in classic executive control regions may make it easier for bilinguals to manage irrelevant information. Bilinguals also have increased white matter in the tracts connecting frontal control areas to posterior and subcortical sensory and…

From: San Gabriel Valley Tribune West Covina Unified is set to launch its first Mandarin dual language immersion program at Orangewood Elementary School this fall. The program will be open to kindergarten students. Enrollment will open March 4, and the program is set to launch in August. West Covina Unified already offers a Spanish dual…

From: The Jefferson Star South Fork Elementary Mandarin Chinese program reaches full capacity South Fork Elementary School Principal Richard Howard said students can’t get enough of the school’s Mandarin Chinese program. Six years after its initial inception, the program — one of just 278 in America — has reached full capacity. The program is just one of…

From: Xinhua by Angela Efros SAN DIEGO, the United States, May 12 (Xinhua) — A crowd of over 1,300 fell silent as 13-year-old Kamila Carter told her story of being raised by deaf parents from two different countries and how she crosses U.S.-China barriers in the world of sounds and silence. To communicate with her…

An interesting article. The important point is this: Dr. Muñoz makes the point that children are only sponges when they get deep and meaningful exposure to the language. “You need a high frequency of input, of good quality,” she said. “You have to live with the language, use the language and function in the language.…

[The Mandarin immersion school is listed further down in the story, click to “Please read more link” to read it.] From The Houston Chronicle Fresh after getting a new principal, West University Elementary School finds itself among the top of the heap in a new list of Houston ISD schools. School rankings were announced by…