Doss Holds Chinese Immersion “Boot Camp” for Incoming Students

by Lelan Miller

Doss Elementary School in Austin, TX concluded a Chinese “boot camp” for first and second grade students today on July 31, 2013. This boot camp was for first and second graders who are slated to enter the Chinese immersion program that will begin operating this August. First and second graders had camp for three mornings from July 29^th through July 31^st. The kindergarten students are scheduled for two mornings of boot camp on August 1st and 2nd. The primary focus of the boot camps will be classroom language, math vocabulary, and learning about writing in Mandarin.

As you can see from the photos below, only Chinese is permitted in the boot camps. The class schedule is posted in Chinese as well. Since many of the children are just starting to be exposed to Chinese, the teachers use a great deal of pictures, drawings, repetition, and gestures to assist in understanding.

The teachers for this session were Nancy Chiu and Connie Soong. Connie Soong will be teaching kinder and first grade and Nancy Chiu will be teaching second grade in the Chinese immersion program this fall. Janna Griffin is the principal of Doss Elementary School who was instrumental in getting this program established at Doss. Congratulations, Doss Owls!

The lion says, “Stop, Chinese only!”

The class schedule is in Chinese supported with pictures to help with comprehension.

Lelan Miller, 孟乐岚  is the founder of Mandarin Matters in Our Schools in Texas (MMOST) and master’s candidate in Chinese Language Pedagogy.

 

Comic Book Snacks that Talk Back in Two Languages
JANUARY 22, 2013 ⋅ POST A COMMENT

(Photo: Patrick Cox)

The other day, I was in Chinatown in New York City, eating dim sum with Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh. They’re a married couple, transplants from Singapore.

For reasons that’ll soon become clear, I couldn’t help imagining that those little Chinese snacks we were eating were…alive. Now, some Asian food items really are alive when you put them in your mouth—but that’s a different story. The dishes we we’d ordered weren’t moving, except for the fact that I’d just viewed them in another form—walking, talking and fighting.

Here’s a taste of Goh and Woo’s creation, Dim Sum Warriors: “Their bravery and skill have inspired millions worldwide, while the mere mention of their names causes enemies to quiver like tofu.”

Dim Sum Warriors is a comic book that started as an iPad app. It started online, and now is out in book form, the reverse of most tech-savvy comic book series.

Goh and Woo created Dim Sum Warriors partly for their daughter, Kai Yen Goh. She’s learning to understand both English and Chinese by using the app.

“We felt especially because we were bringing up a daughter in America we wanted something that would represent her mixed-up cultural heritage,” says Goh.

On an iPad, you can read Dim Sum Warriors in English or in Chinese. Or, you can flip between the two languages. If you want to hear the audio, you tap a word balloon. If you hold your finger on the balloon, you get a translation—script and audio.

Please read more here.

• McIlvaine hosts Camp Ni Hao to further Chinese immersion

• The hallways at J. Ralph McIlvaine Early Childhood Center were filled with the sounds of children chattering and singing while teachers instructed on Wednesday. What makes these otherwise average occurrences unique is that all of the chattering, singing and instruction are being conducted entirely in Mandarin.

• SARAH BARBANIncoming first graders at McIlvaine Early Childhood Center’s immersion camp, Camp Ni Hao, make a paper dragon dance in their physical activity class

• By Sarah Barban
  sarah.barban@doverpost.com
  @SarahDoverPost
  Posted Jul. 26, 2013 @ 11:07 amMagnolia, Del.  —

  The hallways at J. Ralph McIlvaine Early Childhood Center were filled with the sounds of children chattering and singing while teachers instructed on Wednesday. What makes these otherwise average occurrences unique is that all of the chattering, singing and instruction are being conducted entirely in Mandarin.

  This week McIlvaine hosted Camp Ni Hao, a camp designed to help rising first graders who participated in McIlvaine’s Chinese immersion program last year hone their skills before they begin their second year of Mandarin at either W.B. Simpson or Allen Frear elementary schools. The camp also offered incoming kindergartens an introduction to Mandarin, prior to the start of the school year.

  McIlvaine started its mandarin program last school year and so far has had great success, said Principal Sherry Kijowski.

Read more: http://www.doverpost.com/article/20130726/NEWS/130729837/1004/NEWS#ixzz2aYOzCrki

After I wrote about finding books for immersion students to read in Chinese I found out that there exists an entire universe of easy-to-read novels in Spanish and French for new learners. These sometimes go under the moniker TRPS (for Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.) It’s a method of teaching foreign languages in which teachers focus on stories with comprehensible input rather than a textbook.

That’s exactly what happens in an immersion classroom—teachers use language the students can understand, limiting vocabulary, constantly asking easy comprehension question and short grammar explanations to help broaden and deepen students’ understanding of the language.

The TRPS method has its origins in the theories of Stephen Krashen, a professor of second-language acquisition, bilingual education and reading at the University of Southern Calif. whose research has heavily influenced immersion education in this country.

A Spanish teacher named Blaine Ray in California took Krashen’s ideas and ran with them. Ray began writing very easy to read stories in Spanish for his students. There now exist dozens of these novels, in Spanish, French and other languages. Some are set entirely in the present tense, some also use the past tense, each gives the number of words used. Here’s an example of a Level 1 Spanish novel on the TPRS website:

Felipe Alou: Desde los valles a las montañas

Under ordinary circumstances, the odds of being struck by lightning are greater than the odds of becoming a Major League Baseball player, but Felipe Alou’s circumstances in 1955 were anything but ‘ordinary’… He was a black athlete living in the Dominican Republic, and he spoke no English- not exactly a recipe for success in the U.S., especially during the height of the civil rights movement.  This is Felipe’s amazing (true) story of perseverance and determination to beat overwhelming odds and insurmountable obstacles to become one of baseball’s greatest players and managers.

Total word count: 6500   Unique word count: 150。 Page count: 60

Now in Mandarin

Some of these stories have been rewritten for beginning Chinese students. I ordered one last week for my fourth grader and she read it in the course of two summer days without having to look up a single word. Her review:

“This was kind of boring but I read it and it wasn’t hard, and I didn’t even know there was a glossary in the back. Anna lives in America but she goes to China. Her friends have expensive stuff. She’s a teen-ager.”

Well, boring or not it was the first novel without pictures that she’d sat down to read so I say Hurray!

The books are nicely done. The stories are set in easy-to-understand situations, often in the United States. And in a touch I really liked, English words such as names like Anna and Los Angeles were written in English, not Chinese. That’s helpful because often the characters used to transliterate from Chinese are complex and rarely-seen, making them difficult for beginning readers to comprehend. The book is in both characters and pinyin (on facing pages) and features a full glossary in the back.

The Squidforbrains.com site has six of these novels listed, which you can find here

The books:

Susan you mafan: Susan有麻烦

Susan is caught on the treadmill of life in her boring town — dealing with an obsolete computer, a nagging mother, and that nice guy at the ValuMart who just doesn’t know she exists. Until one day, that is — when a chance errand brings her family something that will change their lives — well, not forever, but at least for a few months!

“Susan you mafan” is a true first-year Chinese reader. The first chapter can be read in the first month of Chinese study, and each chapter builds on the language that has been used in earlier in the book. The story is 9,871 words long, uses 207 unique Chinese characters, and contains 431 words.

“Anna Mei Banfa!” Anna 没办法！

is a short, simple novel in Chinese characters and Pinyin that emphasizes and repeats the highest-frequency words and phrases of the language while telling a story. First in a series for Chinese learners, “Anna Mei Banfa” tells the story of Anna, a high school freshman living in upstate New York, who is frustrated with her family and her problems. An unexpected opportunity presents itself when her high school announces a chance for a student to travel to Taiwan for a summer. While living in southern Taiwan, Anna experiences the local culture and makes new friends.

Learners of Chinese may choose to read the Chinese characters or turn the page to see the Hanyu Pinyin romanization.? A full glossary of the words as they appear in the text makes this reader accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of Chinese.

The Three Pandas

Based on the Three Bears, this story is about three pandas who dart out of their suburban Beijing home for just a few minutes to do a little shopping, but when they get back…they discover an unexpected visitor!

This 700+ character story is told in simple Chinese, using only 114 unique words and 89 Chinese characters in all. The text systematically repeats the highest-frequency vocabulary while still telling a coherent story, complete with unexpected twists and turns. A great little read for a classroom library or for someone learning Chinese on his own. A full glossary is provided at the end of the story. Color-coding, word spacing and turn-the-page Pinyin support (not visible, but accessible) ensure that the text is made comprehensible to every reader.

Pandarella

The nearly-classic tale of the hardworking girl who just wants to go to the biggest party of the year…and might get to, with some help from a celebrity’s little brother!

Pandarella draws on the familiar but inserts twists and turns to keep readers engaged. Words are repeated in novel ways. The 1072-word text of the story contains only 88 unique words and 87 unique Chinese characters.

A full glossary is provided at the end of the story. Color-coding, word spacing and turn-the-page Pinyin support (not visible, but accessible) ensure that the text is made comprehensible to every reader.

Herbert’s Birthday

It’s Herbert’s birthday…but life is a drag when your friends don’t give you what you really want…

This easy-to-read story helps new readers of Chinese become confident and fluent. Told in just 46 different words and 50 Chinese characters, the book is over 300 words long. Repetition helps the reader become familiar with and instantly recognize the most important, most frequently used characters in the language.

A full glossary is provided at the end of the story. Color-coding, word spacing and turn-the-page Pinyin support (not visible, but accessible) ensure that the text is made comprehensible to every reader.

The Center for Applied Linguistics is updating it’s two-way immersion program directory. It includes multiple languages, Mandarin among them. Schools that serve both English and Mandarin speaking students should add in their information.

CAL’s Two Way Immersion Directory – Updates in Progress CAL has re-opened its Two-Way Immersion Directory to continue to gather information about dual language and two-way immersion programs around the country. It is important to include all programs in order to comprehensively promote bilingual, dual language, and two-way immersion education with policy makers and stakeholders.Please help us keep the directory current by adding or updating your program.Learn more and connect to the TWI directory.

Parents and teachers often lament the lack of appropriate books in Chinese for immersion students. But while we whine, the kids are getting down to work. If there aren’t books you want to read in Mandarin, write them yourself. That’s the lesson we can all learn from Annemarie Hilton, age 10.

Hilton is  going into fifth grade in Wasatch Elementary in Utah. This week she published her first book: Sally的冒险.

Annemarie wrote the short novel when she was in second grade, in English. It’s about the adventures of a girl named Sally. “Some of the things that happened in the book happened in my life (I really did get stiches after slamming my finger in the door!)” she says in the introduction.

She’s also a Mandarin immersion student and this past summer her father John Hilton encouraged her to translate it into Chinese. “She has worked really hard on it (60+ hours this summer),” he says proudly. “We uploaded it to Amazon and she is now a published author!”

The e-book is available for $2.99 here.

Her father hopes seeing the book will both show families “what these immersion kids can do” and also give them something to read. And “perhaps more importantly it will encourage their kids to do writing in Chinese.”

In her introduction Annemarie is honest about her Chinese skills. In Utah immersion begins in first grade, so she’d had just four years of Chinese when she translated the story.

“So I hope you know that my translation won’t be perfect. I am just a kid!! I kenw a lot of the words, but some I looked up on Google Translate,” she wrote.

She says she also made mistakes. “Instead of writing 他们 I wrote 它们,” she says, confusing the word for ‘they’ meaning people for the ‘they’ for  things.

“When I tried to translate ‘French Toast’ it was法式吐 which means French Dirt. (I wound up changing the English to be “breakfast” instead of French toast.” As another example, instead of ‘tangled’ I put ‘lettuce’ (on accident!)”

The book is presented in a paragraph by paragraph translation, first in English and then in Chinese using simplified characters. It should be easy to read for most third or fourth grade Mandarin immersion students.

I look forward to writing about more books by students in the coming years!