Mandarin Immersion Parents Council

Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education

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  • TV piece on St. Paul’s Mandarin immersion Kinder class

    Students’ Year With Chinese Immersion Program

    May 2, 2012 8:20 AM
    Holly WagnerReporting Holly Wagner

    Filed Under

    ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) – Some Minnesota kindergartners are about to complete their first year of school, and they did it all in Chinese.

    At the start of the school year, WCCO visited the first class ofstudents in the new Mandarin immersion program at Benjamin Mays Magnet in St. Paul. We went back to get a report card on the progress they’ve made.

    Back in September, we could see it wasn’t easy. Two weeks into school, the students appeared to be overwhelmed. Some had their heads down on their desks, they looked frustrated, and one studentadmitted, “I have no idea what to do.”

    Parent Stephen Lee told us it was stressful for his son Ben.

    “Ben came home exhausted. He was tired, he wanted to quit. I was almost ready to throw in the towel saying, I don’t know if that’s for him.”

    But Lee’s son stuck with it and so did the 16 other students in class. Parents say their kids have learned a lot.

    “It’s night and day,” said Lee. “Now when you see it, the discipline, the way he learns, hits the assignments. The fact that his Chinese has exceeded our Chinese is pretty good, pretty impressive.”

    Please read more here.

  • Being bilingual makes your more focused

    Bilingualism Fine-Tunes Hearing, Enhances Attention

    Dual language speakers better able to encode basic language sounds and patterns

    By Wendy Leopold

    EVANSTON, Ill. — A new Northwestern University study provides the first biological evidence that bilinguals’ rich experience with language “fine-tunes” their auditory nervous system and helps them juggle linguistic input in ways that enhance attention and working memory.

    Northwestern bilingualism expert Viorica Marian teamed up with auditory neuroscientist Nina Kraus to investigate how bilingualism affects the brain. In particular, they looked at subcortical auditory regions that are bathed with input from cognitive brain areas.

    Please read more here.

  • News and Opportunities from the Field from the Asia Society

    News and Opportunities from the Field

    2012 National Chinese Language Conference: The program and speaker line-up is now online! This year’s NCLC will be packed with expert and helpful sessions on immersion and early Chinese language learning, technology and innovation in language education, arts and culture, plus networking opportunities and a very special performance by I SING BEIJING. Don’t miss out on the popular school visits and preconference workshops – they’re filling up fast! > Visit: www.AsiaSociety.org/NCLC

    The National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) is offering a STARTALK-sponsored Heritage Language Workshop for K–16 teachers of less commonly taught languages, including Chinese. This workshop is free, with travel stipends available for out-of-state teachers. Apply by April 15, 2012. > Learn more.

    Mandarin for Future Mandarin Teachers (MFMT): The Confucius Institute at China Institute is offering professional development this summer at East China Normal University in Shanghai, July 2–August 10. The program includes four graduate-level courses as well as Chinese cultural immersion excursions, Chinese classroom observation, and collaborative cross-disciplinary activities. Tuition and accommodation are free. Apply by April 16, 2012. > Learn more.

    Chinese Teacher Training Program at Nanjing University: Sponsored by Hanban, the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York is offering its popular teacher training summer program at Nanjing University. Courses include: Modern Chinese Literature, Classical Chinese, Chinese Composition, and Seminar on Advanced Chinese. Participants receive 12 credits from Nanjing University, which can be used to fulfill the content area credit requirement for Chinese language teacher certification or the staff development credit requirement by education authorities in the U.S. Qualified applicants can receive funding from Hanban that covers tuition and housing at Nanjing University in addition to a stipend of 1,500 rmb. Applicants who do not qualify for Hanban funding have the option of attending the program at their own cost. Program dates: July 9–August 3, 2011. > Learn more.

    The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) 2012 Summer Institutes:Online registration is now open for the CARLA summer institutes for immersion teachers and for language teachers. > Learn more.

    Technology and Chinese Language Teaching (TCLT7) Call for Papers: Co-sponsored with Hamilton College, the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) and the National Resource Center East Asia (NRCEA) at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa will host the 7th International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century (TCLT7) at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Conference dates: May 25–27, 2012 > Learn more.

    Call for Abstracts: The first Maryland International Conference on Chinese as a Second Language will be held at the University of Maryland, College Park, November 11–12, 2012. Any papers related to the learning and teaching of Chinese as a second language are welcome. Abstracts due May 31, 2012. >Learn more.

    Summer Study in China: China Institute is pleased to announce that its SSC program will offer two sessions this year: SSC-Beijing and SSC-Shanghai. Both sessions, in addition to employing an intensive language-learning curriculum that covers the equivalent of at least one year of high school-level Mandarin, seek to provide students with the tools necessary to fully contextualize their diverse experiences abroad. The programs will run for 4–5 weeks between the dates of July 5 and August 11, 2012. > Learn more.

    Workshops for Language Educators. Online registration is now open for the 2012 Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research (CALPER) workshops at Penn State. Workshop dates: July 16–25, 2012 > Learn more.

    Landon-in-China, a four-week cultural and linguistic immersion program, is built upon the long relationship between the Landon School (Bethesda, MD) and its three sister schools in Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai. The program is open to students in rising 9th grade and above and will take place July 20 to August 17, 2012. No prior knowledge of Chinese is required. > To learn more, visitLandon-in-China or e-mail Dr. Dali Tan: dali_tan@landon.net

    Please read more here.

  • Global Competence for Chinese Language Teachers

    From the Asia Society newsletter

    Nikada/iStockphoto, Jimmy Wang/NYTimes.com, Fan Kuan

    Nikada/iStockphoto, Jimmy Wang/NYTimes.com, Fan Kuan

    As a Chinese and Japanese language teacher, I’ve always had a secret antipathy for sushi and dumplings. It’s not that I don’t like to eat them. It’s just that, in my first experiences teaching these languages, I was often confronted by skeptical colleagues or parents wondering why these weren’t core parts of my curriculum. I dreaded the annual approach of Lunar New Year, when everyone would expect to see red lanterns outside my classroom and students performing lion dances.

    I was once asked to show students a video of Chinese New Year customs that focused on a small rural village in central China. Toward the end of the video, a student recently arrived from Shanghai wandered into my classroom and sat in the back. At the end of the video, I asked him to tell the class what he thought, and he remarked with great surprise that he had never seen anything like those customs before and that young people in Shanghai just played video games during their New Year holidays!

    Please read more here.

  • Los Angeles Mandarin program enrollment not closed yet

    The Mandarin immersion program at Broadway Elementary school in Venice, Calif (Los Angeles Unified) still has space on its waiting list for Kindergarten and principal Susan Wang encourages parents who are interested to ome in and sign up. “The priority windows were closed on 4/20, but after that we take everyone on the first come  first serve basis.  We will continue to take everyone and put the overflow on the wait list,” she says.

    More about their program below:

    大洛杉磯學區中英雙語浸沉式教學課程

    In September 2010, Broadway launched a Mandarin and English Dual-Language Immersion Program with two full classes of Kindergarten students. LAUSD Principal, Susan Wang, and a group of interested parents had been working together since the Fall of 2009 to make this happen. The program quickly became so overwhelmingly popular that the program expanded to four Kindergarten Mandarin Immersion classes for the 2011-12 school year.

    2010年九月起，百老匯小學開始進行中英雙語浸沉式課程，共有幼稚園兩班的學生參與。此課程得以進行有賴於LAUSD的校長Susan Wang與一群熱心的家長共同努力。由於此一課程相當受歡迎，2011-2012學年度中施行的班級增加到四班幼稚園學生。

    The immersion program is designed so that students achieve academic proficiency in both English and Mandarin and become bilingual, bicultural and biliterate.

    本浸沉式教學課程是為了幫助學生達到中英雙語流利，並能夠使用雙語、跨越雙文化而設計。

    To facilitate that students become bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate, the program offers:

    • Language fluency in both English and Mandarin
    • Rigorous academic instruction
    • Cultural awareness and appreciation
    • Nurturing, supportive learning environment

    Broadway’s Mandarin Immersion Program implements the 50/50 model. The instruction is 50% in English and 50% in Mandarin. Each classroom consists of students who are fluent in either Mandarin or English and they serve as each other’s language models.

    LAUSD is working to establish pipelines in the Venice area to offer students graduating from Broadway’s Mandarin Immersion Program the opportunity to attend a local middle school with a dual language program to further their study in Mandarin. Our local senior high school, Venice High School, has a foreign languages magnet which offers Mandarin Chinese as one of its eight languages.

    Find out more about their school here.

  • Parents start online effort to save Chapel Hill’s Mandarin immersion program

  • Will Rosetta Stone actually teach your child to speak Mandarin?

    Myself, I have no idea. But I spent a lot of time last week talking to teachers at a Chinese language conference and they all were quite clear that while programs like this might be helpful to get kids to practice more (which helps them remember what they’ve learned) it’s not such a great way for them to actually learn to speak. Several of them said they’d had kids in immersion whose parents had spent a lot of money buying Rosetta Stone programs and others with the notion that some how their children would learn to speak Mandarin just by sitting in front of the computer. It doesn’t work like that for kids, they said.

    For what it’s worth.

    Solution for K-12 Market

    TOTALe(R) PRO Platform Delivers Language-Learning Solution to Schools and Districts

     

     

    ARLINGTON, Va., Apr 23, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Rosetta Stone Inc. RST -0.30% , a leading provider of technology-based language-learning solutions, today launched the TOTALe(R) PRO platform for K-12 at the 72nd National School Board Association annual conference in Boston, Mass.

    Rosetta Stone’s award-winning classroom programs have been used by more than 20,000 schools. TOTALe PRO, Rosetta Stone’s newest educational solution, now provides an even more advanced platform for the K-12 market. The TOTALe PRO platform combines interactive software with live online coaches who are native speakers, online educational games and activities, mobile apps for tablets and smartphones, adaptable administrative tools and proactive support services. The new solution was designed with a high degree of flexibility and scalability to accommodate programs focusing on English Language Learners and foreign languages, whether in an individual classroom, a district or an entire state.

    TOTALe PRO for K-12 is Rosetta Stone’s most comprehensive language-learning platform, helping students to develop four key skills–speaking, reading, writing and listening–by leveraging interactive technologies to replicate elements of the immersion environment in which people learn their first language. The superior technology, services and learning opportunities offered by Rosetta Stone’s TOTALe PRO platform ensure that students are equipped with the language skills needed to succeed.