Yu Ying - Do/Can Non-Native Kids Actually SPEAK Chinese?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi from Hong Kong where our kids attend an American-curriculum international school with daily Mandarin (despite Hong Kong being a predominantly Cantonese speaking city). Thought I’d mention some of our experiences as they may be relevant.

Kids have daily Chinese lessons at our school and are divided into two sections: “Mandarin near native (MNN)” speakers and "Mandarin as a second language(MSL)“. Mandarin is required from K-4 through Grade 5, and after that becomes an elective class. As the kids get into high school they are streamed into different sections of MNN or MSL or 1-2-3-4-5 (and higher for the MNN). MNN kids are predominantly two-parent Mandarin or Cantonese speaking households or one-parent Mandarin speaking (with outside tutors) and MSL are two-parent English speakers.

The “average” kids in the Native Speaker stream (MNN 3) are considered ready for AP Mandarin tests as early as their freshman year in high school, though they usually take the test much later. The MSL kids in the top two streams also have a very high pass rate for the AP Mandarin test, though they usually don’t get to that level of proficiency until their Junior or Senior years. I don’t know if AP Mandarin would be considered ‘fluency’ but it’s a baseline that might compare with Yu Ying once they get to that level.

Anecdotally, there was a family who was in Hong Kong for four years and they just moved to the American School in Paris. I asked them the other day how the switch was going from Mandarin to French and they said “we’ve learned more French in one year than we did with four years of Mandarin”. I asked if why and they said “With French they can just ‘sound it out’ if they don’t quite get it, and many of the words are similar enough to English spellings that they can get the gist. With Mandarin it is binary—right or wrong—you get it or you are just staring at the page clueless.

Thanks a lot for this contribution. I've never spoken to a YY parent or admin who has a good feel for the dialect nexus your intl school builds on. Few understand that DC dialect-speaking households are an accessible resource for Mandarin instruction. On the YY parent organization, I once advocated for a pay to play after-school Mandarin immersion program dialect-speaking DC kids would have free access to (with a view to raising speaking standards for all), but there wasn't any interest.

We're dialect speakers who gave up on YY because although it was a happy school, nobody in charge was connecting the spoken Chinese foundational dots. At our kids' weekend Cantonese program in MD, students transition from Cantonese to Mandarin through the MS grades. Grads generally go on to score high on AP Mandarin before senior year in HS, and/or Higher Level IB Diploma Chinese (with 6s or 7s) junior or senior year. This is the course sequencing you're laying out from 12,000 miles away.

Without a MNN type track here in DC public, I can't see how a serious Chinese studies program could emerge at DCI. The school could only support such a track if they made a point of trying to attract and retain native speaking peers, or at least to involve them somehow outside their lottery limitations.

[Anonymous]

The obvious solution is for DCI to become the first hybrid DCPS-DC Charter program The DCI MS-HS could then offer a bona fide advanced track for each of the several languages taught.

The advanced language track would be test-in for students from Spanish/French/Chinese dominant households who are also bi-literate, with the most advanced language students from DCI feeders welcome to get on it. The current DCI "advanced language tracks" would become the "regular tracks," with beginning language tracks still offered below that.

None of this will happen in a blue moon, but it should.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC resident and parent who taught in an international school in Singapore before coming here.

I really wish that DC public schools would get serious about language immersion for languages other than Spanish or throw in the towel.

YuYing, the Chinese immersion program without a Chinese-speaking head or kids. Good Lord, what a joke. You can say it in one post, or 14 pages worth, one thread or many.

Do most immersion program in this country have large numbers of kids who speak the target language at home?

As an English speaking parent, it wouldn't occur to me to put my kid in an ESL class. I don't see how that would benefit my child. Why would a Chinese speaking parent choose to put their kid in an environment that is designed for students who don't speak a word? If you could do a true 2 way system, like DC Bilingual, where a significant portion of the class spoke Chinese, I'd feel differently, but I don't think there are enough Chinese families to make that possible in a system that doesn't allow admissions preference. The only way you'd get a class that was 1/4 Chinese, for example, would be if 1/4 of the applicants were Chinese, and that seems unlikely.

[Anonymous]

Public language immersion programs are set up in different ways in different US cities. DC doesn't seem to try attract or accommodate native speakers to programs that don't teach Spanish.

One of my cousins sends his children to a public immersion program in Northern Cal with three different admissions lotteries: one for kids who don't speak Chinese at home, one for kids who speak any Chinese dialect but Mandarin at home, and one kids from Mandarin dominant homes. Each lottery provides one-third of the students. Another cousins sends her children to the D'Avila School in San Fran where all students are put in 50% immersion Cantonese through 5th grade. Cantonese is used to attract native speakers, around 3/4 of whom are Cantonese or Toisanese (sub-dialect of Cantonese) speakers in the Bay Area, to promote high standards for speaking. The D'Avila students transition from Cantonese to Mandarin in MS, with most going on to knock it out of the park on standardized HS Chinese exams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Public language immersion programs are set up in different ways in different US cities. DC doesn't seem to try attract or accommodate native speakers to programs that don't teach Spanish.

One of my cousins sends his children to a public immersion program in Northern Cal with three different admissions lotteries: one for kids who don't speak Chinese at home, one for kids who speak any Chinese dialect but Mandarin at home, and one kids from Mandarin dominant homes. Each lottery provides one-third of the students. Another cousins sends her children to the D'Avila School in San Fran where all students are put in 50% immersion Cantonese through 5th grade. Cantonese is used to attract native speakers, around 3/4 of whom are Cantonese or Toisanese (sub-dialect of Cantonese) speakers in the Bay Area, to promote high standards for speaking. The D'Avila students transition from Cantonese to Mandarin in MS, with most going on to knock it out of the park on standardized HS Chinese exams.

DCPS ONLY has immersion studies in spanish, and they absolutely balance the classes with native Spanish and English teachers. I

Charter schools, which are newer, can't and don't.

LAMB did balance classes by language for several years (including when my kids started there) by holding a Spanish and English lottery, and allocating seats i each class equally. They intentionally looking at how Oyster had done it and copying the process.

That continued until enough English-dominant people who couldn't get in complained that it wasn't allowed under the charter law, and the charter board and its lawyers agreed. LAMB stopped the practice and no one has challenged the legal ruling since.

[Anonymous]

Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

[Anonymous]

The better comparator than Mundo Verde or LAMB would be Tyler on the Hill with few Spanish speakers at entry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The better comparator than Mundo Verde or LAMB would be Tyler on the Hill with few Spanish speakers at entry.

Sort of. Tyler has long done outreach to Latinos around the Hill to try to draw them in. They've had an unofficial Spanish dominant lottery for years, an official one for two years, and at least one native speaking admin.

You don't have to look as far as Cal to find higher standards and better outputs for spoken Chinese than at YY. Students in the Potomac and College Gardens ES immersion programs, and the Herbert Hoover MS partial immersion program, in MoCo are expected to speak pretty well. Their admins and Chinese teachers are mostly ABCs with MD teaching certifications who speak a regional dialect and Mandarin. The programs offer dialect transition support to native speakers. Their admins do outreach in the local dialect-speaking communities and their FARMs students qualify for special support (after-school tutoring, summer camps, free Mandarin DVDs etc.). The strongest MoCo Chinese immersion students normally go on to Higher Level IBD Chinese studies at Richard Montgomery, Bethesda Chevy Chase or Rockville high schools.

[Anonymous]

Native Chinese speakers want to get rid of AA ED, tracking to segregate AA students away from Chinese-American students, and preferential admissions and free aftercare for Chinese-American students. Poster who revealed that Chinese view YY as a school for black children reveal racism that YY bashers should unpack and deal with rather than lash out on DCUM. As a taxpayer, I would rather not fund a variety of PCS and DCPS iniatiatives, including PK4 in wealthy neighborhoods whose parents can afford childcare (like some of PP). YY parents are generally happy and the PCSB evaluates Mandarin with Mandarin auditor. There are no AP, IB scores available yet - so perhaps we should check our privledge for a few years and see what the data tells us. Heritage speakers routinely bash MoCo programs, even though when you look at the upper high school levels it's all native speakers due to backfilling. However, public schools are supposed to reflect the demographics of the school populous not function as de facto private schools for a minority of students.

[Anonymous]

Total BS. I just went through the last half dozen pages. Nobody here has advocated getting rid of "AA ED" or introducing free after-care for ABC kids. One PP described suggesting "pay to play" immersion after-care to the YY PA to raise standards for speaking, a fine creaetive idea.

Public schools are supposed to serve the students residing in their catchment areas with academics that will enable our US economy to compete with those of competitor nations in a new century, as it happens, the CENTURY OF THE RISING CHINA. People like you would rather cut off their noses to spite your faces than face the future head on.

Yea, let's wait to see what the IBD data coming out of DCI tells us. As somebody who was raised bilingual, earned the IB Diploma as a teen, and went on to an Ivy on massive fi aid, I'm not seeing success in the cards for a good decade. Yet another pointless YY thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Native Chinese speakers want to get rid of AA ED, tracking to segregate AA students away from Chinese-American students, and preferential admissions and free aftercare for Chinese-American students. Poster who revealed that Chinese view YY as a school for black children reveal racism that YY bashers should unpack and deal with rather than lash out on DCUM. As a taxpayer, I would rather not fund a variety of PCS and DCPS iniatiatives, including PK4 in wealthy neighborhoods whose parents can afford childcare (like some of PP). YY parents are generally happy and the PCSB evaluates Mandarin with Mandarin auditor. There are no AP, IB scores available yet - so perhaps we should check our privledge for a few years and see what the data tells us. Heritage speakers routinely bash MoCo programs, even though when you look at the upper high school levels it's all native speakers due to backfilling. However, public schools are supposed to reflect the demographics of the school populous not function as de facto private schools for a minority of students.

Auditor is a joke, with the joke is on the parents who don't speak Chinese and can't hear the poor results. Auditor is paid by PCSB to report that the kids speak acceptable Mandarin. Plumb contract for auditor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

They are enrolled at a higher proportion in Thomson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

They are enrolled at a higher proportion in Thomson.

Who is they? Chinese speaking 3 year olds?

Given that Thomson can offer neighborhood preference, that isn't really surprising is it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but the Spanish immersion charters still attract a good many native speaking students, and strive to meet their particular academic needs. The Mundo Verde student body is thought to be at least one quarter native speakers. YY has never had more than 1 or 2 kids per grade who are truly native speakers (equally at home with Chinese and English, or speaking more Chinese than English), literally a handful of more than 500 students.

But that's due to the demographics of DC. How many Chinese speaking 3 year olds are there in DC?

There are some (one in my house) but their parents rarely put in for the YY lottery.

Sure, YY parents (at least 98% of whom aren't fluent in any dialect of Chinese) who stay with the program are happy. But many have real concerns about the way DCI is shaping up. They should be concerned. There's only so much you can do with MS partial language immersion without any native speakers. There isn't a single one at DCI on a Chinese track. Also, there is effectively no academic tracking in science, social studies or English in a school with a high needs mostly Latino population.