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

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is old territory on DCUM.  I can certainly see a kid from a monolingual home who's has been in 50% Chinese immersion for 7-10 years not speaking nearly as well as a kid who speaks Chinese at home. Just the same, when you talk to the current DCI "advanced track" Chinese students, as a native speaker, you can hardly help shaking your head.  The DCI 11-14 year olds speak like toddlers to my ear, 2 year olds for the stragglers, 4 year olds for the high fliers.  I would never say it to the families, but results for speaking are god awful.  I speak Spanish OK and hear much better Spanish from DCI students whose families don't speak Spanish at home.

I have suggestion for those who come on YY threads. Pack it in until there's a new HOS. Who knows when, 2 years, 5 years. She won't stay forever and nothing much will change until she does. Outreach won't be done to native speakers to drum up interest in the school.  Relationships won't be forged with organizations serving native speaking kids. Hardly any native speakers will enter the YY lottery. After-care won't be immersion. School newsletters won't come home in Chinese and English etc.[/quote]

Does the topic of conversation matter at all?

The non-native, monolingual children are learning school Chinese -- math, science, history, etc. They probably don't know how to talk about sports, movies or what they did over the weekend. If they can't discuss their academic work in Chinese with some level of fluency, I agree there's an issue.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics