Author: Elizabeth Weise

Fourth-grader Maddie Freeman wants to be an FBI agent when she grows up. “I like how detectives work crimes, and I see a lot of news stories that say the FBI and CIA are looking for people who speak Chinese and other languages,” Maddie says. At just 9 years old, she’s well on her way…

The state of Hawai’i, remarkably, only has one Mandarin immersion program. It’s at Maryknoll School and launched in the 2017-2018 school year. Now a gift from a former pupil is allowing that program to expand. Maryknoll alumnus Douglas Ho presented the Catholic schools with a red Chinese envelope which has in it a check for…

This is a general article about language immersion programs in southern California, but it gives a nice overview. Some interesting tidbits: Anaheim Elementary School District has at least one language immersion class in each of its 23 campuses. Currently that’s 22 Spanish programs and one Korean. About 2% of all Los Angeles Unified School District…

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…