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

[Anonymous]

Control freaks and name callers go away.

The clueless parents sound like the ones who need their heads examined. No, the YY ELA PARCC scores aren't good, not for the demographic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In regard to the comments regarding people needing to lie to compliment YY kids on their Chinese, don't people do this in every language? I frequently hear people complimenting others who are obviously learning English on how well they are doing. I take another language that I started as an adult, and I have received very undeserved compliments from speakers of that language.

I think it is common for speakers of any language to complement others who are learning that language, both to be polite and encouraging. This not at all something that is unique to Chinese speakers in talking to kids from YY.

This idea that people are somehow forced to lie because of the skills of YY students is such a weird way to think.

People exaggerate when complimenting kids all the time. If my neighbor's kindergartener shows me her artwork from school, I tell her "it's so beautiful!". I don't say "A house, a tree and a rainbow? How basic! It looks like it was drawn by a 5 year old!". When my 7 year old scores the winning goal at soccer, I tell him "What a great play!" and not "Good thing the defender was picking dandelions!"

Am I a liar?

[Anonymous]

+1.

Complements will only get the oldest YY graduates so far once the first DCI IB Diploma exam results come back two and a half years from now.

IBD language tests are tough, even at the standard level, and the spoken sections are taped and sent to Geneva.

I predict soul searching on the part of YY and DCI board members, admins, teachers and parents (few of whom will have had direct experience with IBD exams) once results start rolling in, if not a comprehensive "fix."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These discussions always seem to treat fluency in a foreign language like some mysterious, all-or-nothing proposition that is not worth undertaking if it is not done perfectly from the get-go - with very little understanding of how speaking more than one language actually functions, or how many different ways there are to be proficient in a language.

As far as i'm concerned, giving kids exposure and the building blocks to learn other languages early on is a good thing; it's been proven to be a good thing; and bilingual education does that. Some kids are going to attain higher levels of fluency than others, because some people are simply better at languages than others. Good luck controlling that.

Sounds peachy PP, but the inconvenient truth is that YY kids are only getting around 50% as much instruction in English as peers who aren't in immersion programs while learning a language that at least 95% of the families can't reinforce at home, and the minority of the kids are unlikely to use as teens let alone adults. The building blocks come at too high a price, much too high. All or nothing propositions are not the issue.

Fluency is a misnomer in this context. The great majority of upper grades YY kids speak Chinese minimally - there is no level of fluency involved. That's why we bailed on the school. You get slammed on these threads for calling a spade a spade when the dismal results are painfully obvious to any native speaker of any dialect of Chinese. Most YY parents may love the arrangement, but it seems ludicrous to this parent whose kids do speak Chinese fluently, and score 5s on the PARCC ELA every year they take it at our DCPS. We avoid conversations about Chinese instruction with YY families to minimize the risk of offense. Call me and other posters who point out obvious truths "haters" if it makes you feel better. Problem is, we're right (as YY Chinese teachers know) and, to my knowledge, there's no fix on the horizon.

Your need to keep coming here and bragging about your children is pathetic. Seriously, I don't get it. You sound like you are desperate to prove your own worth. Please salvage some self respect.

I don't hear bragging. The poster is pointing out that there's a way to do immersion right. DC immersion parents who aren't bilingual need to hear this. Kids can learn to speak a target language well without the effort coming at the expense of high ELA performance. But for a non native kid to speak well and score well in English, the school and parents need to be more serious about the project than your average DC immersion charter and your average monolingual DC charter parent. If you don't do immersion right, the pay off can be negligible or even negative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These discussions always seem to treat fluency in a foreign language like some mysterious, all-or-nothing proposition that is not worth undertaking if it is not done perfectly from the get-go - with very little understanding of how speaking more than one language actually functions, or how many different ways there are to be proficient in a language.

As far as i'm concerned, giving kids exposure and the building blocks to learn other languages early on is a good thing; it's been proven to be a good thing; and bilingual education does that. Some kids are going to attain higher levels of fluency than others, because some people are simply better at languages than others. Good luck controlling that.

Sounds peachy PP, but the inconvenient truth is that YY kids are only getting around 50% as much instruction in English as peers who aren't in immersion programs while learning a language that at least 95% of the families can't reinforce at home, and the minority of the kids are unlikely to use as teens let alone adults. The building blocks come at too high a price, much too high. All or nothing propositions are not the issue.

Fluency is a misnomer in this context. The great majority of upper grades YY kids speak Chinese minimally - there is no level of fluency involved. That's why we bailed on the school. You get slammed on these threads for calling a spade a spade when the dismal results are painfully obvious to any native speaker of any dialect of Chinese. Most YY parents may love the arrangement, but it seems ludicrous to this parent whose kids do speak Chinese fluently, and score 5s on the PARCC ELA every year they take it at our DCPS. We avoid conversations about Chinese instruction with YY families to minimize the risk of offense. Call me and other posters who point out obvious truths "haters" if it makes you feel better. Problem is, we're right (as YY Chinese teachers know) and, to my knowledge, there's no fix on the horizon.

Your need to keep coming here and bragging about your children is pathetic. Seriously, I don't get it. You sound like you are desperate to prove your own worth. Please salvage some self respect.

I don't hear bragging. The poster is pointing out that there's a way to do immersion right. DC immersion parents who aren't bilingual need to hear this. Kids can learn to speak a target language well without the effort coming at the expense of high ELA performance. But for a non native kid to speak well and score well in English, the school and parents need to be more serious about the project than your average DC immersion charter and your average monolingual DC charter parent. If you don't do immersion right, the pay off can be negligible or even negative.

My child isn't at Yu Ying, but I would not prioritize a high ELA standardized test score over the chance to study a foreign language, even if my child didn't gain full proficiency in the foreign language by fifth grade. Thank goodness I'm free to make choices for my child, and you are free to make choices for your child.

[Anonymous]

The solution for the detractors, particularly given the waitlist at YY, would be for the "heritage speakers" to form their own charter school, however, like YY, they wouldn't be able to discriminate in favor of heritage-speaking children, obviously. At least, however, they would be able to hire an ED and teachers they that they feel speak Chinese well - and then, they would have less need to continually bash YY on DCUM.
The idea that "If you don't do immersion right, the pay off can be negligible or even negative" is simply not supported by any evidence. The pay-off of learning a language doesn't have to be grade-level fluency in the language per se - it teaches to cope with failure (something the offspring of millennials lack generally), to problem solve, to decode language, to relate to difference, to feel comfortable outside one's own culture. This is very valuable. It also encourages language learning as an adult. As to negative effects, the evidence suggests that a child in a bilingual or immersion environment may initially have fewer words in the dominant language - but that these deficiencies are temporary and the child catches up as they age. Being committed to bilingualism or immersion study requires parents to suppress their own egos that their child is the best English reader on the block or gotten a certain score as a four year old - because when the kid is ten their English will have caught up to their peers AND they will have SOME level of fluency in another language. My sister and her husband are fluent and native speakers of Spanish and their nanny is a Spanish speaker. Her daughters are the best English readers on the block and understand Spanish but don't speak it because my sister and her husband do not speak to them consistently in Spanish. My husband and I are fluent and native speakers of Italian and we chose to only speak Italian to our DC. DC is fluent in Italian and had little exposure/ interest in English until kindergarten, so he was an not an early English reader and he had fewer English words initially. He has more than caught up now - even though we continue to speak to him in Italian and he had an Italian au pair. However, I will never have the bragging rights to say my kid was reading the New York Times at three or scored the highest on the English test for his grade in kindergarten. I'm OK with that - and perhaps that's a class-based analysis -because DC has grandparents and parents who are college professors and lawyers so we know that the kid will always be surrounded by high level English speakers who can support and enrich later on. I might feel differentially if this were not the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In regard to the comments regarding people needing to lie to compliment YY kids on their Chinese, don't people do this in every language? I frequently hear people complimenting others who are obviously learning English on how well they are doing. I take another language that I started as an adult, and I have received very undeserved compliments from speakers of that language.

I think it is common for speakers of any language to complement others who are learning that language, both to be polite and encouraging. This not at all something that is unique to Chinese speakers in talking to kids from YY.

A lot of native speakers are pleasantly surprised when they see a child that they expect to be a non-native speaker of that language speaking with a great accent and pretty good grammar in their own language. Often, kids sound really good in more basic language because they can pick up a native accent so easily when they start young. Usually, they have very limited vocabulary, though, in the language they are acquiring. So some people may be genuinely impressed. Others are trying to be nice.

We are at LAMB. DC learns Spanish from his mother and I support by speaking to his mother in Spanish too. As a non-native but fluent speaker, I am often pretty impressed by how well a lot of the English speaking LAMB kids speak Spanish - my wife complements these kids all the time. At the same time, I know that DC is head and shoulders above his close monolingual friends in Spanish (and a smidge behind in English) due to the constant chatting and learning new words from his mother.

I do think that it is easier to support Spanish for a whole host of reasons than Chinese. More people in the street speak Spanish so you have relevance. Many kids start learning Spanish at birth from nannies or in daycares. Tons of kids have at least one Spanish speaking parent. Relatives visiting from Spanish speaking countries. Aftercare is full Spanish immersion. Tons of books available in Spanish. Indeed, in DC's lower elementary class, about 70% of the class started out Spanish dominant. By 1st grade, it seems like most of the LAMB kids speak well enough to engage pretty well in the classroom with their teacher (and the Sp dominant kids are raising the level all the time). There is just no way to compare this level of language exposure to what you would get in a Yu Ying type setting.

I always wonder why people pretend there are not tradeoffs in every educational setting. The tradeoff of more Spanish dominant kids is that some kids have harder life circumstances and aren't as advanced in schoolwork. For Chinese, the tradeoff of learning a language that is so different from your own is that it is harder to learn -- but also more valuable. The tradeoff of not learning Chinese (or Spanish) at a young age is that you will never be able to achieve a native Speaker accent. The tradeoff of spending time learning a language at a young age is that you may not understand some of your core subjects completely (those in the target language). The tradeoff of your child being truly bilingual in another language (w/ at least one parent speaking it) is that their English will be slightly delayed.

You can't have it all.

[Anonymous]

You know these two slights can't be true simultaneously, right? (For the curious, the second one is much closer to the mark.)

Anonymous wrote:No, the YY ELA PARCC scores aren't good, not for the demographic.

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room is that they can't afford homes in Upper NW, or the Brent or Maury Districts.

[Anonymous]

I'm a Canadian academic researcher who studies education reform, mainly looking at the effectiveness of secondary programs in my country. If only it were true that the the pay off can be negligible or even negative is not supported by any evidence.

In fact, there is a sizeable corpus of academic literature, mainly contributed by Canadian and Nordic commentators in the last 20 years, proving that language immersion done poorly (via one-way immersion, and/or immersion ending before age 12 or 13) does indeed set students back in the dominant language. The new research has prompted our provincial governments, particularly Quebec, to alter modes of delivery of public language immersion products.

Since the mid 1990s, Canada has largely stopped offering YuYing style "50% immersion in target language" to families unable to support immersion at home, with at least one adult in the home speaking the target language well. As a result, more and more Canadian schools offers public immersion programs (dual or two-way immersion) only admitting children with at least one native speaker in the home, along with more second tier programs offering about 25% immersion in the language to others.

What we've found in Canada is that 50% one-way immersion disadvantages students from monolingual families on university admissions examinations given in English. I am aware that the strongest public K-8 American immersion and partial immersion program, mainly found in county and municipal school systems in California, North Carolina, Utah and New York, have heeded the relevant research in developing their immersion programs. I don't know the DC politics of education reform well enough to know why DCPC has not followed suit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You know these two slights can't be true simultaneously, right? (For the curious, the second one is much closer to the mark.)

Anonymous wrote:No, the YY ELA PARCC scores aren't good, not for the demographic.

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room is that they can't afford homes in Upper NW, or the Brent or Maury Districts.

Not the PP who wrote this, but they actually can be true.

Plenty of white, highly educated parents whose kids should be doing well on PARCC regardless, who are living outside the zones for those schools because they work in the public or nonprofit sector.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In regard to the comments regarding people needing to lie to compliment YY kids on their Chinese, don't people do this in every language? I frequently hear people complimenting others who are obviously learning English on how well they are doing. I take another language that I started as an adult, and I have received very undeserved compliments from speakers of that language.

I think it is common for speakers of any language to complement others who are learning that language, both to be polite and encouraging. This not at all something that is unique to Chinese speakers in talking to kids from YY.

A lot of native speakers are pleasantly surprised when they see a child that they expect to be a non-native speaker of that language speaking with a great accent and pretty good grammar in their own language. Often, kids sound really good in more basic language because they can pick up a native accent so easily when they start young. Usually, they have very limited vocabulary, though, in the language they are acquiring. So some people may be genuinely impressed. Others are trying to be nice.

We are at LAMB. DC learns Spanish from his mother and I support by speaking to his mother in Spanish too. As a non-native but fluent speaker, I am often pretty impressed by how well a lot of the English speaking LAMB kids speak Spanish - my wife complements these kids all the time. At the same time, I know that DC is head and shoulders above his close monolingual friends in Spanish (and a smidge behind in English) due to the constant chatting and learning new words from his mother.

I do think that it is easier to support Spanish for a whole host of reasons than Chinese. More people in the street speak Spanish so you have relevance. Many kids start learning Spanish at birth from nannies or in daycares. Tons of kids have at least one Spanish speaking parent. Relatives visiting from Spanish speaking countries. Aftercare is full Spanish immersion. Tons of books available in Spanish. Indeed, in DC's lower elementary class, about 70% of the class started out Spanish dominant. By 1st grade, it seems like most of the LAMB kids speak well enough to engage pretty well in the classroom with their teacher (and the Sp dominant kids are raising the level all the time). There is just no way to compare this level of language exposure to what you would get in a Yu Ying type setting.

I always wonder why people pretend there are not tradeoffs in every educational setting. The tradeoff of more Spanish dominant kids is that some kids have harder life circumstances and aren't as advanced in schoolwork. For Chinese, the tradeoff of learning a language that is so different from your own is that it is harder to learn -- but also more valuable. The tradeoff of not learning Chinese (or Spanish) at a young age is that you will never be able to achieve a native Speaker accent. The tradeoff of spending time learning a language at a young age is that you may not understand some of your core subjects completely (those in the target language). The tradeoff of your child being truly bilingual in another language (w/ at least one parent speaking it) is that their English will be slightly delayed.

You can't have it all.

No, you can't. We scrimped and saved for years, and delayed childbearing until our late 30s, to afford a house in Upper NW so we could send our kids to a strong DCPS. They sometimes complain that they aren't allowed to do many afternoon playdates and extra curriculars in English, summer camps with school friends, or to watch much TV in English. They also complain about going to Chinese school in MoCo on weekends. We keep them home, or out and about, with the grandparents (who live with us) most afternoons year round to ensure that they speak good Chinese. Lots of logistics to juggle, but the arrangement had paid off for both their spoken Chinese and English. We need to work harder on Chinese writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a Canadian academic researcher who studies education reform, mainly looking at the effectiveness of secondary programs in my country. If only it were true that the the pay off can be negligible or even negative is not supported by any evidence.

In fact, there is a sizeable corpus of academic literature, mainly contributed by Canadian and Nordic commentators in the last 20 years, proving that language immersion done poorly (via one-way immersion, and/or immersion ending before age 12 or 13) does indeed set students back in the dominant language. The new research has prompted our provincial governments, particularly Quebec, to alter modes of delivery of public language immersion products.

Since the mid 1990s, Canada has largely stopped offering YuYing style "50% immersion in target language" to families unable to support immersion at home, with at least one adult in the home speaking the target language well. As a result, more and more Canadian schools offers public immersion programs (dual or two-way immersion) only admitting children with at least one native speaker in the home, along with more second tier programs offering about 25% immersion in the language to others.

What we've found in Canada is that 50% one-way immersion disadvantages students from monolingual families on university admissions examinations given in English. I am aware that the strongest public K-8 American immersion and partial immersion program, mainly found in county and municipal school systems in California, North Carolina, Utah and New York, have heeded the relevant research in developing their immersion programs. I don't know the DC politics of education reform well enough to know why DCPC has not followed suit.

THIS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know these two slights can't be true simultaneously, right? (For the curious, the second one is much closer to the mark.)

Anonymous wrote:No, the YY ELA PARCC scores aren't good, not for the demographic.

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room is that they can't afford homes in Upper NW, or the Brent or Maury Districts.

Not the PP who wrote this, but they actually can be true.

Plenty of white, highly educated parents whose kids should be doing well on PARCC regardless, who are living outside the zones for those schools because they work in the public or nonprofit sector.

meh, some of both. There are plenty of YY parents who own million-dollar homes in Brookland, Crestwood, Capitol Hill, and elsewhere. I own a home in upper NW that I rent out. I know YY kids who are zoned for Brent, Lafayette, Janney, Ludlow Taylor, Key and Hyde off the top of my head. Some parents are choosing to buy in 16th Street heights, Shepard Park or Takoma to be closer to DCI. We like that there are an interesting mix of professional families--plenty of lawyers and IT folks but also teachers, non-profits, government employees and other do-gooders. Lots of racial and religious diversity that we might not see in all the JKLM schools. We are not worried about our children's English skills, though they are still too young for PARCC. YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know these two slights can't be true simultaneously, right? (For the curious, the second one is much closer to the mark.)

Anonymous wrote:No, the YY ELA PARCC scores aren't good, not for the demographic.

Anonymous wrote:The elephant in the room is that they can't afford homes in Upper NW, or the Brent or Maury Districts.

Not the PP who wrote this, but they actually can be true.

Plenty of white, highly educated parents whose kids should be doing well on PARCC regardless, who are living outside the zones for those schools because they work in the public or nonprofit sector.

NP. You're not taking into account anything else, though. It's not so clear cut. For instance, a high SES family with disposable income may supplement their child's education with a tutor. A white, MC family where both parents are highly-educated but work FT may not be able to do that.

And don't presume that ALL people who don't live in Upper NW can't afford it. They may just have different priorities and desires for the kind of neighborhood they want to live in.

[Anonymous]

There are immersion programs in German, French, and Japanese in Fairfax county where the language is not necessarily supported at home and there are not all that many heritage speakers in the program. Can anyone compare and contrast those programs to YY in terms of how successful the language learning is in these programs?