What's the best way to prepare for language immersion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not the poster you're responding to. The fact remains that at Spanish immerison charters, parents don't need to host au pairs to ensure that the kids can speak the language fairly decently. They simply don't.

We speak Spanish pretty well, so we can hear that kids who've been at one of the SI charters for many years from a non-Spanish speaking family can speak the language OK. This is generally true even if a family has never hosted au pairs. The kids obviously aren't just learning Spanish from teachers. They're learning the language from bilingual peers/classmates.

By contrast, at YuYing families w/out a native speaker in the home do need to host au pairs for the kids to speak OK Mandarin. We hosted au pairs ourselves after figuring this out. We bailed on YY eventually and are now at BASIS for 5th grade. We use a heritage language program we like in MD to keep up our son's Chinese. There are many native speakers in the program and his spoken Chinese has improved a lot since we left YuYing. Post as much nasty crap as you want in your defensiveness.

Thank you for this information. There's no need for me to be nasty towards your response, because you were not rude and condescending. As I stated in my previous posts, we chose YY for the diversity and the LI was just a plus for us. We want to prep our child with a few basic words so that he's not frustrated and coming home crying every day. DS learns quickly, but I'm definitely not expecting him to be fluent in Mandarin. It would be awesome if he could, but it's not a priority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for sharing your experience, PP. there’s really nothing nasty to respond to your post. But it really doesn’t answer OP’s question- what’s the best way to prepare for Mandarin immersion? I think the question of the kind of immersion experience YY provides has been thoroughly hashed put in multiple threads. Two-way immersion programs may lead to greater proficiency but that doesn’t mean there aren’t benefits to immersion programs that aren’t two-way.

Back to answering OP's question, immersion is obviously the best way to prepare for immersion.

Bona fide Mandarin immersion (vs. 1-way "immersion") isn't what YY offers. So no need to prepare, and no point really IMHO if you're trying to prepare without being able to prepare via immersion for a toddler.

Thank you!! I've read that the first few weeks or months will be very difficult for children, and I just wanted to try to avoid that. I don't want him to be upset and crying, because he doesn't want to go to school. I don't want to be upset and crying, because he's upset. I want this to be an enjoyable experience for our whole family.

[Anonymous]

Bona fide Mandarin immersion (vs. 1-way "immersion") isn't what YY offers. So no need to prepare, and no point really IMHO if you're trying to prepare without being able to prepare via immersion for a toddler.

I’m sorry , but an immersion program does not need to be two-way to be a “bona fide” immersion program. Studies show more benefits if an immersion program offers two-way learning. But the fact that a program does not have 50/50 native speakers does not make it non- bona fide. In that case, none of the immersion charter schools are “bona fide”.

[Anonymous]

I'm from Europe by way of Canada. In Europe and Canada, one-way language instruction isn't considered immersion and isn't referred to as such. You don't need 50/50 native speakers-non native speakers to support a veritable immersion program, but you do need a good cohort of native speakers. My understanding is that YuYing enrolls a handful (literally) of native speakers in a school with almost 600 students. That set up isn't any kind of immersion by any standard. Yes, the kids are taught Chinese, but there's no immersion because the language is rarely spoken outside of classrooms under the supervision of teachers.

When we considered YuYing for our child last year after winning a lottery spot, we toured the school with a friend. The friend is a parent leader whose children have attended for many years. We listened carefully for children speaking Chinese to one another in hallways, on the playground/grounds, in the cafeteria and in the after-care program. We heard no Chinese spoken between students outside of Chinese classes during the several hours we were on campus.

[Anonymous]

The parents are happy to pretend it's real immersion because the program works for them overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The parents are happy to pretend it's real immersion because the program works for them overall.

[Anonymous]

The fact is that most Mandarin immersion schools in the US are one-way immersion programs. There just isn’t a large enough population of Mandarin speakers in the US, particularly on the East Coast.
YY could do a better job of attracting and keep the small number of Mandarin speakers in the city. But it is not the case that only 50/50 programs are legitimate immersion programs. Much easier to expect closer to a 50/50 in spanish programs.

[Anonymous]

Not buying it. Public Chinese immersion programs commonly support several lotteries: one for kids who mainly speak Mandarin at home, one for kids who mainly speak other Chinese dialects at home, and one for kids who don't speak Chinese at home, aiming for a 3-way split. There are even immersion programs where all students learn Cantonese (the only way to attract enough native speakers for dual immersion), then all the kids transition to Mandarin in middle and high school. The Cantonese-Mandarin immersion programs produce the best AP Chinese results eventually, by a long shot.

In YY's case, it wouldn't be difficult for the school to partner with a large, well-established MoCo heritage program like Hope to ensure that YY students interact with bilingual immigrant families on a regular basis. No chance of this under the current head of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The fact is that most Mandarin immersion schools in the US are one-way immersion programs. There just isn’t a large enough population of Mandarin speakers in the US, particularly on the East Coast.
YY could do a better job of attracting and keep the small number of Mandarin speakers in the city. But it is not the case that only 50/50 programs are legitimate immersion programs. Much easier to expect closer to a 50/50 in spanish programs.

Major understatement. YY admins make it clear to bilingual Chinese-speaking families who get spots that their curriculum treats children who are fluent in Chinese on arrival as though they speak (and read and write) none. There isn't any outreach of any kind to Chinese-speaking parents of little kids in the city and hasn't been for a good decade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact is that most Mandarin immersion schools in the US are one-way immersion programs. There just isn’t a large enough population of Mandarin speakers in the US, particularly on the East Coast.
YY could do a better job of attracting and keep the small number of Mandarin speakers in the city. But it is not the case that only 50/50 programs are legitimate immersion programs. Much easier to expect closer to a 50/50 in spanish programs.

Major understatement. YY admins make it clear to bilingual Chinese-speaking families who get spots that their curriculum treats children who are fluent in Chinese on arrival as though they speak (and read and write) none. There isn't any outreach of any kind to Chinese-speaking parents of little kids in the city and hasn't been for a good decade.

Do we have any data on numbers here? I’d imagine tiny numbers to the extent that outreach wouldn’t make much of a difference, assuming a sizeable number of this tiny pool even opt to lottery for YY AND get a seat. Seems wouldn’t make sense unless in a city like NY or SF.

[Anonymous]

Not the PP. This may be harder than it sounds, but I’d start by changing the website to all present info in Mandarin, in addition to English. Right now it’s all English, which to me signals it is an immersion program for English speakers. I’d also translate all messages from the school to families in Mandarin. Again, it’s currently all English.

Longer term, subsidize a bus pick up in the downtown/Chinatown areas. Schools like Thomson and Seaton have high populations of Mandarin speakers. Make it more convenient for those families to send their kids to YY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not the PP. This may be harder than it sounds, but I’d start by changing the website to all present info in Mandarin, in addition to English. Right now it’s all English, which to me signals it is an immersion program for English speakers. I’d also translate all messages from the school to families in Mandarin. Again, it’s currently all English.

Longer term, subsidize a bus pick up in the downtown/Chinatown areas. Schools like Thomson and Seaton have high populations of Mandarin speakers. Make it more convenient for those families to send their kids to YY.

I see that 11-14% of these schools are Asian. Do we have any data on what % are actually Mandarin speakers?

[Anonymous]

I don’t, but my understanding is that Thompson selected Mandarin as its foreign language special due to its student population, and Seaton (our IB) translates school messages into Mandarin and provides Mandarin translators at parent events, so I assume it’s the predominant language for at least a majority of those students, and/or enough of the populAtion to justify the expense. (there may be DCPS regulations or guidelines on when translation is required, if there is a threshold number or % concentration of native speakers)

[Anonymous]

Above info about Thompson isn't accurate. I don't know about Seaton. Thompson traditionally hires a Cantonese-speaking ECE teacher to interpret for the small number of Cantonese-speaking IB residents who send their little ones. Sometimes this teacher speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese - no connection to YY. There are around a dozen ethnic bilingual kids at Thompson (generally zero Mandarin speakers). Thompson goes with Mandarin as its foreign language special because it was the least stupid alternative to not bothering with 45 minutes of week of gimmicky "language exposure" DCPS has required for the last 5 years. Most downtown ethnic Chinese with kids still bail on DCPS by 1st grade, generally for MoCo schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not the PP. This may be harder than it sounds, but I’d start by changing the website to all present info in Mandarin, in addition to English. Right now it’s all English, which to me signals it is an immersion program for English speakers. I’d also translate all messages from the school to families in Mandarin. Again, it’s currently all English.

Longer term, subsidize a bus pick up in the downtown/Chinatown areas. Schools like Thomson and Seaton have high populations of Mandarin speakers. Make it more convenient for those families to send their kids to YY.

All this has been proposed at YY at various times in the last 12 years, by the board and the PA. But the YY principal doesn't speak any dialect of Chinese well and has never lived, worked or studied in China. She doesn't have her head around the dialect transition process (e.g. Cantonese to Mandarin, Fujian dialect to Mandarin, child native Mandarin speakers are hard to find in DC). Change the head and things could change.