I love the Internet. You can find anything (well, most things) there, and things you never thought you’d find. And people spend tremendous amounts of time and thought writing up answers to questions you’ve always wondered about Just Because It’s Cool.
A Chinese-American mom gives a great introduction to the textbooks used by beginning students in China, Taiwan and in U.S. in a lot of heritage classrooms.
She shows pages out of the textbooks, discusses what they teach, how many characters, what they expect of kids and generally how literate they get.
Note that the U.S. textbooks she talks about, 馬立平, are used in Chinese Saturday schools for kids who come from Chinese-speaking households where the parents (generally) read and write Chinese. So it’s not really fair to make a comparison between what those schools do and what immersion schools do. But it’s kind of fascinating to see what’s expected of kids in those schools.
All in all it’s a great look at the similarities and differences between China and Taiwan.
A few notes:
The “zhuyin” she refers to is also known as Bopomofo, the phonetic syllables used in Taiwan to help kids learn to read characters. In China they use pinyin.
Later on she says “The one extra difference that people in China learn is 唐詩.” That’s the Tang Dynasty poems that your kid will probably memorize at some point in their school career. All literate people in China know a bunch of these and can recite them. Using lines from them in your speech makes you sound educated (which you are if you can do that, of course.) In China they’re build into the curriculum starting in grade school.
It’s a great blog posting and you can read it here.
At International Friends School we create habits of strong heart and mind through Quaker education in a modern, immersive, multilingual environment.
Our students have the character, communication skills and cultural competency to meaningfully participate as world citizens.
On five stunning acres in downtown Bellevue, the International Friends School opens its door this fall to it’s first classes of 3 and 4 year old children then growing a grade a year until 8th grade. As a Quaker Friends School, IFS joins a 300 year old tradition of excellent academics mirrored by the thoughtful concern for the moral and social development of children. IFS is the first Friends’s school in Washington state and the first in the world to offer a multilingual environment. Students will learn through a Mandarin/English immersion program with some daily exposure to Spanish. The third commitment of IFS is to offer students a balanced year calendar where learning is more evenly dispersed throughout the school year. Check out more at: ifschool.org
Close to 200 students to graduate from Norquay elementary program this year
John Kurucz / Vancouver Courier
MARCH 14, 2018 10:09 AM
Norquay elementary’s Early Mandarin Bilingual Program began in 2011, and now the first students to enrol are graduating. Photo Dan Toulgoet
Sashaying across an East Vancouver classroom floor, about a dozen elementary students sang and danced to “Picking Mushrooms,” a well-known Chinese folk song used in celebratory settings.
Up next was a rap interpretation of the Chinese animated character Mulan.
Both performances were sang entirely in Mandarin by kids spanning cultures from across the globe. Events like these were a bit of an anomaly 10 years ago at Norquay elementary, though the school’s Early Mandarin Bilingual Program is actively changing that.
A first of its kind in Vancouver and established in 2011, the curriculum blends Mandarin and English instruction for kids in kindergarten through Grade 7. The first stream of students to go through the entirety of the program leaves the Norquay doors in June. Parents, administrators, PAC members and curriculum writers got together at Norquay March 8 to celebrate that fact.
Many districts are seeing enrollment dropping. It’s interesting to see how kids coming from immersion K – 8 charter school bolster enrollment in the St. Paul, Minn. schools. curious if other districts see this pattern as well.
St. Paul schools’ K-12 enrollment down slightly this year
K-12 enrollment fell slightly this year in St. Paul Public Schools, but not as far as officials feared.
The 103-student drop, to 36,858, is a decrease of three-tenths of a percent. The district had projected a decrease of 549 students.
Research director Stacey Gray Akyea said it’s possible this year is the start of a turnaround, but “overall, enrollment trends suggest that we are on a (steady) decline.”
Kindergarten enrollment declined for a fourth consecutive year, but by just 13 students.
The district saw substantial improvement in ninth grade.
Gray Akyea said high schools got a boost from partnerships with German- and Chinese-immersion charter schools.
And the district’s own eighth-graders in schools with specialized academic pathways, such as aerospace or language immersion, stayed for high school at higher rates than in past years.
I’m attending the Early Childhood Chinese Immersion Forum in San Francisco today. I’ll be posting throughout the day.
Keynote speaker: Helena Curtain
How immersion benefits preschool kids
Helena Curtain speaking on early childhood immersion programs at the Early Childhood Chinese Immersion Forum at the Chinese American International School on March 17, 2018.
Remember that most children in the world are in immersion programs – because in two-thirds of the globe children go to school in a language different than the one they speak at home. Only one-third of children are schooled in the same language they speak at home.
The good news is that we know that whatever kids learn in one language transfers into another, it’s backed up by research.
Not only that, but there are 50 years of research saying that learning a second language will improve your native language.
In addition, people who’ve learned two languages have a much easier time learning a third language. They already intuitively understand the metalinguistic issues and instinctively know how to communicate using a new language.
The Advantages of an Early Start
Children who learn another language before age five us the same part of the brain to acquire that second language that they use to learn their mother tongue.
Starting language earlier gives you longer to get to an language advanced level. If studetns don’t start until high school they don’t have enough time to fully take the language in.
It’s also good to learn early, because of what Curtain calls “the easy and naturalness factor. Little kids don’t worry about are they saying it wrong! They’re still learning their first language, so it’s all new.”
Children also may not realize that they can understand the immersion language, but they do. Curtain told the story of talking with a Kindergarten student in a Spanish immersion classroom.
“Do you understand your teacher?” she asked?
“No, I don’t. But I do everything she tells me!” the child responded.
The phases of language learning:
The nonverbal silent period
It’s not just preschool children who go through this process. Everyone who’s learning a language goes through this.
The telegraphic and formulaic speech period.
“Me go. “Me hungry.” They can get their needs met but not much more.
Formulaic speech.
They have a phrase that they can repeat. “May I go to the bathroom?” “How are you today?”
Productive language.
When they’re actually able to create with language.
NOTE: Parents need to remember that students start out like babies or toddlers, speaking the new language very simply. “So it’s not fair for parents to expect that they can suddenly go to a Chinese restaurant and order as if they were an adult!
Caretaker speech – How teachers begin teaching students in the first years of immersion.
This involve
Simplified Vocabulary
Simplified Phonology
Exaggerated Pitch & Intonation and acting-out
Speaking to children as if they understand even when they don’t.
An example: Your two-year old says, “Wawa.” You respond, “Oh, you want water. Let’s get you a drink. There’s the water fountain. Isn’t that water good?”
Why teachers need to use Mandarin all the time and don’t speak English to students.
Learners need to access the target language through the target language, not through English.
If teachers speak the language 50% of the time, students are learning the language 50% of the time.
[Though if a child’s crying, you talk to them in English but you don’t do it in front of the other students. We’re not going to put the child’s social and emotional well-being at risk, of course.]
What if your child can’t get into an immersion preschool?
Is not having access to an immersion preschool a problem? Not all areas have them, or in areas that do, not all students can get into them.
Starting is better but it’s not a deal-breaker, Curtain told attendees. Programs for three-, four- and five-year-olds are not academic. They’re very concrete, hands-on, play-based and developmentally appropriate. So the students who come to it later aren’t missing out on academic learning. But preschool gives them a head start on the language.
“But if you can’t get your kid into the program until they’re five, that’s still a very young age to get them started and just fine,” Curtain said.
In the fall of 2018 the East Voyager Academy will open in Charlotte, N.C. It will be the first whole-school Mandarin immersion school in the state, joining eight others.
The charter school is launching with Pre-K to Grade 4 for the 2018-2019 school year and will add a grade each year until Grade 8. It will use simplified characters and begin with a 75%/25% Mandarin to English ratio.
Just last month the new school’s Board of Trustees announced that Dr. Tim Murph would be its founding Principal. He has previously served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and executive director in numerous school districts, both traditional and charter.
Charlotte has one other school offering Mandarin immersion, Waddell Language Academy, which is a K – 5 magnet school which has four language immersion programs – Chinese, French, German or Japanese. The city also has Spanish K – 8 immersion programs at Collinswood Language Academy and Oaklawn Language Academy.
For more about East Voyager Academy, please see their website here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 