Archive for the ‘Mandarin’ Category

Video Extras Offer More Food for Thought About Immersion Education

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

As a writer I know that plenty of what comes out of my pen (or keyboard) never sees the light of day. Sometimes I have to cut entire paragraphs or pages–even ones I really like–simply because they don’t serve the overall purpose of the story or article. In my case these get relegated to a file called “leftovers” and spend purgatory in my computer hoping to be called up another day. Sadly, I don’t think that day has come for any of my leftovers, but I still can’t bear to throw them away.

When people make a film, a similar thing happens, but on a much grander scale. Filmmakers spend hundreds of hours and many more dollars scouting locations, receiving permission, employing a crew, hiring equipment, and setting up lighting and sound gear to shoot many hours of footage, comparatively few minutes of which make it into the final version of their films. Those hours in the editing room letting go of great stuff that just won’t fit or that has to be sacrificed so other points can be made must be much more painful than my cutting and pasting into a ‘leftover’ file because that work represents so much effort and energy from so many people.

Fortunately, we now have the Internet, and some of those great scenes can now be seen and shared. Material that didn’t make the cut or caused the story to stray can now enhance viewers’ experience of the finished product–just like dvd extras do.  Speaking in Tongues filmmakers Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider have recently posted ten of these video extras on the Speaking in Tongues site.  (Make sure to use the scroll bar on the right of the screen so you can watch them all.)

The extras run the gamut from Mimi Met, Senior Research Associate at the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland, discussing the importance of multilingualism in creating a more peaceful world to educator Laura Ringard expanding on the value of bilingualism for enhancing cognitive function. A Mandarin immersion kindergarten class joyfully sings a children’s song with their teacher, and a 3rd grade science class measures and discusses the progress of plants in their garden entirely in Cantonese. The extras also delve into more controversial topics such as the lag in standardized test scores of immersion students who are taught in the target language but tested in English before they have received as much instruction in that language as their monolingual peers. A touching episode on integration and immersion features a Spanish-speaking mother who decides to enroll her daughter in a Mandarin immersion program as well as insight from an African American mother and a school employee about how learning a second language can open new opportunities for children.

I hope you have a look and that these extras help answer some questions that Speaking in Tongues may have raised for you.  Spread the word to family and friends and let us know what you think about these videos in the comment section below.

And just for fun, check out this excellent audio extra in the form of a World in Words podcast from Public Radio International’s The World and Patrick Cox.  Cox devotes about half the show to Speaking in Tongues, interviewing Ken and Marcia as well as their younger son Jaden, who points out that it’s useful for he and his brother to be able to communicate in a language their parents can’t understand.  No doubt that’s true!

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Posted in Chinese, Language Immersion, Mandarin, Parents, Public Schools, Standardized Tests | 1 Comment »

More Languages Spoken Means More Holidays to Celebrate

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

My kids are never ones to miss a party.  When I tried to clean house (and enlist their assistance in putting their dirty laundry in the hamper) on Labor Day they protested that it was a holiday and that, at the very least, kids should get a pass on chores of any kind–especially if their parents were such wet blankets as to not bother to mark the importance of the day beyond sleeping in.

Now that they’re learning Chinese, we have new holidays to celebrate.  The “new” holidays are not optional in our secular, Judeo-Christian-influenced household.  The Moon Festival has become as important as Easter.  Chinese New Year is just a notch below Christmas on the priority level.  But alas, I have a hard enough time remembering to plan for the holidays I grew up with, and my poor children are consistently disappointed with my failure to satisfy their need to observe the Sino-celebrations.

So they’ve started taking matters into their own hands.  When my kindergartener came home with some lovely Moon Festival-inspired art Tuesday afternoon, I was informed that the Moon Festival was the next day and that we would be celebrating it.  His older brother concurred.  I had 24 hours to acquire moon cakes, and we would be having a parade (in which said art would be carried).

When I hadn’t gotten moon cakes by pick-up time on Tuesday, the search was on.  I pedaled our bike, kids on the back, through the Mission looking for a Chinese bakery.  Score.  I locked the bike on the sidewalk and sent the kids in to enquire.  “Ask if they have moon cakes, and do it in Chinese,” I said.  Moments later my older son came out.

“They DO have moon cakes, but it’s only a really big one, not just two like you wanted.”

“And did you ask in Chinese?” I asked following him in.

“I didn’t have to ask at all, see?” he gestured to a large moon cake display in the center of the room.

They were all packaged, beautifully, in metal tins, four to a box and labeled in Chinese.  Each of these cost between $25 and $30 depending on the flavor of the moon cakes within.  The truth is, I don’t really care for moon cakes, and the last time we got excited about marking the holiday, we overbought and had them sitting around until Christmas.  I had made up my mind that our family of four would share two of them, which is perfect because, cut in half, the moon cake does what it does best: represents the big yellow harvest moon as depicted by a boiled, salted egg yolk buried in the center of the cake.

“We need to find out if we can buy them separately,” I told my son (his little brother was lost in the cake display watching for the cake with the motorcycle to make its way back around).  We approached the counter, and I expected him to ask in Chinese.  No dice.

“We want some moon cakes,” he said to the Asian woman behind the counter who raised a finger and smiled as she walked away to get something.

I realized my son was uncharacteristically nervous because he couldn’t remember how to actually say “moon cake” in Chinese at that moment and I decided to let it slide.  The woman returned and showed us a paper with the different types of moon cakes and their prices listed out–in Chinese.  She began gesturing to it, then laughed. “Oh!” she said smiling and, raising a finger again, walked away.

“She brought us the Chinese price list,” I explained to my son.  “She’s going to come back with the English one.” And in a sudden display of bravado, my son calls out to her “I can read Chinese!”  This, I think to myself, is a stretch, but you go, boy!

Fortunately, this was not the moment to put his bilingual literacy to the test.  She returned with the English price list, and I noted that several of the cakes were listed with an individual price next to the full-tin price. “So,” I asked, “can you buy just one or two of these?”  She looked at me a little blankly and made an effort to answer–in Spanish.

Normally I would not shrink from such a challenge.  My Spanish is OK, and if I had to communicate with her in this circumstance I would have done it, but it seemed silly given that I had a four-foot Chinese interpreter to my left.

“Do you speak Mandarin?” I asked.

“Mandarin OK.  Cantonese OK,” she replied.

“All right Isaiah,  you need to handle this.”

In a couple of minutes I was paying for the moon cakes–two of them, mixed fruit and nut flavor.  “Your son speak very good Chinese,” the woman told me.

“Thank you,” I said, “Xie-xie.”

After dinner the kids waited for the moon to rise over the supermarket across the street.  We all went out on the stoop, the kids in pajamas, to eat our moon cakes (not bad–I prefer this flavor to the traditional bean paste) and mark the change from summer to fall while taking a moment to marvel at the fullness and beauty of the moon.

I never knew what I was missing growing up with only one set of holidays.  How do those of you in bilingual/bicultural homes mark the extra holidays in your lives?  I’d love to hear your stories.


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The Elephant in the Classroom: English Language Development in an Immersion Setting

Friday, September 17th, 2010

One of the most common criticisms of immersion education in the U.S. is that it prioritizes second-language acquisition above English-language development.  While studies have shown that being bilingual actually improves one’s understanding of his native language, it is true that children being taught in a language immersion school do experience some lag in English language proficiency as compared to their English-only peers in the early years of school.  Most English-speaking parents who opt to put their kids in immersion programs understand and accept this, but when test scores start to roll in that are lower than hoped for, or as English instruction time–with non-native English speakers–increases as kids get older, English-speaking parents start scratching their heads.  Moreover, when parents already speak the target language but either speak no English or speak English as a second language, getting adequate English instruction for their kids becomes a bigger issue.

My older son entered kindergarten reading English fluently, and I didn’t worry about the kind of English instruction he was getting at school that first year.  Kindergarten, while more academic than it used to be, is still a place where kids are getting used to school. He was having fun and learning–especially Chinese!  I was just so glad that he was in an immersion environment so that he wasn’t bored all day being taught to do things he had already mastered.  First grade was harder to get through as the English Language Arts curriculum is still very much focused on early literacy skills.  I tried to work with his teachers, native Chinese speakers, about varying his English assignments so that he will be more challenged and engaged, but despite acknowledging my son’s advanced reading skills, they haven’t seemed very comfortable experimenting with the curriculum.

Now we are working through year three, and the English portion of the day is twice as long as it had been in kindergarten and first grade.  My son is still ahead of most of his peers, though the gap is certainly narrowing as other students develop their literacy skills.  I have never felt that the excellent Chinese teachers at my sons’ school lack the basic ability to teach English Language Arts at the elementary level, but it now occurs to me that being charged with helping to develop native literacy in children in one’s second language is a daunting task.  It is no wonder the teachers stick closely to the curriculum: getting creative could mean making mistakes and teaching those to the kids.  This is not a risk such truly professional teachers would be willing to make.  I am frustrated that my child is not getting the level of challenge he needs in English–and I continue to work with the teachers and administration on alternatives–but I am heartened by how well he is learning Chinese and remain thrilled that he has this opportunity.  The fact remains that while he may be bored during English at school, his father and I can help supplement this part of his education at home.

But what if we couldn’t?  The Mandarin immersion program at my kids’ school is now in its fifth year.  It started as an underenrolled program in 2006, and has steadily grown to the point that it now has a waiting list.  The vast majority of students in the first three years of the program were native English speakers with highly educated parents who understood the concept of immersion and the value of bilingualism.  With the success of the program and the  increased interest in Chinese over the last few years, the program has grown significantly.  More children from Chinese-speaking families are attending school with my younger son (who just entered kindergarten), and several kids in his class attended a local Mandarin-immersion preschool that did not exist a few years ago.  Native Chinese-speaking parents have expressed concern that, while their children will be getting an excellent Mandarin education, they might not get all they need in terms of English-language instruction.  And, unlike me, they are less confident about their own abilities to supplement English instruction outside of school.

And then there is the matter of standardized testing.  In second grade, the students’ English teacher reads the test questions for the California STAR test aloud to the students, and there is no written copy available to the students to read on their own.  Most immersion students in San Francisco, whether in Spanish, Korean, or Chinese, have an English teacher for whom English is a second language–a language that is sometimes spoken with a fairly heavy accent.  Could this affect the children’s performance on the tests?  It’s a valid question.  Moreover, kids for whom English is a second language are given the test in English, leading to scores that reflect their ability to understand English regardless of the subject mater being tested.  The fairness of this is continually called into question, and there is even legislation to offer English language learners the opportunity to test in their native language currently sitting on the (non-native English-speaking) governor’s desk.

Whether or not children receive their English instruction from a native speaker, research shows that immersion students not only catch up with their peers on standardized tests by fourth or fifth grade, they usually leap ahead of them (even in math) where standardized tests are concerned.  I have always explained away the minor errors in my sons’ teachers’ written English by letting my kids know that such mistakes are very common for people who didn’t learn their second language until they were much older.  “You are lucky,” I tell them, “to be learning Chinese when you are so young, because you will probably make fewer mistakes in Chinese when you grow up.”

I remain extraordinarily happy about my kids’ language immersion education.  I’d actually be more pleased if they could go to school 100% in Chinese and their English instruction were left entirely up to us, but I make this statement from a personal perspective.  I understand the importance of teaching English to all kids in the public schools, and I’m wondering what we could do in immersion programs to make the English teaching more effective for all the kids while still supporting our wonderful native-speaker teachers.  Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below.

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Posted in Language Immersion, Mandarin, Multilingual Education, Public Schools, Research, Standardized Tests, Students | 3 Comments »

Conversations with my Son on the Eve of Kindergarten

Monday, August 16th, 2010

My baby is starting kindergarten today. It’s the end of an era for our family, and I’ve been a little emotional.

He’s ready, I know.  And he’ll do fine.  But he’s still a bit nervous.

The fact that one of his best friends will be in his class is a huge comfort to all of us! And of course, we know the school and his teachers already and couldn’t be happier about either.

But the fact remains. My not-quite-five-year-old will spend 6 hours a day in a relatively unfamiliar environment being spoken to in a language he doesn’t understand.

He knows this. He’s not sure how he feels about it.

Last week the two of us sat down to watch Speaking in Tongues together. He took it in, despite his tender age. His brother’s school—now his school—is featured. There are lots of familiar faces. He certainly got a sneak preview of what his coming year might be like.

But when he watched the scene of the Cantonese kindergarten class being led through backpack protocol by their teacher on the first day, he froze.

“How do you feel about that?” I asked.

“Not good,” he said in a small voice.

I swallowed hard. This scene is always touching: tiny little kindergarteners in a big, unfamiliar school bewildered by the speech of the only adult in the room. But here I was imagining my own shy little guy—whose name begins with “A”, like Alex in the film, the first student to go before the class and be led through the backpack drill—going through the same thing. Ouch. Will he be able to handle it?

Please don’t let him be one of those kids who cries at drop-off!

“Will you be a teacher in my class sometimes?” he asked.

He’s been through two years of co-op preschool. That means he saw me or his dad in his classroom at least one morning a week for the three days per week he attended.

“Sometimes I’ll be there,” I said. “But I won’t really be a teacher, and I can’t come at first.”

Our kindergarten teachers welcome parent volunteering, but if we can’t speak Mandarin, our tasks are limited to cutting and stapling in the back of the room, and chaperoning the occasional field trip. Moreover, parents are asked not to be in the classroom at all for the first couple of weeks so the kids can get used to the routine.

I may end up with separation anxiety.

As we talked, I realized my little boy was under the impression he would be spending time with his older brother, entering second grade, while he was at school. It was hard to burst that bubble. A summer of a little too much togetherness has had my boys at each others’ throats more often than I care to think about lately, so the fact that my younger son was comforted in the knowledge that his brother would be around was heartwarming.

“You might see each other when you’re finishing lunch, and he’s starting lunch, or maybe sometimes in the halls, but that’s all,” I was forced to tell him. “You will be in your classroom with your teacher. He will be in a different classroom with his teacher.”

He took it in. Solemnly.

We watched that scene again. “See,” I said, “the teacher’s really nice, and she’s showing them what to do. If you just watch your teacher, you’ll figure it out. And you already know some Chinese!” I said encouragingly. The fact that this scene is in Cantonese, and my son’s day would be in Mandarin, made little difference at this point, I figured. Still, she said the word for backpack quite a few times…I had picked it up. And it sounded familiar. I found myself hoping it was a cognate!

That evening at dinner I asked my older son “So, how do you say backpack in Mandarin?”

“Shi bao! I’ve told you a million times!”

Shrugging off the derision of my seven-year-old, I turned to my younger son. “See. It’s the same!” I told him. “Shi bao! You already know backpack!”

He will be ok. At least for the first day…

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Keeping Up With a Second Language Over Summer Vacation

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

School will start again soon. I’m looking forward to it in many ways. I’ll have more time for the blog, for one thing. Of course I’m a little nervous about my baby going off to kindergarten—and how he will handle the immersion environment. I’m also a little concerned about his older brother who will enter second grade and may have a brand new teacher since there has been some shuffling around of staff at their school. And, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I’m also a little concerned about my older son’s Mandarin.

Going from 5 hours a day 5 days a week of Mandarin immersion to, well, pretty much zero for 10 weeks of summer will definitely cause some backsliding. I’ve tried to keep his language skills up over the summer, but, I admit it, I haven’t tried as hard as I could have. He has friends who actually traveled to China or Taiwan this summer and others who attended Chinese summer camp at the Chinese American International School.

I did show him this amazing magic trick performed by the famous Liu Qian (I was pleased to have him explain some of the jokes to me, but the illusion is awesome even if you don’t understand Mandarin). He has read along with some stories from the fabulous Taiwanese reading program, 5Q Channel. One day I got him to order everyone’s lunch in Mandarin at the deli near his school where we often go for smoothies (which he also orders). If we had a television that picked up digital signals, I would definitely be letting him and his brother watch the Taiwan Public Television show, Fruity Pie, a wacky-looking program that other parents at his school speak highly of. I have quizzed him, over dinner, about the vocabulary printed on his placemats, purchased as a fund-raiser for Jose Ortega Elementary School. I am pleased to say that judging by his lack of derision, my own Mandarin pronunciation must have improved somewhat.

He has written (minimally) in his Chinese journal that was sent home for the purpose, but I’m not good at pushing homework during the summer. Indeed, I worry that our relationship may would suffer irreparable damage without this all-important break in the nagging schedule! But I do strive for gentle encouragement.

I prefer the practical, real-world reinforcement of using a language as a means of practicing the language, thus the contrivance of getting smoothies but only if he orders them in Mandarin (and only because the deli worker can speak Mandarin!). When he learned about Chinese Chess, or Xiangqi, at school last year I agreed to buy a set for home if he could handle the transaction entirely in Chinese. He sailed through that one to the astonishment of the Chinatown shopkeeper. She asked me, in Mandarin, if I knew how to play. I answered with a dumb look, and she repeated the question in English.

“No,” I replied. “But he does.” (I learned later that this was a bit of a stretch.)

I probably get a little lazy because I know my son has already proven he has some facility with language. I am certain he will start school a little further behind in his Mandarin than he or I would like, but I am confident he’ll catch up pretty quickly. I do have some new school year resolutions such as obtaining more books in Chinese for our home and upping the Mandarin media quota for our sons. Next summer, I plan to try harder at getting them some practice (my preference would be for a few weeks abroad). And of course by then both of my children will have an incentive to speak Chinese to each other: their parents won’t know what they are saying!

Meanwhile, I’ll try to be gentle on both of us for letting his language practice lapse. It’s summer after all. He has gone to camp, taken swimming lessons, read a lot (in English…sigh, see my new-school-year resolution above), conducted science experiments and will visit his cousin and friends on a trip to Disneyland next week. We haven’t been wasting time. Maybe we’ll play lots of Chinese children’s songs in the car on our way to Southern California. There’s an idea!

I’m curious what others do to maintain their children’s language skills over the summer and how much teachers feel the students lose when they return from a summer of, more or less, English-only living.

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Ways of Speaking, Ways of Thinking

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

It has always seemed to me that once we start thinking in words, the shape of those words becomes the shape of our thoughts. More accurately, it is the language itself—how those words are put together and what they can convey—that shape our thinking. Following from this, it makes sense that different languages lend themselves more or less easily to different ways of thinking.

Stanford Psychologist Lera Boroditsky explores this very theory in a recent Wall Street Journal article, asserting that language itself influences culture. She backs up this theory with anecdotes from research, and her examples are fascinating.  What I find almost more interesting, however, is that many linguists have disregarded this theory, sometimes referred to as linguistic determinism, (though many believe that language’s effect on thought exists more on a continuum, which seems reasonable) for the last 40 or 50 years. None other than celebrated linguist Noam Chomsky asserts that all languages have a “universal grammar” and that each is, more or less, equal to the tasks for which human beings have created and used language. But decades of research, according to Boroditsky, have debunked this idea, and people are beginning to study, instead, just how language shapes the culture that creates it or, if you will, the culture it creates.

In his 2008 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell compares the counting system of English to that shared by certain Asian languages including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The Asian system is very regular and consistent: what we know in English as twelve translates literally into Mandarin as ten-two. Thirteen is “ten-three” and so on. Twenty-two is “two tens-two”—the value is inherent in the way the number is stated. When we say “twenty-two” in English our minds actually have to translate that word into the number value associated with it, and, although we soon come to do this with ease, our brains must still take an extra step to internalize the number value.

Is it any wonder that Asian children consistently outperform their peers in the U.S., France, Germany, England and other Western industrialized nations on mathematics exams? Of course one can argue that factors beyond language influence the scores, but the discrepancy, as reported in US News & World Report is so dramatic, and the language studies so compelling, it is hard to deny that the math engines built into these languages facilitate math learning to some extent.

Many of us have had the beautiful experience of learning an untranslatable word from a friend who speaks another language. Once we are able to get our heads around the concept signified by this foreign word—a concept our own language and culture has not formally recognized with language—we are thrilled. We haven’t simply learned a new word, we’ve learned something new and even somewhat mysterious (it can’t be translated after all) about the people who use that word.

My personal favorite, the Portuguese word saudade, can be described as something akin to the English word nostalgia, but without the gloppy sentimentality or, if I understand it right, quite the same flavor of melancholy. While saudade does convey longing for a past that can never return (as well as a future that will never happen or a present that is not turning out as one had hoped), acceptance of this reality is somehow built into the word. Saudade embodies all that is positive of a time or feeling that is no longer, while also deeply acknowledging the sadness of this truth. It can be found all over grave markers in Brazil, (and probably Portugal, too, but I’ve never walked through a Portuguese cemetery, so I don’t know). Brazilians even have an official day devoted to commemorating saudade (January 30). It’s hard to deny that this untranslatable word has an influence on the culture.

One day after school last spring, my son’s teacher sent him off with a string of Chinese that, by nature of the delivery, seemed important and meaningful.

“What did she say?” I asked my six-year-old.

“I can’t tell you” was his reply.

“You didn’t understand?”

“No, I understood, but I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Is it something you don’t want me to know about?” I pressed.

“No. It’s something good. I just don’t know how to say it in English.”

Perhaps as his abilities in both languages improve, once he learns more about nuance and increases his vocabulary, he can try to make me understand, just as my bilingual Brazilian friends have helped me with saudade. In the meantime, I will enjoy watching him learn how to speak–and to think–in more than one language.

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Posted in Brain, Chinese, Critical Thinking, Language Immersion, Mandarin, Math, Multilingual Education, Parents, Portuguese, Standardized Tests, Students, World Languages | 2 Comments »

Positive Immersion Experience Dissolves Parental Apprehension

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

“Really?”

“Why Chinese?”

“Do you speak Chinese?”

“How do you help him with his homework?”

“Do you plan to learn Chinese?”

“Are you worried about him learning the other subjects?”

“Were you nervous about sending him to kindergarten?”

These are the questions I get most often since we got word, a little over two years ago, that our son would be enrolled in a Mandarin immersion program. I was pleased to get the letter, but also a little nervous—as all parents are when contemplating sending their children to kindergarten—about all of these things.

The hardest one for me to answer is “Really?” especially when it is spoken with an air of judgment about it as if the questioner thinks I might be making a mistake. My inclination is to reply with “Of course, who wouldn’t want this opportunity for their kid?” But the truth is that all those other questions often bog parents down when they are considering immersion for their children, and the lack of answers leads many to stick with the comfortable option of putting their child in an English-only classroom.

Even before I had children I knew I wanted them to be multilingual, so when it came time to shop for kindergartens (the public schools where we live are selected by parents in a complicated lottery system), I toured immersion schools almost exclusively. I had thought I would go for a language that was more approachable considering my own background (I studied French, Spanish, and Italian in college), so I took a look at every Spanish immersion school in our district, and checked out the Chinese immersion programs mainly for comparison. On one of these tours, I fell in love with my sons’ school and thus embarked on the process of talking myself and their father into going for Mandarin, a language neither of us could speak, read, write, nor understand.

Not one word.

I explained to my son that when he went to kindergarten his teacher would speak Chinese and he wouldn’t understand her at first but would learn to after a while. He mulled it over for a few weeks then told me he thought he’d rather go to kindergarten in English.

“But you already know English,” I responded. “Won’t it be great to learn a whole new language, too?”

This prospect did excite him, and, to his credit, he was (and is) a very good sport. His brother, who will enter kindergarten next month, is thrilled that the day is finally coming where he will learn more than how to count to ten and say hello in Mandarin. I wouldn’t be surprised to find them chattering with each other by winter break while their helpless parents look on.

I also learned from parents who had gone before that it is important to let children know that though their teacher will never speak English to them, she or he can understand it. “She will answer in Chinese, but she’ll make sure you get what you need, especially if you’re hurt or sick or have an emergency.” Knowing that they understand this definitely eases all our minds.

Two years later, I know more Chinese than I did, and am far less intimidated by it. With two live-in tutors I may just learn some useful Mandarin after all. Most of their Chinese homework (so far) consists of writing characters, which is mercifully straightforward. The math curriculum is written in English, even though it is taught in Chinese at school. When students need help that parents can’t provide, they call on each other. Like the students in Speaking in Tongues, the majority of my older son’s classmates are reading in English and doing grade-level math just like their peers in English-only classrooms. They just happen to be learning a new language and sharing new cultural experiences at the same time.

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Welcome to the Speaking in Tongues Blog!

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Hello, Ni Hao, Hola, Bonjour, and greetings to all in whatever language(s) you speak or are learning. Welcome to the Speaking In Tongues blog! I am the mother of two kids learning Mandarin at a San Francisco public school. My older son—who already holds his own in casual conversation and gets compliments on his accent every time he speaks Mandarin—is about to start second grade, and his little brother will begin kindergarten in August. Being their mother has, of course, brought me amazing experiences every day since they were born, but the budding bilingualism is making things more interesting all the time. Their father and I speak no Chinese beyond what our older son has taught us (and he doesn’t hesitate to criticize our attempts at pronunciation), and since he learned to spell, our only recourse to private conversation in front of our children has been pig Latin.

The tables are about to turn!

When we decided to enroll our kids in a language immersion program, we just thought we were taking advantage of a wonderful opportunity. We didn’t realize until watching the premiere of Speaking in Tongues at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2009 that we were trailblazers on a controversial path.

I have always felt extremely fortunate to live in a city that has not only the political support to provide immersion options in public education but also the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity to support language acquisition outside the classroom. Parents in other parts of the country who want this opportunity for their children have a much harder road to travel. Still, more schools, both public and private, are taking advantage of parent interest in immersion and the brain’s remarkable ability to learn languages at an early age. Programs in languages as diverse as Navajo, Russian, Hebrew, Hawaiian, Arabic, Korean, and more are increasing in areas from New York City to the Navajo Nation.

As the popularity of early second-language instruction increases, anti-immigrant sentiment, the English-only movement, and measures such as the controversial Arizona law SB 1070 are also making regular headlines. It is unclear how immersion programs will ultimately be affected by the No Child Left Behind mandate and Race to the Top incentive program, and many parents, though excited about their children learning a second language, are understandably concerned that their learning and literacy in English and other core subjects may suffer as a result of the immersion environment.

In this blog we hope to explore the excitement and the controversy of immersion education and second language acquisition in children. We will write about research and politics, trends and tendencies. With guest bloggers and voices of experience throughout the language education community, we hope to stimulate conversation about this very important topic and to provide a forum for parents, teachers, students, administrators, politicians, psychologists and other experts in the field of early language acquisition to share their perspectives. We hope you will come here often to explore the world that is opening up as an unprecedented number of US schoolchildren are opening to the world by learning to communicate in a language other than English.

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