Posts Tagged ‘Chinese’

A Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Good day faithful readers and newcomers, too.  I haven’t been posting as often as I’d like lately because I’ve been working behind the scenes to make connections so that this blog remains meaningful and reaches more people.  To that end, I am pleased to host this month’s blogging carnival on bilingualism!

If you’ve never heard of (been to?) a blogging carnival, allow me to explain.  It’s sort of a curated post compiled of teasers and intros to the posts of other bloggers writing on a topic related to that of the host blog.  In this case, all of the featured bloggers are parents of bilingual children.  Their kids have become bilingual (and in several cases trilingual and beyond!) in a variety of languages and due to a variety of circumstances.  Each of their posts are interesting, entertaining or useful, and they speak to the joys and challenges of raising kids in multilingual and multicultural environments.

Many thanks to Letizia Quaranta of Bilingual for Fun for establishing this carnival and for all the work she does to help make multilingualism a reality for younger generations!

Now, on to the carnival!

Tamara of Non-native Bilingualism, who is raising her daughter in German in the U.S., shares an idea with us that is not specifically language-related but which she hopes will make a difference in her daughter’s future as a global citizen with A Very Very Un-birthday in the Making.

Corey at Multilingual Living has offered 9 Ways to Keep Language Learning Going. These tips to keep language learning casual and fun have even inspired my family to follow her lead and start learning Spanish together!

Jan at Babelkid has a humorous story about his children’s code-switching in a song I will henceforth remember  as “Incy Wincy Ankaboot.” He also has a lovely “Family Language Diagram” visually showing  who speaks what to whom in their quadrilingual (!) family.

“Solnushka” of Verbosity writes about her realization that when a toddler begins trying out new vocabulary in one of his two home languages it becomes very clear which parent he is imitating in On Ps and Qs.

Sarah at Bringing up Baby Bilingual writes on the evaporation of her non-native OPOL insecurities as she looks forward to baby number two in On Second Languages and Second Babies.

Santi of Trilingual writes about her persistence in sharing her native Indonesian (both speaking and literacy) with her kids who have always gone to school in French while also learning the local language (which has been Dutch, German and now English!) in Indonesian Literacy in a French and English Environment: Doable and Fun!

At Mummy do That! we get to share a mother’s delight when her heretofore English-insistent daughter marches into a friend’s home and starts speaking German like a native in Language Leaps.

Lalou of Laloulah, who blogs about raising her sons in French and German in Australia, writes about how her boys’ enthusiasm for French after attending one-day of French school derailed their commitment to speak only German in the morning in Just Your Typical Day.

Maria of Polyglot Tots, who has three trilingual children of her own, writes about sharing Spanish, English, and French with the two toddlers who come to her for daycare in her Polyglot Tots Experiment Update.

Rea from Not So Spanish imagines the musings of her Spanish husband and their bilingual two-year-old regarding the couple’s search for a name (traditional Spanish versus “hippy nature thing”) for their second child in Dancing with Dump Trucks.

Smashed Pea of Intrepidly Bilingual shares her frustrations over her daughter’s determination to keep her younger brother from speaking German–at least in front of Mom–in English it is. Again.

Mama Poekie at Authentic Parenting gives a very helpful review of several French children’s books in her post French Books for Toddlers, and Marjorie Coughlan of Paper Tigers weighs the pros and cons of bilingual books (for which this site is an incredible resource!) in Bilingual Children’s Books – Good or Bad? And by the way, I have reviewed many multicultural childrens’ and young adult books for this not-for-profit site dedicated to multicultural children’s literature.

Finally, my good friend Beth Weise of the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council writes about her first-ever experience making glutinous rice balls for the Chinese New Year festival at her daughters’ (and my sons’) school in Glutinous Rice Balls at 7 AM. It’s a timely post as that time of year is upon us once again. With the new moon on February 2, we usher in The Year of the Rabbit, 4079. Xin nian kuai le, and happy reading!

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Posted in Blogging Carnival | 20 Comments »

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 »

Speaking in Tongues: A Film. A Challenge.

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

The following is a guest blog by Homa S. Tavangar, author of Growing up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World. Look for a review of her book on this blog soon.

With all the talk of “Restoring Honor” and taking back our country, I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes in America that feel so threatening to some. We are living through revolutions in just about every sphere of life. Some revolutions can be terrific. Like the American Revolution. Or the technological revolution that enabled us to throw out our bulky typewriters for increasingly thin, fast and powerful computers. A revolution in learning and human relations needs to accompany the technology shift – and this is where it can get tricky. At a time when national borders mean less and less, and cultures interact on a daily basis, Americans can do better than complete their education as monolinguals with a weak grasp of geography, math, or how to interact across cultural lines.

Among the key skills for success in the 21st Century workforce is fluency in at least a second language. Many disagree with me on this point. Thirty-one U.S. states have passed “English-only” initiatives, in order to not be required to translate official documents and services. School districts (including where I live) have dropped foreign language instruction in elementary school and/or middle school due to budget shortfalls or because the results aren’t demonstrated on standardized tests. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security is clamoring for Americans fluent in the languages of other countries to aid intelligence work, the Department of Defense is pouring money into language programs, businesses are more likely to hire a bi-lingual candidate when offered a choice, and research (as well as common sense) indicates the younger the learner, the easier it is to acquire an additional language.

Yet, for many Americans, the idea of foreign language immersion falls somewhere between threatening and mysterious. Amidst this backdrop I was delighted to watch the new documentary film Speaking in Tongues, by veteran filmmakers Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider. The film humanizes the difficulties and triumphs of language learning by following four diverse students and their families. As we get to know the children we see the impact of speaking more than one language, from becoming closer to one’s heritage and the older generation that holds the traditions, to taking opportunities to live and travel abroad, to offering a chance to break out of a cycle of poverty.

The medium of film tells a story that no academic study could convey. I found myself rooting for Durrell, an African-American boy living in public housing who starts Kindergarten immersed in a Chinese classroom. And also for Jason, a Mexican-American boy, whose parents are not literate in any language, but who develops proper Spanish literacy while mastering English. Their determination through substantive lessons in Chinese or Spanish actually serves as their ticket to potential success in mainstream America – and beyond.

The filmmakers are clearly committed to this ideal. “We have seen the amazing transformation through language in our own home. Our sons are in their fourth and eighth year in a Chinese immersion program. They are equally comfortable in both English and Chinese” explains Ms. Jarmel. “As parents and as filmmakers, we wanted to pose the question: ‘In today’s world, is knowing English enough?’ and we invite the film’s audience to consider the answers with us and one another.”

Watching the film helped me better envision what an immersion classroom looks like, how a family can support the intellectual (and at times emotional) challenge their child is taking on, how a global mindset can be developed for a child from any economic condition, and more generally, how language can unite diverse peoples.

Speaking in Tongues is streaming with Spanish or Chinese subtitles on PBS Video (click here to watch it now) and is the first program to be carried in three languages (Spanish, Chinese, English) on the PBS video portal.  The film also has recently been broadcast on PBS and other cable TV stations throughout the United States. Check the film’s website here for schedules. If you don’t find your city on the schedule, call your PBS affiliate and ask for it. The website also offers information if you’d like to host a screening and community discussion, and more resources for language learning and global thinking.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the film, and your community’s experience on this issue, whether it’s with children learning a second language through immersion or simply dabbling, or the response to immigrant English language learners. Are you from one of the English-only states? How has this played out in practice? How have school budget pressures impacted programs? If school leaders don’t speak a second language is this affecting the way they decide on programs?

Whatever your experiences with language learning – keep talking! It will translate into a better community, and might even stir a revolution.

—-
Homa Sabet Tavangar is the author of Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World, hailed a “Best New Parenting Book” by Scholastic Parent + Child, and a Best Education Book of the Decade. Between conversations with grandparents, Saturday school, high school courses, and their year-long AFS exchange student “sister,” her three daughters are learning how to order cupcakes in Persian, Spanish, French and Chinese.

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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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Posted in Chinese, Mandarin, Multilingual Education | 5 Comments »

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 »

Lessons from Utah: How a ‘Red State’ is Building Thriving Language Immersion Programs

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

The following is part 1 of an email interview with Gregg Roberts, World Languages & Dual Immersion Specialist for the Utah State Office of Education.  Despite having designated English as the official language of the state and traditionally conservative politics, Utah has become a leader in language immersion education.  Roberts shares his insights and perspectives with us here.

In the conservative Salt Lake City newspaper, Deseret News you were recently quoted as saying “Our main goal is to mainstream immersion…to make that option available to all parents.” How would you characterize the overall reaction of parents and other Utah citizens to the news that Utah plans to “mainstream immersion”?

For the most part I would say it has been very enthusiastically received, especially in the business community, the state legislature, the educational establishment and amongst younger parents. The opposition is coming from the older generation, the less educated populace, and teacher unions who are worried about the jobs of underperforming monolingual teachers.

How long has elementary school language immersion been happening in Utah and what does the future hold for immersion education there?

The first elementary Spanish immersion programs in Utah began back in the early eighties. However, there has not been much growth until the State Legislature created the Utah Dual Immersion program in 2008 with Senate Bill 41. There will be an additional 14 new programs this year bringing the total to 51 for the 2010-11 school year. Our goal is to have 100 programs in five different languages by the 2014-15 school year, so we will need to add 12-14 programs each year to stay on pace. Utah currently has programs in Chinese, French, and Spanish, and will add German in 2011 and Russian in 2012.

Has Speaking in Tongues been useful in helping citizens to understand the goals and challenges of immersion education?

Speaking in Tongues has been extremely useful particularly with business, government and education leaders. We found the Chinese examples particularly useful, and worked with Patchworks Films on a special short video, Inside Immersion: A Chinese Example. However, one must remember that the politics in Utah are counter to one of the principal arguments in the film, English Only, which become problematic for us in Utah. The official language of the State of Utah is English; paradoxically immersion programs are flourishing all over this conservative state. In my opinion, Immersion education should NOT be linked to English only and immigration. Dual Immersion in Utah is NOT a red issue or a blue issue; it’s a purple issue meaning that it should be a non-partisan issue. It’s all about preparing our students for the 21st Century and not continuing to live in the 20th. Finally, in Utah, giving the gift of a second language to a child is all about economics!

What were the motivating factors prompting Utah’s decision to launch so many new immersion programs at one time?

Economic, Economic, Economic! Utah is a small state, so for our economic survival and the national security of our country we MUST educate students who are multilingual. In these tough budget times, the only reason why the State Legislature continues to fund this program, while all others have been cut or reduced, is because this program is tied directly to the future economic development of Utah.

What about the practical struggles of implementing these programs, for instance, how did you find so many teachers so quickly?

Yes, there have been struggles in finding qualified teachers. However, Utah has the highest percentage of native English speakers who can speak a second language so we already had some highly trained elementary teachers who were highly proficient in the immersion language. In addition, Utah has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with China, Spain, Mexico, France, and Taiwan, and these agreements are currently providing about 30 highly skilled elementary International Guest Teachers. In addition, Utah has two renowned universities, University of Utah and Brigham Young University, which are starting to produce elementary teachers who are either native speakers or highly proficient in the target language. Finally the Utah State Office of Education has created an outstanding Alternative Routes to Licensure (ARL) program that has produced some excellent native speaking or highly proficient in the target language teachers who have come from other professions.

What type of choice do parents have in selecting immersion (or not) for their children?

Utah is an open enrollment state, which means parents can chose the school their child attends. All of our Dual Immersion programs are strands that exist in the same school as traditional education since choice in education is extremely important in Utah. Each district participating in the program is permitted to set their enrollment policy and it differs from district to district. However, districts have been great about opening more Dual Immersion programs as the demand increases, thus it is all about meeting the needs of parents and students.

Utah is the first in the nation to develop standardized immersion curriculum. What sort of expertise was required for this curriculum development? How has it been received? Do you feel it could be improved?

Utah has brought in some of the finest immersion experts in the country to work hand-in-hand with our highly skilled curriculum development team. Please remember that the main premise of immersion education is to teach the core content areas through the medium of another language. Thus, our state-approved curriculum aligned to the Utah State Core has been warmly received. In addition, we have also created an enhanced literacy strand in each immersion language. Of course we feel our curriculum can always be improved and we are proud to be releasing our new and improved integrated curriculum (Science and Social Studies) in Chinese, French, and Spanish this year. Utah has agreed to move to the Common Core Standards so this year we will be working on aligning our Math and Language Arts curriculum to the Common Core.

I noticed that your programs are designed for 50/50 immersion meaning that students will spend half their day in English instruction and half their day in the target language. In other programs, such as San Francisco’s public schools, the model is to begin with 80-90% of a child’s instruction in the target language and gradually increase the amount of English instruction time as the children age. How will Utah’s programs change for the students from year to year, and what informed the decision to do 50/50 rather than 90/10 or 80/20?

I personally abhor anything but a 50/50 model for instructional and political reasons! In Utah we use a balanced two teacher model to clearly respect the separation of languages. In addition, our model is a K-12 model where students receive 50/50 instruction grades 1-6, two content course in the target language in grades 7-9, take the AP exam in grade 9, then enroll in university 300-level language courses in grades 10-12. Our goal when these students graduate from high school is to hand them off to universities or the workforce at the advanced level of proficiency in speaking, listening, reading and writing.

In June, representatives from Arizona, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, and North and South Carolina dropped in to take a peek at the state’s program. How do you feel about being a role model for immersion programs across the country?

We feel very honored and fortunate. I strongly believe if Utah can do this, so can (some) other states. Of course, all politics being local, and yes there are plenty of politics in immersion education, they may need to tweak our model to meet their own unique landscape.

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Posted in Chinese, Guest Blogs, Language Immersion, Multilingual Education, Parents, World Languages | No Comments »