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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^S/he's not wrong.

We hosted Chinese au pairs for years AND paid for 2 summers at a big 2-week immersion Concordia Camp. We have since moved on from YuYing to a private w/a strong Chinese program.

To my knowledge, we were the only YuYing families at ANY Chinese Concordia camp both summers - they offer 1,2 and 4-week Mandarin immersion camps. PLENTY OF OTHER families could have hosted au pairs and/or paid for the camp without difficulty.

Guess what? Other high SES families in the school community paid for summer vacations to Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean etc. along with pricey enrichment camps running them more. At the camp, we met many other public Chinese immersion kids/families from all around the US + Canada. The campers included a couple kids in DC public schools but not at YuYing. They spoke excellent Mandarin (unlike DS)...

This poster seems to focus exclusively on learning Chinese. International travel will teach your kid more than Chinese. What a boring, one track mind child you must have!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Couldn't disagree more. PP made an obvious point. Kids who need remedial education/intensive ELL support don't belong in the same middle school humanities classes as kids who are really advanced in ELA. This is a real problem all over the place. No wonder suburban parents in this Metro area in school catchment areas with high numbers of ELLs seek out middle school GT programs. Even Stuart Hobson has offered honors English for the last few years to provide appropriate differentiation. DCI doesn't and should.

There's this thing called research where people do studies. They will tell you that you are dead wrong.

I wonder, if your child was the one with a condition that threatened his quality of life (let's say cancer instead of poverty, both devasting conditions that no one chooses). Would you be OK if your doctor crowd sourced treatment on DCUM instead of doing what research shows to be the best thing? No, then don' offer uninformed opinions, please.

Here's an "uniformed opinion" for you. Grew up in public housing in MA. Gained from test prep for Boston Latin entrance exam provided by a non-profit. Attended Latin and went on to an Ivy and JD. Many former ES school classmates ended up on welfare or in prison. Hate to break it to you, but academic tracking and test-in GT programs can work very well, particularly for kids from low SES backgrounds like myself. Not taking language immersion seriously enough to supplement doesn't work so well. But hey, if the YY and DCI parents don't want to knock themselves out on the Chinese, that's their call. At least they're starting to admit that Mandarin isn't all that important to them. My respect is for the families who go the extra mile for the Chinese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Couldn't disagree more. PP made an obvious point. Kids who need remedial education/intensive ELL support don't belong in the same middle school humanities classes as kids who are really advanced in ELA. This is a real problem all over the place. No wonder suburban parents in this Metro area in school catchment areas with high numbers of ELLs seek out middle school GT programs. Even Stuart Hobson has offered honors English for the last few years to provide appropriate differentiation. DCI doesn't and should.

There's this thing called research where people do studies. They will tell you that you are dead wrong.

I wonder, if your child was the one with a condition that threatened his quality of life (let's say cancer instead of poverty, both devasting conditions that no one chooses). Would you be OK if your doctor crowd sourced treatment on DCUM instead of doing what research shows to be the best thing? No, then don' offer uninformed opinions, please.

Here's an "uniformed opinion" for you. Grew up in public housing in MA. Gained from test prep for Boston Latin entrance exam provided by a non-profit. Attended Latin and went on to an Ivy and JD. Many former ES school classmates ended up on welfare or in prison. Hate to break it to you, but academic tracking and test-in GT programs can work very well, particularly for kids from low SES backgrounds like myself. Not taking language immersion seriously enough to supplement doesn't work so well. But hey, if the YY and DCI parents don't want to knock themselves out on the Chinese, that's their call. At least they're starting to admit that Mandarin isn't all that important to them. My respect is for the families who go the extra mile for the Chinese.

This would be an anecdote, not an opinion, but it seems to support the idea that kids can go to school with low income kids, and come out of the experience with strong skills.

[Anonymous]

You've got to be upper middle-class by background to argue this point. Of course some SES kids are capable of keeping up with affluent classmates academically, not the majority but a few. Nose to the grindstone low SES East Asian immigrant children generally are. This is the main reason YY and DCI don't work for almost all the DC families who speak Chinese dialects at home. They can't take YY or DCI seriously. Give it a rest why don't you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one actually compares Sela with the DCI feeders. And last I heard, they arent doing full immersion anymore.

All of the other feeders do it.

Either someone thinks they're doing bilingual English/Hebrew meetings at a DCI feeder, or the person I replied to was actually comparing Sela and Yu Ying.

Sela is separate from the DCI feeders.

Among the DCI feeders, only YyY does not routinely communicate with its extended school community in two languages.

DCI communicates with its parents and prospective parents in English. DCI is also very clear that DCI is not an immersion school, so perhaps they think that makes it ok.

Wait. DCI isn't a language immersion school? Then what is it, and what's the point?

It is a IB school with advanced language studies (or beginner language, if you are entering new at 6th or 9th).

Students take a minimum of 2 classes in their target language in middle school (social studies + their language) and sometimes an elective will be in their language if the teacher is fluent in their target language -- for the other students that elective will be in English.

It's not like the feeders which teach everything in the target language, depending on the day or the week. But that immersion approach ends for all the students after 5th grade.

This shouldn't come as a surprise -- read their charter application and their website.

Sounds great but "advanced language studies" doesn't do it for me when I speak in good Mandarin to neighborhood DCI 8th graders. They've been studying Chinese via 50% immersion since age 5 or 6 yet can't speak or understand nearly as well as my own 5 year old. To my ear, the ""advanced" kids sound like beginners. YY parents like to say, oh the fluency issues will get sorted out once the kids who started in full immersion PreS3 make it to DCI, or once the kids grow up and go live in China. Right.

Can you please send your social media account name? I'm concerned about this as well...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^S/he's not wrong.

We hosted Chinese au pairs for years AND paid for 2 summers at a big 2-week immersion Concordia Camp. We have since moved on from YuYing to a private w/a strong Chinese program.

To my knowledge, we were the only YuYing families at ANY Chinese Concordia camp both summers - they offer 1,2 and 4-week Mandarin immersion camps. PLENTY OF OTHER families could have hosted au pairs and/or paid for the camp without difficulty.

Guess what? Other high SES families in the school community paid for summer vacations to Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean etc. along with pricey enrichment camps running them more. At the camp, we met many other public Chinese immersion kids/families from all around the US + Canada. The campers included a couple kids in DC public schools but not at YuYing. They spoke excellent Mandarin (unlike DS)...

What private school please??? I'd like to wait as long as possible before moving out of the DMV, but besides Mandarin, YY does not use China/Singapore Math methods that are my priority.

[Anonymous]

Not the poster you're responding to, but we're at Sidwell and their MS and HS Chinese program is decent. Unfortunately, if you really want serious Mandarin instruction in this area, you have to look to MoCo public schools in the Rockville and Bethesda areas. That's where the dialect speakers congregate, and parents don't accuse you of being narrow or a Tiger Parent for going all out to ensure that the kids can really speak (e.g. sending them to Concordia camps in the summers from the upper elementary grades). Only MoCo gets a bunch of HS kids to the point where they score 6s and 7s on Intl Bacc Higher Level Chinese/Mandarin.

[Anonymous]

I'm just curious if anyone else is noticing that you're ability to tell the difference between the sock puppet posters (the ones who try to look like different people agreeing with others) and the real agree-ers/dissent-ers is getting faster and faster?

I think there are valid points on all sides, so this isn't about reducing one view to "troll" because I disagree. But there are some serious sockpuppets on here, and on a thread with 26 pages it's good to be able to spot them and skip their posts as quickly as possible...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not the poster you're responding to, but we're at Sidwell and their MS and HS Chinese program is decent. Unfortunately, if you really want serious Mandarin instruction in this area, you have to look to MoCo public schools in the Rockville and Bethesda areas. That's where the dialect speakers congregate, and parents don't accuse you of being narrow or a Tiger Parent for going all out to ensure that the kids can really speak (e.g. sending them to Concordia camps in the summers from the upper elementary grades). Only MoCo gets a bunch of HS kids to the point where they score 6s and 7s on Intl Bacc Higher Level Chinese/Mandarin.

Thank you very very much... Golden info and much appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Not sure how golden the info is. Moving to MoCo or paying for Sidwell. No way. DCI and a tutor will do it for most.

[Anonymous]

Don’t worry too much about YY and their Chinese instruction. YY harder to get into than Sidwell.

[Anonymous]

It's golden for me since i just moved back to the area from Georgia, where my son was in mandarin immersion since 12 months old.
I had no clue there was a strong Chinese community in MoCo, and you can test in to mandarin programs... YY school secretary told me they allow noone to test in for the spots lost inupper grades, and DCI spots are almost all reserved for feeder school students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t worry too much about YY and their Chinese instruction. YY harder to get into than Sidwell.

You're absolutely right. I'm going with Mindbloom for a couple years and then probably move to minnesota or west coast... It would be immoral to do YY just for 2 years of 100% immersion (if by some miracle DS got in)

Nonetheless, its worth advocating for thorough multilanguage programs!! Its the worldwide norm, and I love that DC's leading the pack for it in universal PreK... In NYC there are many more free preschools offering immersion BUT they dont guarantee admission to elementary immersion programs. So silly to offer language immersion without continuity... That's why it seems like a fad to critics.

[Anonymous]

Yea, silly to offer immersion without continuity, there's the rub. Where's the continuity going to come from for the majority of the YY families? They don't have Chinese-speaking friends or ties to an ethnic Chinese community, know little about the culture, and haven't lived, worked or even traveled independently in Chinese-speaking countries. The school doesn't connect the YY students to groups of Chinese-speaking peers in this Metro area. In 15 or 20 years, some academic is going to do a study finding that most of the YY kids no longer speak Chinese at all (even bad Chinese).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yea, silly to offer immersion without continuity, there's the rub. Where's the continuity going to come from for the majority of the YY families? They don't have Chinese-speaking friends or ties to an ethnic Chinese community, know little about the culture, and haven't lived, worked or even traveled independently in Chinese-speaking countries. The school doesn't connect the YY students to groups of Chinese-speaking peers in this Metro area. In 15 or 20 years, some academic is going to do a study finding that most of the YY kids no longer speak Chinese at all (even bad Chinese).

The continuity is that YY kids can receive Mandarin instruction from PK3-12 if they go through DCI, so 15 years of study. I realize that you think their Chinese will be shitty regardless, so there's no need to go through your spiel again.