Naselle students win in Washington state Chinese language competition

NASELLE — Seven students from the Mandarin Immersion Program at the Naselle-Grays River School District participated in the Fifth Annual Washington State Chinese Language and Talent Competition, with all seven receiving awards.

The competition, held on Sunday, March 22, at the Chief Sealth International High School in Seattle, was divided into various individual and group performances among different levels of Chinese-as-a-second-language students. Students in grades K-2 had the opportunity to compete in: Team Poetry Recitation, Individual Poetry Recitation, Individual or Team Talent Show, Individual or Team Chinese Singing, Individual or Team Chinese Language Arts, Drawing, and Chinese Chess.

When the competition ended and awards were posted, the names of Naselle students Anderson, Lanz, Lebovitz, Lindstrom, Popkin, Tichenor and Weston stood out in stark contrast to those of Qiang, Huang, Han, Zhu and others of more decidedly Chinese ancestry. The team consisting of William Anderson, Kinsley Lanz, Alia Lebovitz, Jacob Lindstrom, Hannelie Popkin, Dash Tichenor and Aaliyah Weston won the second place award in group singing.

Please read more here.

UNION, Ore. (AP) — The Union Hotel, which opened in 1921, is a local icon, owning the distinction of being one of the oldest hotels in Eastern Oregon.

Soon the hotel will own another distinction. The building will be the site of one of the few bilingual elementary schools in Oregon.

Charlie Morden and partner Ruth Rush, owners and operators of the Union Hotel, plan to open a Chinese language immersion school at the Union Hotel as early as September 2016. Children will be taught in both Mandarin Chinese and English on the expansive and now vacant third floor of the Union Hotel plus other portions of the building.

“Math, for example, will be taught in Chinese one day and English the next,” Morden said.

Please read more here.

A Concordia study shows that kids exposed to two languages have different expectations than those who are monolingual

Early second-language education could promote acceptance of social and physical diversity. | Photo by Concordia University

Most young children are essentialists: They believe that human and animal characteristics are innate. That kind of reasoning can lead them to think that traits like native language and clothing preference are intrinsic rather than acquired.

But a new study from Concordia suggests that certain bilingual kids are more likely to understand that it’s what one learns, rather than what one is born with, that makes up a person’s psychological attributes.

The study, forthcoming in Developmental Science, suggests that bilingualism in the preschool years can alter children’s beliefs about the world around them. Contrary to their unilingual peers, many kids who have been exposed to a second language after age three believe that an individual’s traits arise from experience.

For the study, psychology professor Krista Byers-Heinlein and her co-author, Concordia undergrad Bianca Garcia, tested a total of 48 monolingual, simultaneous bilingual (learned two languages at once) and sequential bilingual (learned one language and then another) five- and six-year-olds.

Please read more here.

What’s of course noteworthy about this is that kids coming from Mandarin immersion programs don’t need to spent two to three years learning Chinese while they’re in college–they arrive at college already speaking Chinese. Which gives them a tremendous leg up. — Beth

U.S. students losing interest in China as dream jobs prove elusive
BY ALEXANDRA HARNEY
SHANGHAI Thu Mar 12, 2015 5:15pm EDT

(Reuters) – American students are getting cold feet about studying Chinese in China, with many study abroad programs in the country seeing a substantial drop in enrolment over the last few years.

At the University of California Education Abroad Program (UCEAP), student enrolment in programs in China is expected to be less than half the level it was only four years ago. Washington-based CET, another leading study abroad group, says interest in China has been falling since 2013.

The apparent waning of interest worries some China watchers. Given the importance of the U.S.-China relationship, having a group of Americans across different industries who speak Chinese and understand the culture is “a matter of national interest”, says Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“We can’t respond coherently, effectively and fully to China unless we understand China on its own terms,” he said.

The Institute of International Education says the number of U.S. students studying in China fell 3.2 percent in 2012-13 to 14,413, even as overall study abroad numbers rose modestly.

American students’ apparent loss of interest contrasts with Chinese students’ clamor for a U.S. education. The number of Chinese studying in the United States jumped 16.5 percent in 2013-14 to more than 274,000.

Please see more here.

I think I’ve mentioned this site before, but it’s worth repeating.

This is a cool site where they’re taking Chinese newspaper articles and making them a little easier to read for students. The title is a dual-language pun, as bao, 报, means newspaper.

See their site here.