Chinese Immersion school

[Anonymous]

The District's Chinese-speaking immigrant community is tiny, and there are no clear boundaries between the DC and MoCo communities. Many of us schlep to Rockville on weekends for this and that (shopping at the Asian supermarkets, dim sum, heritage language school classes for kids housed in MoCo public schools, visiting friends who speak our dialects), particularly those of us who don't attend the evangelical Christian church in Chinatown. YY is irrelevant to us - we don't speak the textbook Chinese they teach, and can't speak to admins in any dialect. We look to MoCo for advanced Mandarin classes and visit older relatives in NYC, California, Hong Kong, Taiwan, on the Mainland etc. in the summers to provide immersion experiences to kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

They should make Chinese fluent parents actively volunteer at YY in exchange for their kids admission. That would motivate involvement.

YY parents are very active, native Mandarin speaking or otherwise.

That's fine but one of the problems I keep hearing is lack of native Chinese speaker involvement

Chinese native speakers are involved as parents.

Given the very small Chinese population in DC, and the lottery which allows for no preference, YY seems to have a fair number of families with Chinese heritage and/or speakers. Some of the kids are surpassing their parents levels though especially in writing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The District's Chinese-speaking immigrant community is tiny, and there are no clear boundaries between the DC and MoCo communities. Many of us schlep to Rockville on weekends for this and that (shopping at the Asian supermarkets, dim sum, heritage language school classes for kids housed in MoCo public schools, visiting friends who speak our dialects), particularly those of us who don't attend the evangelical Christian church in Chinatown. YY is irrelevant to us - we don't speak the textbook Chinese they teach, and can't speak to admins in any dialect. We look to MoCo for advanced Mandarin classes and visit older relatives in NYC, California, Hong Kong, Taiwan, on the Mainland etc. in the summers to provide immersion experiences to kids.

I do not believe YY is irrelevant to you. You post constantly and trash it on a constant basis. We don't care. I would sooner die than live in MoCo among racists such as yourself.

[Anonymous]

Give us a break. This poster explained something OP may find interesting, if he's still on board. Come on, it's odd that YuYing doesn't attract families with Chinese speaking kids, although, apparently, there are some in the district. You're the one doing the trashing here!

[Anonymous]

Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

The head of school is not Chinese, so it is a no-go for them.

Plus I hear black peoples can attend YY. How could it possibly be as good as your all-Chinese Saturday school?

But they're not racist at all. Nope. Nothing to see here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

Who are these kids? When we were at YY (not long ago) we talked to every Chinese-speaking kid in the student body, in Chinese, at one point or another; there were only 3 or 4 (one actually was not ethnic but was born in China). My family immigrated from Taiwan when I was a teenager, so I speak Mandarin and Fujian dialect. There were 2 dozen ethnic parents who spoke some Chinese (half a dozen fluent), but only a few kids you could have a real conversation with in a dialect. At our heritage language school there are a dozen DC kids who speak a dialect at home, and speak it well. These are mostly JKLM families. Chinese-speaking kids at YY are essentially an urban myth, and if that's" trashing YY" and "racist" talk, guilty as charged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

Who are these kids? When we were at YY (not long ago) we talked to every Chinese-speaking kid in the student body, in Chinese, at one point or another; there were only 3 or 4 (one actually was not ethnic but was born in China). My family immigrated from Taiwan when I was a teenager, so I speak Mandarin and Fujian dialect. There were 2 dozen ethnic parents who spoke some Chinese (half a dozen fluent), but only a few kids you could have a real conversation with in a dialect. At our heritage language school there are a dozen DC kids who speak a dialect at home, and speak it well. These are mostly JKLM families. Chinese-speaking kids at YY are essentially an urban myth, and if that's" trashing YY" and "racist" talk, guilty as charged.

No dog in this fight, but I'm curious. Don't all the kids at YY speak Chinese? Can't you have a conversation with all of them in Mandarin? Why is it important to be able to converse with parents in dialect?

Is this like Arabic, where older non religious people would as soon speak French to people who don't speak there dialect?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

Who are these kids? When we were at YY (not long ago) we talked to every Chinese-speaking kid in the student body, in Chinese, at one point or another; there were only 3 or 4 (one actually was not ethnic but was born in China). My family immigrated from Taiwan when I was a teenager, so I speak Mandarin and Fujian dialect. There were 2 dozen ethnic parents who spoke some Chinese (half a dozen fluent), but only a few kids you could have a real conversation with in a dialect. At our heritage language school there are a dozen DC kids who speak a dialect at home, and speak it well. These are mostly JKLM families. Chinese-speaking kids at YY are essentially an urban myth, and if that's" trashing YY" and "racist" talk, guilty as charged.

Go away heritage mom. No one wants to speak with a Hillbilly accent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

Who are these kids? When we were at YY (not long ago) we talked to every Chinese-speaking kid in the student body, in Chinese, at one point or another; there were only 3 or 4 (one actually was not ethnic but was born in China). My family immigrated from Taiwan when I was a teenager, so I speak Mandarin and Fujian dialect. There were 2 dozen ethnic parents who spoke some Chinese (half a dozen fluent), but only a few kids you could have a real conversation with in a dialect. At our heritage language school there are a dozen DC kids who speak a dialect at home, and speak it well. These are mostly JKLM families. Chinese-speaking kids at YY are essentially an urban myth, and if that's" trashing YY" and "racist" talk, guilty as charged.

No dog in this fight, but I'm curious. Don't all the kids at YY speak Chinese? Can't you have a conversation with all of them in Mandarin? Why is it important to be able to converse with parents in dialect?

Is this like Arabic, where older non religious people would as soon speak French to people who don't speak there dialect?

Call me Heritage Dad.

YY kids are taught textbook Mandarin by strong Chinese teachers. But because only a handful speak Chinese consistently at home (maybe with a series of Chinese au pairs the family hosts), the bar isn't set high. The school doesn't have the speakers of dialects who pick up on the Mandarin quickly and well, raising standards for the others. If you teach a kid who speaks decent Fujian dialect, Cantonese, Shanghai'ese etc. for their age Mandarin, they learn it roughly twice as fast and well as kid who doesn't speak Chinese at home. They also tend to use much better tones, and have an easier time gaining literacy than non native speakers. So what you get at YY are many kids who struggle to speak, understand, and read basic Mandarin after years in the school. I talk to upper grades kids in the neighborhood who've been there since PreK who understand and speak Chinese at roughly the level my children did at age 3. Nobody much at YY minds, or wants to question Chinese standards (a loaded issue). Hope that answers your question.

[Anonymous]

Yawn........
Why do you care so much about trashing Yu Ying? Something threatens you very much about this school or you wouldn't be spending so much energy on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

Who are these kids? When we were at YY (not long ago) we talked to every Chinese-speaking kid in the student body, in Chinese, at one point or another; there were only 3 or 4 (one actually was not ethnic but was born in China). My family immigrated from Taiwan when I was a teenager, so I speak Mandarin and Fujian dialect. There were 2 dozen ethnic parents who spoke some Chinese (half a dozen fluent), but only a few kids you could have a real conversation with in a dialect. At our heritage language school there are a dozen DC kids who speak a dialect at home, and speak it well. These are mostly JKLM families. Chinese-speaking kids at YY are essentially an urban myth, and if that's" trashing YY" and "racist" talk, guilty as charged.

No dog in this fight, but I'm curious. Don't all the kids at YY speak Chinese? Can't you have a conversation with all of them in Mandarin? Why is it important to be able to converse with parents in dialect?

Is this like Arabic, where older non religious people would as soon speak French to people who don't speak there dialect?

Call me Heritage Dad.

YY kids are taught textbook Mandarin by strong Chinese teachers. But because only a handful speak Chinese consistently at home (maybe with a series of Chinese au pairs the family hosts), the bar isn't set high. The school doesn't have the speakers of dialects who pick up on the Mandarin quickly and well, raising standards for the others. If you teach a kid who speaks decent Fujian dialect, Cantonese, Shanghai'ese etc. for their age Mandarin, they learn it roughly twice as fast and well as kid who doesn't speak Chinese at home. They also tend to use much better tones, and have an easier time gaining literacy than non native speakers. So what you get at YY are many kids who struggle to speak, understand, and read basic Mandarin after years in the school. I talk to upper grades kids in the neighborhood who've been there since PreK who understand and speak Chinese at roughly the level my children did at age 3. Nobody much at YY minds, or wants to question Chinese standards (a loaded issue). Hope that answers your question.

Thanks, it really does. Part of my curiosity comes from the fact that my bi-lingual son also took a couple of years of Chinese as a a third language, but is now happy to be done. I think he feels that he'll never really learn it, so why bother. It seems much harder than picking up his second language (which his mom and I speak).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yu Ying DOES attract families with Chinese-speaking kids actually. Just not PP or his friends apparently.

Who are these kids? When we were at YY (not long ago) we talked to every Chinese-speaking kid in the student body, in Chinese, at one point or another; there were only 3 or 4 (one actually was not ethnic but was born in China). My family immigrated from Taiwan when I was a teenager, so I speak Mandarin and Fujian dialect. There were 2 dozen ethnic parents who spoke some Chinese (half a dozen fluent), but only a few kids you could have a real conversation with in a dialect. At our heritage language school there are a dozen DC kids who speak a dialect at home, and speak it well. These are mostly JKLM families. Chinese-speaking kids at YY are essentially an urban myth, and if that's" trashing YY" and "racist" talk, guilty as charged.

No dog in this fight, but I'm curious. Don't all the kids at YY speak Chinese? Can't you have a conversation with all of them in Mandarin? Why is it important to be able to converse with parents in dialect?

Is this like Arabic, where older non religious people would as soon speak French to people who don't speak there dialect?

Call me Heritage Dad.

YY kids are taught textbook Mandarin by strong Chinese teachers. But because only a handful speak Chinese consistently at home (maybe with a series of Chinese au pairs the family hosts), the bar isn't set high. The school doesn't have the speakers of dialects who pick up on the Mandarin quickly and well, raising standards for the others. If you teach a kid who speaks decent Fujian dialect, Cantonese, Shanghai'ese etc. for their age Mandarin, they learn it roughly twice as fast and well as kid who doesn't speak Chinese at home. They also tend to use much better tones, and have an easier time gaining literacy than non native speakers. So what you get at YY are many kids who struggle to speak, understand, and read basic Mandarin after years in the school. I talk to upper grades kids in the neighborhood who've been there since PreK who understand and speak Chinese at roughly the level my children did at age 3. Nobody much at YY minds, or wants to question Chinese standards (a loaded issue). Hope that answers your question.

Hey Heritage Dad! You sound like a total creep talking to kids in the neighborhood and trashing them on an anonymous website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

They should make Chinese fluent parents actively volunteer at YY in exchange for their kids admission. That would motivate involvement.

YY parents are very active, native Mandarin speaking or otherwise.

That's fine but one of the problems I keep hearing is lack of native Chinese speaker involvement

Did you hear this information on an anonymous board?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YY tried outreach in those areas, but they have been snubbed so they gave up.

They should make Chinese fluent parents actively volunteer at YY in exchange for their kids admission. That would motivate involvement.

YY parents are very active, native Mandarin speaking or otherwise.

That's fine but one of the problems I keep hearing is lack of native Chinese speaker involvement

Did you hear this information on an anonymous board?

Tee hee no. I hear on various listservs and parent meetings.