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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Same PP, to clarify, oldest one has graduated college now, and middle is in college but has worked summers.  It's through college jobs that they met the businesspeople who made them other job offers.[/quote]

Congratulations, and you should be proud, seriously.  I had a colleague who is full blooded American but has a Ph.D. in Chinese and served as an interpreter for the U.S. Army to the Chinese Army.  (His job was to avoid a miscommunication that would lead to a nuclear holocaust.)  He would tell me that DMV public school students in immersion programs couldn't understand  "good morning" in Chinese even by the 12th grade.  [b]You should be proud, but your DC's are an outliers.[/b]
[/quote]

We are proud, thank you.  But "outliers" means that the majority "can't understand "Good morning" in Chinese by the 12th grade", that's the only way my kids are exceptions.  Yet somehow my youngest is almost out of that school, it's been a good 5 yrs since the last time I was daily at the elementary school (where I had way more contact with the Chinese teachers on a daily basis), and my DH didn't even go into that school as much as I did and neither of us ever took Chinese lessons.  And yet somehow, "Good morning" is one of many phrases we STILL can say and remember to say (though I've totally forgotten how to answer), while literally all of our kids friends, even the ones who went to different middle schools and high schools, they all still have a level of conversational Chinese that means they all know and understand how to say WAY MORE than "Good morning" and they weren't all the best in the classes nor did they take Chinese language outside of regular school classes.  A few did do Chinese outside of school, but I'm not including them in the ones who still to this day didn't even finish middle or high school in a dual language program but can still have whole conversations in Mandarin though their vocabulary and understanding has definitely dwindled from their 5th grade levels.

When you only hear and speak Mandarin from PK3 or PK4 through 5th grade either 100% of the school day or 50%, for those 7 or 8 years, you are not an "outlier" if you can hold whole conversations and still understand a good amount of Mandarin when you're 3 or 4 years out of those schools.  And NO ONE doesn't understand "Good morning" or remember how to answer.  Our kids were not outliers, most of the kids who finished 5th grade still understand and can say a lot.[/quote]

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