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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If the YY kids get 4s or 5s on AP Chinese - that would be a success - and every post by native speakers reveals a pronounced racism that they should try and work through rather than spill their bile continually on this board. The majority of children in DC are black and Hispanic. There are more Vietnamese families in DC than Chinese. Any given PCS or DCPS by definition is supposed to be serving the majority of the kids in DC. [/quote]

No, any given DCPS is by definition supposed to primarily serve the students residing in its catchment area (explaining why a dozen DCPS elementary schools support FARMs rates in the single digits).

Public immersion schools aren't serving DC students well i[b]f most of their students' language skills are laughable after 5, 10 even 15 years of intensive study[/b].  As a city, we can function in the realm of avoiding hurt feelings at all costs, or strive to run world-class schools, not both.

PS.  Most DC Vietnamese are "Hoa," Cantonese speakers in the older generation. They very seldom choose YY [b]but pick up Mandarin easily because they already speak at least two tonal languages[/b].[/quote]

There are no YY alumni who have been intensely studying Chinese for 15 years at this point, maybe not even 10.  There is no MS immersion option so not sure that's a fair statement to make.  As for the students' language ability after 5 years, you admit that other people who speak tonal languages pick up Mandarin easily.  So what does that say about kids who don't already speak a tonal language and are trying to learn Mandarin? Perhaps they will have a more difficult time picking up the language?  That's not to say that YY couldn't be doing more, but don't act as though these kids are learning Spanish.[/quote]

The oldest YY grads at DCI are now in 9th grade, with 7-10 years of public immersion and partial immersion language study behind them. Sadly, for a native speaker to hear them speak, the decade of instruction, or close, is a shocker.

It's certainly not hard to for little kids to learn tonal languages if they're taught well. It is hard for them to learn it under the structures YY provides. unless a family speaks Chinese at home (no more than a handful of families in the category) or hosts Chinese-speaking au pairs under orders not to speak English to their charges, or accept it in return, for years on end.  The system is really screwed up. The kids need a lot more speaking support for the immersion to work. [/quote]

Thank you for your input. We appreciate so much the fact that you write the same thing over and over 500 times in every Yu Ying thread. It's more meaningful if you repeat it a zillion times.[/quote]

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