And you thought it would just give them a leg up in the world!

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The Bilingual Advantage

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Published: May 30, 2011

Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?

A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.’s. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.

As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.

Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?

A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.

But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.

More here.

National Summer Mandarin Immersion Language Program for High School Students has Openings

(Located on the UW-Madison Campus)

Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth

 

Please inform interested students and parents. No previous Chinese classes required. Rising eighth graders may also participate.  Students choose to be residential or commuter.

 

For more information about the Accelerated learning program (ALP):

http://alp.wcatyweb.com/

Session:                                     June 19-July 9, 2011

Application Deadline:                        Extended, Please inquire about openings

Contact:                                    Carole Trone, Director

cjtrone@wisc.edu

Lisa Li Urbonya                                    Instructor, Curriculum Developer for Chinese

actionlanguagelearning@gmail.com

608-332-6132

Residential Tuition:                        $2400

Commuter Tuition:                        $1750

Dear Friends,
The Mandarin Institute in conjunction with STARTALK will offer a K-12 Chinese Teacher Preparation Program to teachers from the U.S. and the Greater China area. It is an unparalleled opportunity for new Chinese language teachers and teachers who are new to teaching in US classrooms, to gain concrete classroom experience teaching American students. For qualifying teachers, the tuition fee ($1600) will be waived. Please help us spreading the word.
Teachers will learn the critical skills they need to be innovative and successful in the classroom and to facilitate high quality Chinese language programming in their schools. This training enables participants to practice what they have learned in authentic American classrooms with real students at the same level as they are going to teach. This program emphasizes “hands-on” training, ensuring that theory is presented in collaboration with the application for a comprehensive training experience. Critical communication skills will be learned through interacting with real school administrators, teacher peers and parents.

Dates: August 1 – August 5, 2011
Location: Chinese American International School
150 Oak Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Application Deadline: June 3, 2011

Register at http://www.mandarininstitute.org/STARTALK2011_Teacher today!
Contact Benson Zhao bzhao@MandarinInstitute.org (415)861-0966 for more information.

Benson Zhao
Program Manager, Mandarin Institute
44 Page Street, Suite 403
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel: 415-861-0966
Fax: 415-861-0266
http://www.MandarinInstitute.org
http://www.TheMandarinCenter.org

By Andrea Hughes

of The Item

Millburn Board of Education members stated their opposition loud and clear regarding the applications for two charter schools that could draw students from the district.

Applications for two Mandarin-themed elementary level charter schools, Hanyu International Academy and Hua Mei Charter School, have been submitted to the Department of Education. The public school districts in the schools’ catchment area, including Millburn, have until May 30 to send comments to the state.

At the May 23 board meeting, members passed a resolution allowing Superintendent of Schools James Crisfield to comment to the state in opposition to the schools. They also passed a resolution supporting a New Jersey School Boards Association resolution which states that local voters should have control over the approval for charter schools.

More here.

From Patch

The Board of Education will urge New Jersey school leaders to deny applications for two Mandarin-immersion charter schools in Livingston.

Voting unanimously, the board members hope a letter – now in draft form – will persuade Acting Education Commission Christopher Cerf to deny charters for Hanyu International Academy Charter School and Hua Mei Charter School.

“When charter schools were started, even then I wasn’t a fan of them,” said Sen. Richard Codey (D-Essex), who joined the nearly full house in the auditorium at Livingston High School for public discussion on charter schools. “I think the jury’s still out if the vision was urban as oppose to suburban.”

Acting separately at their meeting at town hall, the Township Council voted 4-1 to oppose the charter applications as well. Councilwoman Deborah Shapiro, who is a founder of Hanyu International, did not abstain and voted against the resolution.

Read more here.

A production crew  from China Central Television was filming at Starr King Elementary school in San Francisco on Friday. The focus of her story was on “the rise in Mandarin immersion programs in the United States,” says Rachel Silverman of CCTV. The story should air in the coming weeks. We’ll post a link to it when it does.

The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature

Edited by Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender

In The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, two of the world’s leading sinologists, Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender, capture the breadth of China’s oral-based literary heritage. This collection presents works drawn from the large body of oral literature of many of China’s recognized ethnic groups—including the Han, Yi, Miao, Tu, Daur, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Kazak—and the selections include a variety of genres. Chapters cover folk stories, songs, rituals, and drama, as well as epic traditions and professional storytelling, and feature both familiar and little-known texts, from the story of the woman warrior Hua Mulan to the love stories of urban storytellers in the Yangtze delta, the shaman rituals of the Manchu, and a trickster tale of the Daur people from the forests of the northeast. The Cannibal Grandmother of the Yi and other strange creatures and characters unsettle accepted notions of Chinese fable and literary form. Readers are introduced to antiphonal songs of the Zhuang and the Dong, who live among the fantastic limestone hills of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; work and matchmaking songs of the mountain-dwelling She of Fujian province; and saltwater songs of the Cantonese-speaking boat people of Hong Kong. The editors feature the Mongolian epic poems of Geser Khan and Jangar; the sad tale of the Qeo family girl, from the Tu people of Gansu and Qinghai provinces; and local plays known as “rice sprouts” from Hebei province. These fascinating juxtapositions invite comparisons among cultures, styles, and genres, and expert translations preserve the individual character of each thrillingly imaginative work.

More here.