Taking Chinese in high school

[Anonymous]

Some of these posts are pretty ignorant.

The question about the student's ear is a good one, though. A lot of kids have trouble hearing and imitating the tones in the beginning and some even at advanced levels.

There's no Chinese alphabet. You memorize characters so if your child is visual it will help.

Chinese can be a good language choice if a child has dyslexia because the way the language is structured it is not an issue.

The classes are not full of native speakers. Tons of students who have not been previously exposed to the language.

I don't know if anyone brought up the usefulness of the language but China has become much more closed off and more aggressive quashing political dissent even when it comes to foreigners than it was a few years ago so that is something to keep in mind.

[Anonymous]

Chinese is a hard class, but a good teacher can make it very rewarding.

My son who has no Chinese heritage, is doing well, but he works hard at it.

The teacher mentioned that the students with a family background are better at speaking and understanding through listening. However, the non-native students are sometimes better at reading and writing.

[Anonymous]

Speaking the Chinese language in general is more important. Getting the tones correct is key. Saying the high tone instead of the low tone will change the meaning of a word. No one really reads and writes Chinese. Even in China, speaking the language and being able to verbally communicate is most important and impressive. Most in China who are working with American companies speak English.

[Anonymous]

My DS did 6 years of Chinese in MCPS MS/HS. He's now majoring in Chinese in college. No Chinese heritage. I've studied a bunch of tough languages, including Arabic and Russian. Chinese is at least as tough as those, and probably tougher. DS's classes had a lot of heritage speakers in the first few years but most gave it up by year 3 or 4. I think that makes the beginning even tougher, because some kids have a bit of a leg up. I would never advise Chinese as a throwaway class; we tried to talk our DS out of it but he had his mind made up and to our total shock, he stuck with it.

[Anonymous]

With ADHD, writing Chinese characters will be the biggest challenge. The strokes must be done in a specific order and the only way to learn them is through hardcore practice (writing them over and over and over).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Speaking the Chinese language in general is more important. Getting the tones correct is key. Saying the high tone instead of the low tone will change the meaning of a word. No one really reads and writes Chinese. Even in China, speaking the language and being able to verbally communicate is most important and impressive. Most in China who are working with American companies speak English.

"No one really reads and writes Chinese"
WTH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With ADHD, writing Chinese characters will be the biggest challenge. The strokes must be done in a specific order and the only way to learn them is through hardcore practice (writing them over and over and over).

DC never had a Chinese teacher who required hand written characters. You should know how to read and pronounce but you can type them out. Even if your child gets a teacher who requires writing your child could ask for an accommodation to type.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Speaking the Chinese language in general is more important. Getting the tones correct is key. Saying the high tone instead of the low tone will change the meaning of a word. No one really reads and writes Chinese. Even in China, speaking the language and being able to verbally communicate is most important and impressive. Most in China who are working with American companies speak English.

"No one really reads and writes Chinese"
WTH

I think they are confusing it with "no one but the Pope speaks in Latin"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of these posts are pretty ignorant.

The question about the student's ear is a good one, though. A lot of kids have trouble hearing and imitating the tones in the beginning and some even at advanced levels.

There's no Chinese alphabet. You memorize characters so if your child is visual it will help.

Chinese can be a good language choice if a child has dyslexia because the way the language is structured it is not an issue.

The classes are not full of native speakers. Tons of students who have not been previously exposed to the language.

I don't know if anyone brought up the usefulness of the language but China has become much more closed off and more aggressive quashing political dissent even when it comes to foreigners than it was a few years ago so that is something to keep in mind.

At Whitman they are, same for Russian and Japanese. It's designed that way specifically so those kids can benefit by doing well in challenging class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With ADHD, writing Chinese characters will be the biggest challenge. The strokes must be done in a specific order and the only way to learn them is through hardcore practice (writing them over and over and over).

DC never had a Chinese teacher who required hand written characters. You should know how to read and pronounce but you can type them out. Even if your child gets a teacher who requires writing your child could ask for an accommodation to type.

OP, typing out Chinese is not hard. You type out what you pronounce and it gives you a list of possible characters and you click to pick. Your child should do just fine with this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With ADHD, writing Chinese characters will be the biggest challenge. The strokes must be done in a specific order and the only way to learn them is through hardcore practice (writing them over and over and over).

DC never had a Chinese teacher who required hand written characters. You should know how to read and pronounce but you can type them out. Even if your child gets a teacher who requires writing your child could ask for an accommodation to type.

PP w/DS who did 6yrs of Chinese in MCPS: just sharing this for the record in case other parents are curious about Chinese in MCPS. My DS started pre-pandemic but his work was almost entirely hand-written characters. It's pretty minimal at the beginning but he filled notebooks with handwritten classwork and homework. He has incredibly messy/childlike writing in English but his Chinese writing always looked like works of art to me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With ADHD, writing Chinese characters will be the biggest challenge. The strokes must be done in a specific order and the only way to learn them is through hardcore practice (writing them over and over and over).

DC never had a Chinese teacher who required hand written characters. You should know how to read and pronounce but you can type them out. Even if your child gets a teacher who requires writing your child could ask for an accommodation to type.

PP w/DS who did 6yrs of Chinese in MCPS: just sharing this for the record in case other parents are curious about Chinese in MCPS. My DS started pre-pandemic but his work was almost entirely hand-written characters. It's pretty minimal at the beginning but he filled notebooks with handwritten classwork and homework. He has incredibly messy/childlike writing in English but his Chinese writing always looked like works of art to me!

Was it required or optional? Most teachers we know do not require hand writing characters but some kids like to do it. With ADHD you could also ask for accommodations to type everything anyway.

[Anonymous]

Again, not a class I would let my kid take. Sooo not important in this economy. Take Latin which is the root of many languages, helps with spelling/English language and will actually be impressive to colleges and employers. U.S. immigration generally favors and is extremely generous regarding Chinese immigrants, so we already have a ton of people FROM the country who live here and speak the language. There is absolutely no advantage to taking it and no-one will be the least bit impressed.

Also, not sure why my comment on this issue keep getting deleted - some people are incredibly sensitive. If you told me you wanted to learn Swahili, I would also tell you similar. I work for a well known international corporation and being fluent in Chinese gets you no brownie points. I'm advising you not to waste your time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Chinese is hard and like PP, it’s a tonal language. By HS, it’s harder to learn and differentiate the tones. Chinese is also character based and the written language is challenging. Also, by HS, most students are native speakers. The teacher favors native speakers to the point where she basically makes it so challenging that most non-native speaker just drop out. She takes pride in teaching to native speakers. Honestly, what’s the point in teaching native speakers! The sign of a great teacher is someone who can teach the language to a non native speaker and have them excel. This is at a W school.

🤡

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, not a class I would let my kid take. Sooo not important in this economy. Take Latin which is the root of many languages, helps with spelling/English language and will actually be impressive to colleges and employers. U.S. immigration generally favors and is extremely generous regarding Chinese immigrants, so we already have a ton of people FROM the country who live here and speak the language. There is absolutely no advantage to taking it and no-one will be the least bit impressed.

Also, not sure why my comment on this issue keep getting deleted - some people are incredibly sensitive. If you told me you wanted to learn Swahili, I would also tell you similar. I work for a well known international corporation and being fluent in Chinese gets you no brownie points. I'm advising you not to waste your time.

Racist baffoon