By Elizabeth Weise

A program launched this year in Utah could make creating new Mandarin immersion schools a little easier, and more sustainable, for everyone. It’s called the Flagship – Chinese Acquisition Pipeline, or F-CAP for short.

Mandarin immersion programs in elementary school are growing at a tremendous rate. In  2012-2013 or, in the 2012-2013 school year alone at least 21 schools began programs. Most of those schools start cold. They’re just one school in a district that has few Mandarin speakers, no experience setting up a Mandarin immersion school, no Mandarin-speaking principals and sometimes no Mandarin-speaking teachers to start.

Until recently, there’s been no road map for these programs, no “Mandarin immersion in a box” program that would tell them, step-by-step, what was needed to create a vibrant, academically strong Mandarin immersion program. Each school has had to work out for itself how to go about creating what many in the world of education believe to be one of the most challenging school programs there is. If they were lucky, program administrators were able to attend a Chinese language conference before they launched. Until this spring, with the publication of Chinese Language Learning in the Early Grades: A handbook of resources and best practices for Mandarin immersion by the Asia Society, there wasn’t even a book that discussed effective practices for starting and maintaining Mandarin immersion programs.

That’s beginning to change. Conferences offer insight and techniques, several programs have become go-to sites for schools that want to start Mandarin immersion, and education professionals with experience in Mandarin immersion are now available to consult with newer programs.

Until now, however there wasn’t anywhere that offered a curriculum that was “shovel ready,” to use a current term. But this year Utah, which has the largest number of Chinese immersion schools in the nation, launched the F-CAP consortium led by Brigham Young University and the Utah State Office of Education, five other state departments of education and individual school districts in 18 other states as well as the U.S. universities who belong to the Language Flagship, a federal program that supports K-16 language learning.

The goal is to create “a national model of well-articulated and replicable K-16 pathway for Chinese language study,” to be developed and implemented to result in students’ superior level of proficiency by the time they graduate college, said Gregg Roberts, World Languages and Dual Language Immersion Specialist with the Utah State Office of Education in Salt Lake City.

The consortium plans to create two pathways. One for students entering immersion programs in either Kindergarten or 1st grade, and another for students beginning their Chinese instruction in middle or high school. The goal of each is to have students reach an advanced level of proficiency by high school graduation.

Students coming out of either of these pathways will be primed to enter a Chinese Flagship university in the United States offering advanced Chinese training here and in China. The list can be found at: http://www.thelanguageflagship.org/chinese

Much as the International Baccalaureate program has become a recognized leader in education, F-CAP plans to create an easy-to-replicate program that can be implemented at any school anywhere in the country.  It is being funded in part by a grant from the Language Flagship, a federally-funded component of the National Security Education Program at the U.S Department of Defense. NSEP was created in 1991 to develop a much-needed strategic partnership between the national security community and higher education to address national needs for expertise in critical languages and regions, according to its website.

F-CAP will create an executive committee and advisory board to “guarantee effective use of resources, equal opportunity for all consortium members, plans for national dissemination, program evaluation, and program quality control to ensure consistency in the pedagogical philosophy, goals, and approaches throughout the program consortium,” it said in a statement.

The idea of a ready-to-implement program that any school district could use is helpful given the large number of schools that want to add Chinese immersion programs but don’t have the expertise locally to do so.

F-CAP programs include:

• Utah State Office of Education
• South Carolina Department of Education
• Delaware Department of Education
• Georgia Department of Education
• Oklahoma Department of Education
• Kentucky Department of Education

And local school districts from:

• Arizona
• California
• Delaware
• Georgia
• Illinois
• Idaho
• Kentucky
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• New York
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Wyoming

The F-CAP model for Dual Language Immersion:

50/50 Chinese/English instruction and a minimum of two classes per grade level

This allows schools to hire one Chinese-speaking teacher for each grade level and one English teacher. In the morning half the students are instructed in one language and in the afternoon they switch to the other. This avoids the problem of having non-native speakers of English teaching English, and allows Chinese teachers to focus on Chinese. “Our target language teachers are never required to teach in English,” says Roberts. This makes hiring and teaching easier, he adds..

Dual language

All programs work on the dual-language model, meaning they are meant for both Mandarin-speaking and English-speaking students. In dual-language programs, Mandarin speakers and English speakers aid each other in the languages. Some immersion programs are one-way, meaning all students are expected to be fluent English speakers who are new to Mandarin. While many of the schools in the Utah program have low levels of Mandarin-speaking students (as is the case nationally in almost all Mandarin immersion programs) they are designed to offer the chance for Mandarin-speaking students to learn English and English-speaking students to learn Mandarin.

All schools use the same progression

In K-3, Chinese curriculum includes Chinese, math, science, and social studies. The English curriculum focuses on English language Arts. In 4th and 5th grades, math and social sciences are taught in English, though practical application of these subjects remains in Chinese language. In 6th grade, social science shifts back to Chinese and science shifts to English.

In grades 7 through 9, student have two classes a day in Chinese, one in Chinese Language Arts and one in another subject.

In 9th grade students take the AP Chinese exam and World Geography in Chinese.

In 10 – 12 grades students will be offered university-level coursework through blending learning with six major Utah universities. Students are also encouraged to begin study of a third language in high school.

A state program of teacher recruitment

Utah sponsors J-1 work visas for teachers from China and Taiwan and has a well-organized guest teacher program that licenses the teachers for three years. The state has Memorandum of Understanding with China, Taiwan, France, Mexico and Spain to bring in teachers.

For Chinese, Hanban in China is developing immersion teachers for Utah’s needs.

There is also an elaborate system of support for the teachers. In addition to their visa, they get a week of education at the Annual Utah Dual Immersion Institute (AUDII) as well as four meetings a year for the entire team. There is a statewide Chinese Dual Language Immersion director, Sandra Talbot, who oversees the Chinese Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program.

Training for administrators

The Utah Dual Language Immersion Advisory Council, made up of district administrators, principals and instructional specialist from all DLI schools and districts, is brought together four times a year for training and sharing of information.

Cross-coordination among all DLI programs in all languages

Teachers in all Utah DLI languages are sometimes trained together, except when there is language-specific information to be conveyed. This allows a larger community of teachers to share knowledge and experience.

No English allowed after January of 1st grade

Utah has a non-negotiable policy of no English allowed in the Chinese portion of the day after the winter break in 1st grade.(January 15th) “Kids must start doing all their group work in the, target language. It’s all about expectations of teachers, students and parent. You just tell those parents, ‘Your kids are able to answer in English at the beginning but at the middle of January, there’s a conversion.’ It’s all done through positive rewards. The teachers will no longer answer the students if they’re speaking English.” End of quote here?

To help with that,  Utah  focuses on teaching students not just academic Chinese but also social language. “They teach them how to say ‘It’s my turn,’ ‘Move over,’ ‘What do you think?’ etc.,” says Roberts.

While it’s hard to get the students to switch entirely to Chinese, “it’s harder in 4th grade than it is in 1st grade,” he says.

Reading is still the wildcard

Utah, like all Chinese immersion programs, is very aware of the difficulties of getting students to read more in Chinese. Students in this country face the difficulty of having to first learn Chinese and then learn to read and write it. The sheer number of characters that must be memorized to be able to read at grade level (Chinese grade level, that is) is daunting.

Utah has convened two meetings so far to talk about literacy and what came out was a great big question mark: “There is no definitive answer. We don’t have enough data. It’s a big open area to do research on,” says Roberts.

For Kindergarten and Grade 1, Utah uses Better Chinese (www.betterchinese.com/Home.html) a Palo Alto-based company. For 2nd through 6th grade, Utah has adopted the textbooks Singapore uses for Chinese education in elementary school, Chinese Language for Primary Schools. These are the same textbooks used by Portland’s well-known Chinese immersion program.

Singapore is actually one giant immersion program itself, so it’s a good match for immersion students here. More than 50% of children in Singapore live in homes that speak a Chinese dialect, the rest speak English, Malay, Tamil or other languages at home. The main language of instruction in elementary school is English but all students must also learn one of the others as their second language. Just as the Singapore Math textbooks are considered among the world’s best, Singapore’s Chinese textbooks for elementary school are also considered excellent.

Utah chose them specifically because they’re not written as FLES (Foreign Language in Elementary Schools) textbooks, meant for a few hours of instruction a week. They’re meant for students who spend several hours a day learning in Chinese and who are expected to come out of school able to function fully in the world in Chinese.

Many of the popular textbooks used in many immersion programs in the U.S. are too easy for immersion students and don’t provide enough content, says Roberts. “We’ve had a lot of issues with teachers and parents saying ‘It’s too hard,’ but we say ‘Better hard now than later.’

The textbooks feature a more difficult reading program, with more stories and more complicated questions. Utah Chinese Dual Language Immersion classes work about one to two semesters behind what students would be doing in Singapore, so in 2nd grade they do textbooks 1B and 2A, then in 3rd grade 2B and 3A, he says.

“We have learned one thing. We know that without having rigorous literacy materials your kids aren’t going to go anywhere. Literacy is the key to everything and the sooner you get kids literate so they can read, read, read,” they won’t be able to progress in the language.

The problem is finding engaging materials for the students to read that are at the right level. These don’t really exist yet. That’s one of the unanswered questions Utah found when it called the literacy meeting of programs in the Chinese Consortium.

“Dual Language Immersion is probably the most fabulous way to educate kids,” says Roberts. “Hopefully it will be come the mainstream, hopefully in Utah it will just become the norm that all children just start learning a second language in grade school.”

But immersion schools, and especially Chinese immersion schools, need to work with each other and share what they’ve learned. “We’re all on a journey and we should be helping each other a lot more than we do,” Roberts say.

“I think that if this group is sharing resources and best practices it is great,” says Elizabeth Hardage, the Mandarin immersion coordinator at Yuying charter school in Washington. She also consults with Mandarin immersion schools nationally. “In the end, the more kinds of ‘consortiums’ there are, the better it is for all. We can all learn so much for each other.”

F-CAP does require that the subjects taught in Mandarin switch every year, which puzzles some in the field as most schools tend to teach math, science and sometimes social studies in Mandarin. But they applaud the ways the program ties its curriculum to strong benchmarks which students are expected to reach.

Utah as an immersion giant

Utah launched itself as an immersion pioneer in 2008 when then-governor John Huntsman, a fluent Mandarin speaker, urged a state Dual Language Immersion initiative, the first in the nation, says Roberts.

The Utah Senate passed the International Initiatives in 2008, creating funding for Utah schools to begin Dual Language Immersion programs in Chinese, French, and Spanish. Huntsman also initiated the Governor’s Language Summit and the Governor’s World Language Council, both with a goal to create a K-12 language roadmap for Utah. (Dual language immersion means students are taught in two languages, the ‘target language’ and English. In Mandarin immersion, for example, students are taught in Mandarin and English.)

In 2010, Governor Gary Herbert challenged Utah to implement one hundred immersion programs in the state by 2015, with a goal of enrolling 30,000 students. The program has been so successful and there has been such demand that the target completion date was moved to 2014.

For the 2012-13 school year there will 78 Dual Language Immersion schools:

• 25 Chinese (one third of all Chinese programs in the nation)
• 40 Spanish
• 10 French (the second higher number of French immersion students in the country, after Louisiana)
• 3 Portuguese (to support a large and growing Brazilian community in Utah)

Utah doesn’t spend a lot of money on education, and last year it ranked dead last on the list of per-pupil spending, at $6,356. New York led the nation in spending at $18,126 per student. However that’s ameliorated in part by the state’s relatively homogeneous population and lack of severe poverty. Approximately 78% of students are white, 15% Hispanic, 1.8% Asian, 1.5% Pacific islander, and 1.3% each African American, Multi-racial and American Indian. Just 38.4% of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches.

The focus on immersion education and language instruction comes because Utah realizes its strength is the education of its workforce. It’s already known as a hub of language ability because of the numbers of Mormon missionaries who return after spending two years abroad. The state decided to capitalize on that existing expertise and its citizens’ strong awareness of the importance of bilingualism.

“Utah is a small state and for our future economic survival we must educate students who are multilingual and culturally competent,” says Roberts.

Portuguese came about because of the state’s 30,000 Portuguese speakers. Of those, 15,000 are Brazilian and 15,000 are returned missionaries. There are now 3 million Mormons in Brazil, which adds to the economic interchange between the nation and the state. Angola and Mozambique in Africa are also economically important, with Angola being the continent’s second largest oil producer.

French is popular because it’s still considered a language of culture and it’s the most important business language in the world after English and Chinese, according to the latest Bloomberg report released in August 2011.

Finally, 芝麻街 (Sesame Street) in Mandarin! Two Chinese-produced series — Big Bird Looks at the World and Fun Fun Elmo made their debut in the United States on July 30th. The shows are running on SinoVision, the largest U.S. Chinese language television program broadcaster, serving the Chinese community in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and sections of Pennsylvania. Their web site is sinovision.net.

For those who live outside of the area reached by SinoVision, please contact your local Chinese language TV station and request that they air the shows. Contacts are

Sesame Workshop’s developing Chinese Culture and Language initiative will not only cater to the vast populations of Chinese communities in the U.S., but will also encourage Chinese cultural appreciation and exchange, using locally developed content from China. Newly developed content from Fun Fun Elmo introduces viewers to Mandarin language through new animation and live action films shot in China, underscored by catchy music. Live action segments follow local children in modern-day China, as their authentically daily lives interweave with the curriculum from episodes. The Fun Fun Elmo series will especially encourage Mandarin language exposure, as each episode introduces a Chinese tone, word, and stroke order for writing characters.

Sesame Street’s Big Bird Looks at the World fosters children’s natural curiosity about nature and science and encourages hands-on exploration as a great way to learn.  Each episode is triggered by a question that the Muppet characters have when they notice something about the world around them (e.g., “Where does the sun go at night?” “What are seashells?”).  Within each episode, two live-action films provide in-depth information and real-world visuals. These segments are designed to extend the science knowledge and to bring it to life.

“Sesame Workshop has had a proud history of serving the needs of children globally since 1969 and we continue to encourage cultural exchange and celebrate this diversity within the states,” said H. Melvin Ming, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop. “We are very happy to offer Sesame Street content to communities serviced by SinoVision as the first step in the Workshop’s developing language-learning initiative in the U.S., as we continue to address the diverse needs of our young fans.”

“A long-running program, Sesame Street has brought joy and laughter for many generations, and Sinovision is proud to present the U.S. premiere of Sesame Street content in Chinese,” said Philip Chang, President of SinoVision. “As a Chinese language television provider founded in 1990, Sinovision has emerged to become one of the most influential TV stations with extensive coverage across North America. We are honored to provide our Chinese viewers and their children with Chinese learning opportunities and educational programs, to promote Chinese culture.”

The locally developed, Mandarin-language series Sesame Street’s Big Bird Looks at the World first debuted in China in December 2010, on HaHa Channel by Shanghai Toonmax Media Co. Ltd., as well as on CCTV Children’s Channel by the national broadcaster CCTV.  The “Tree Use” episode won a 2011 Hugo award for “’innovative and outstanding” contribution to the world of television, and the series continues to reach 200 million school-age children in China. This debut with SinoVision is the first step in the developing expansion of Chinese-language Sesame Street content in areas around the U.S.

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization that revolutionized children’s television programming with the landmark Sesame Street.  The Workshop produces local Sesame Street programs, seen in over 150 countries, and other acclaimed shows to help bridge the literacy gap including The Electric Company.  Beyond television, the Workshop produces content for multiple media platforms on a wide range of issues including literacy and health. Initiatives meet specific needs to help young children and families develop critical skills, acquire healthy habits and build emotional strength to prepare them for lifelong learning.  Learn more at www.sesameworkshop.org.

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《芝麻街》系列中文节目与美国中文电视携手

北美首播

（纽约2012年7月19日）世界著名儿童节目《芝麻街 Sesame Street》里的神奇大鸟(Big Bird) 1983年第一次来到中国。30年后的今天，芝麻街工作室，这个国际知名的非盈利教育机构，仍然致力于为儿童提供寓教于乐的内容，而且更加本地化。从7月30日起，每周一至五，中文版《芝麻街-大鸟看世界》和《乐乐ELMO》节目将在北美首播。芝麻街工作室携手北美最有影响力和最具规模的中文电视机构之一——美国中文电视，第一次将《芝麻街》系列中文节目带到北美。免费24小时数字频道美国中文电视63.4覆盖大纽约地区、新泽西、长岛和部分滨州。从7月30日起，这些地区的观众都有幸看到中文版《芝麻街-大鸟看世界》（Sesame Street’s Big Bird Looks at the World）和《乐乐ELMO》（Fun Fun Elmo）这两个节目，而全世界的华人观众，通过美国中文网sinovision.net的网络直播，也可以收看。芝麻街工作室与美国中文电视此次合作的节目发布会，将通过美国中文电视63.4和英文频道63.3同步直播。

芝麻街工作室取材中国本土内容，致力传播中国文化和推广中文。美国广大的华人社区人口众多，芝麻街工作室通过制作中文芝麻街节目，鼓励广大华人观众认同中华文化和促进中美文化的交流。新节目《乐乐ELMO》运用新的动画模式、音乐和真人表演的场景向观众推广中文。生动的真人表演场景，就设在当代中国，拍摄当地小朋友们的日常生活，和每一集的教程紧密相连。《乐乐ELMO》节目的每一集都会介绍一个中文发音，一个中文字和书写中文的笔划，鼓励小朋友们学习中文。

中文版《芝麻街-大鸟看世界》节目激发了孩子们关于自然科学天生的好奇心，启发他们实地探索，学习知识。每一集节目中，人偶们都会对周遭世界，提出一个问题，例如：晚上太阳去哪里了？贝壳是什么？在每一集里，2段真人表演秀，给孩子们展现了真实世界的场景，并提供详尽的信息。这些节目环节的设计将科学知识带入真实生活。

“芝麻街工作室从1969年起就服务全世界的小朋友，我们为此感到十分自豪。我们一直鼓励文化间的交流和多样性”，芝麻街工作室总裁兼首席执行官H. Melvin Ming说，“我们非常高兴迈出第一步，提供中文版芝麻街节目给美国中文电视，在美国发展芝麻街提供语言学习的功能。我们将继续为满足广大年轻粉丝的多样化需要而努力”。

美国中文电视总裁蒋天龙先生说：“芝麻街一直是享誉全球的电视儿童节目，为一代又一代的儿童带来快乐。美国中文电视很高兴与芝麻街合作，促成了中文版芝麻街的北美首播。美国中文电视1990年建立。作为拥有22年历史，在北美最有影响力，最具规模的中文电视台之一，我们很荣幸为广大华裔家庭和儿童提供学习中文，寓教于乐的儿童节目，普及中文教育和中华文化。”

中文版《芝麻街-大鸟看世界》在2010年12月第一次与中国观众见面，由上海炫动传播股份有限公司推出，在上海电视台哈哈少儿频道，炫动卡通频道和中央电视台少儿频道播出。其中一集《树的用途》（Tree Use）获2011年雨果奖电视类“最具创意和杰出贡献奖”。中文版《芝麻街-大鸟看世界》在中国面向3到7岁学龄前儿童。芝麻街工作室携手美国中文电视在北美的首播，是芝麻街工作室和华文媒体在美国传播《芝麻街》系列中文节目的第一步。

关于芝麻街工作室

芝麻街工作室是一家非营利性教育机构，推出了以《芝麻街》系列节目为代表的创新性儿童电视节目。芝麻街工作室出版发行的《芝麻街》儿童电视节目，收视覆盖150多个国家，并推出其他深受好评的节目，例如《The Electric Company电力公司》，致力于弥补学龄前儿童的读写能力差异。除电视节目之外，芝麻街工作室致力于多媒体平台，制作推出了包括读写能力和卫生健康等在内的大量题材的内容，满足年幼的儿童及其家庭对发展孩子重要技能、养成健康习惯和培养情感交流能力的特殊需求，为他们的终生学习奠定良好的基础。

关于美国中文电视

美国中文电视成立于1990年，总部位于纽约，是北美地区最具影响力和规模的中文电视台之一，全天候24小时在WMBC63.4播出。如今，拥有9档实时滚动新闻和娱乐新闻，白金剧场以北美首播剧为主，黄金综艺档齐聚华语地区优秀的综艺节目，自制的谈话节目、美食栏目以及深度专题报道致力服务华人社区和传播中华文化。

When the new school year starts, the United States will have at least 119 schools offering Mandarin immersion programs, a Mandarin Immersion Parents Council analysis finds. The list is based on information gathered by the MIPC, schools that have sent information to the MIPC, and lists compiled by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C. We believe it to be the most complete list available of Mandarin immersion programs currently in existence.

Before 2000 there were only 13 Chinese immersion schools in the U.S. The other 97 all came into being after the 2002-2003 school year. The past three years have seen an enormous growth in these schools.

Most Mandarin immersion schools are public. We counted 74 public school, 17 charter schools and 29 private schools.

The oldest Mandarin immersion program in the nation is the private Chinese American International School, a K-8 founded in 1981. In 1997 the Pacific Rim International School in Emeryville, Calif. was founded, originally in Berkeley. The oldest public is Potomac Elementary School in Potomac, Maryland, founded in 1986. That same year the International School of the Peninsula, a private school in Silicon Valley, opened. In 1998 the west coast’s first public Mandarin immersion program, at Woodstock Elementary School, was launched in Portland, Ore.

But most Mandarin immersion programs are very, very new. So new that few programs have had time to go beyond the elementary school years. Of the schools where it was possible to tell what grades were covered, there were 99 elementary schools, 20 middle schools and only one high school offering Mandarin immersion programs

Of the 119 schools in the United States with Mandarin immersion, 108 were started in 2002 or later.

The two powerhouse states when it comes to Mandarin immersion are California and Utah, with 34 and 25 programs respectively. Minnesota with seven and Oregon with six are the next closest.

In addition to Mandarin immersion, there are five Cantonese immersion schools in the United States, including three elementary, one middle and one high school, all within in the San Francisco Unified School District. The oldest public Chinese immersion program in the nation is West Portal Elementary School. It was begun as a strand at West Portal in 1984.

Internationally, there are 17 Mandarin immersion programs in Canada, 12 in Edmonton and five in or near Vancouver, British Columbia. There are three Mandarin immersion programs in Australia and at least one that we’ve found in Budapest, the Magyar-Kinai Altalanos Iskola.

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Special thanks to Joan Fang, whose son will begin in the Mandarin immersion program at Bergeson Elementary in the Capistrano Unified School District in Orange County this fall. She volunteered to input the schools the MICP had collected into a spreadsheet. Her work made it possible to analyze information about the programs.

            We’ll be posting the full list on the MIPC site as soon as we clean it up a bit, then we’ll find out the schools we’ve missed. We expect there are more than 119 out there.

From today’s San Francisco Chronicle, an interview with the husband of the US ambassador to Hungary. In it, Markos Kounalakis, says this about their two boys’ schooling:

Q: What school do the boys go to? A: During the week, they are at the American International School of Budapest, and on the weekends, full time, they go to a Chinese-language immersion school.

Read the full interview here.

By Elizabeth Weise

We know two things about reading in all languages: the more you do, the easier it gets and the more your read, the better your vocabulary, grammar, writing and understanding become.

Dr. Stephen Krashen has done years of research on this, which has been backed up by multiple other researchers (If you want to do some of your own reading on this, try The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research and Summer Reading: Program and Evidence, both by Krashen.

The research clearly shows that that reading for fun (academics call it “Free Voluntary Reading”) really ramps up language development and literacy. But it’s got to be compelling and comprehensible — i.e. fun and at the right level.

Krashen’s research has also shown that one way to get non-readers interested in reading is comic books, because they’ve got great story lines and also pictures that help draw kids in.

Dr. Christy Lao, a professor of education at San Francisco State University put those two pieces of information together and created a phenomenal summer program to get kids reading in Chinese. The children were either in Chinese immersion programs or from Heritage language schools. Lao had a STARTALK grant from the federal government that allowed her to work with a group of students in San Francisco for several years running. These kids spent much of their summer in a big, friendly room at SF State that is lined with bookcases filled with Chinese language comics, which also go by the name graphic novels or manga.

They loved them.

“Some of these students were reading ten books a week,” Lao says. “We had one boy who read 644 books over the summer and wanted to take more home in his suitcase.” The group of students who took the month-long summer workshop read Chinese graphic novels, lots of them. The numbers ranged from 96 to the boy above, at 644. In one month.

Kids who had never before read a full book in Chinese were devouring the graphic novels/comic books. One mother called Lao to complain: “You said this was just a summer program, but you’re making my child read five hours a night!” Lao had to explain to the mom that there was no homework – her daughter just wanted to read that much.

“What is more encouraging is that when the students finished the summer program, they continued reading Chinese for pleasure,” she says. In the months after the program ended, kids read between 19 and 272 books, in Mandarin, just because they wanted to.

Lao says they had a whole shelf of picture books but the kids ignored them. But the comic books they couldn’t keep them away from.

Sadly, Lao has moved on to other projects and isn’t running the STARTALK reading program any more, but after interviewing her this week for my Mandarin Immersion: A Parents Guide, I started thinking about how parents could replicate it for themselves.

A call for assistance on the various Mandarin lists resulted in amazingly helpful suggestions – what a great group of parents we have engaged in Mandarin around the country!

So here’s are some suggestions:

• This isn’t homework, this is about reading for fun. You don’t want books where the kids have to look up words, says Lao. “I discourage consulting dictionary for new/unknown words.  It stops the reading flow and is tedious to do so. Children will be able to figure out the meaning of the words in the story context. If there are too many unknown words, the book is not right for him/her. They should pick another one.”
• Make sure you find materials that use the type of characters your child is learning. Some programs use traditional, some simplified. There are many more comics available in traditional out of Taiwan but you can also find them in simplified if you look.
• Your child won’t know how to pronounce all the characters, even if they would know the words from having heard them spoken. But Lao says that by 3^rd or 4^th grade most students should be able to make educated guesses about how characters are pronounced from the ‘phonetic radical’ that’s a part of over half of Chinese characters. That gives them a good chance of figuring out what the word is, because they probably already have heard it used at school.
• Let your child find books that they like. There are many genres of comic books and graphic novels – kung fu, little kids, romance, adventure. Let your kid explore. They’ll only read if it’s a story that pulls them in.
• Some of the most popular graphic novels Lao’s staff found are translations from Japanese manga. Don’t feel you have to buy something that was originally written in Chinese. Translations are fine.
• Many comic series have cartoon series as well. You can also buy DVDs or watch them online to further interest your kids. After watching an afternoon of cartoons they’ll know the characters and the kind of story and will have an easier time reading
• Most of these won’t look like the comic books we grew up with, they’re graphic novels and thick. Both kinds are fine, as long as your kid wants to read them.

So how to find graphic novels and comic books? Here are some suggestions from parents across the United States. Some of these sites are only in Chinese, but ask your child to help you buy – it will give them a chance to show off their knowledge.

Parent suggestions about what’s available and where to buy:

TinTin/丁丁

The TinTin books have been translated into both simplified and traditional. If your kid got hooked on TinTin from the movie, this is a great place to start. You could even have them read a book in English and then take it away and give them only the Chinese version, so they have to read it.

羊羊与灰太狼Xi Yang Yang (Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf).

Popular with younger kids) in simplified characters.

闹FUN天闹闹漫画系列1 Nao Nao series,

This one apparently won awards from the Singapore Dept. of Education

Available at

http://chinasprout.com/shop/BSY061

China sprout is having free shipping above $50 till June 30.

We bought all the graphic novels that Chinese Books for Children carries. They’re located in the Bay Area, so the books came much quicker than the Garfield and Tintin sets I ordered from China. The slow shipping from China cost more than the books, so I don’t recommend doing that.

www.nanhai.com/

Nan Hai books in Santa Clara carries My First Scientific Comic Book Series that our 4th graders liked.

Little Monkey and Mouse

Bookstore, online and local in Bay Area, carries many popular comics books in Simplified Chinese such as Smurf, Gadget Cat, Pleasant Goat & Big Big Wolf etc…   She  I just received a new shipment and will be updating her website soon.

http://www.littlemonkeyandmouse.com/index.php/children/comics.html?dir=asc&language=10&order=name

iPad

There are hundreds of comics on you can get onto your iPad. I just did a search using the Chinese characters for comic strip (漫画man hua), and got lots of hits.

I was super excited to see that someone had scanned the entire series of小叮当Xiao Ding Dang (or Doraemon, the blue robotic cat from the future) and made them available on the iPad. Do a search for robotic cat using机器猫 (ji qi mao) and you should see it. This has been my favorite since I was a kid, and remains one of the most popular comic strips in Asia.

I had also gotten some 羊羊与灰太狼 Xi Yang Yang comic strips with high-quality graphics for the iPad. My kids really enjoyed reading them (I mean, having me read to them). The benefit of Xi Yang Yang is that they are more likely to be in simplified characters, since this started from mainland China.

I also have some comic strips of西游记 Xi You Ji (Journey to the West – about the Monkey King), also downloaded to the iPad.

Books and Me down in Los Altos has a bunch too… but you should call them and ask first, especially if you’re looking for ones in simplified characters. They tend to carry more books from Taiwan. Their website is http://www.booksandme.org/

You might find this list of comics helpful, they seem to all be in simplified.

http://category.dangdang.com/all/?category_path=01.41.50.05.00.00

dangdang.com.

This site requires registration.  The hardest part is getting the first purchase done – there’s a credit card verification process that involves an error message that shows up despite successful transaction, and the company will also do another verification through email.  Also, shipping takes about a month.  Sounds daunting but it’s all worth it because it’s the most affordable option I’ve found so far.

www.yesasia.com/us/en/chinese-comics.html

Soyodo

Bookstore based in California with a web site, a search for comics got this:

http://www.soyodo.net/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=124_138_141&sort=2d&page=1

San Francisco Bay area:

The San Francisco Public Library, main branch and Chinatown branch, both have comics. Most are in traditional characters, although they also have Xi Yang Yang (Pleasant Goat and Big Bad Wolf, popular with younger kids) in simplified.

Gogo Music & Books, 675 Jackson, near Grant, in Chinatown, carries comic books.

The Millbrae library seems to have comics and graphic novels in Chinese.

Sodo, a bookstore at 273 Broadway Ave.,Millbrae, California, has the comic books in simplified Chinese characters. They also have a branch in Sunnyvale.

Books and Me down in Los Altos call them and ask first, especially if you’re looking for ones in simplified characters. They tend to carry more books from Taiwan. Their website is http://www.booksandme.org/

The Quickly store in Millbrae (where you get pearl tea). I know there are Quickly stores everywhere in the Bay area now, but I’m not sure all of them carry these comic strips.