Reply to I'm pretty sure I won't send my child to Basis, BUT....

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Reply to "I'm pretty sure I won't send my child to Basis, BUT...."

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[quote=Anonymous][/quote]

So taking your child out of Yu Ying will help their Chinese?  I've known bilingual kids from other countries, those born in other countries, who could read and read well who lost their language completely within two yrs.  If your child is under 8, it's a possibility since they won't get to use much Chinese anywhere else except home.  Maybe they'll keep their "home" or "baby" Chinese but it won't get more sophisticated and they certainly will not be bilingual adults.  As much as you can complain about Yu Ying, it is the only school in DC where your child will be kept exposed to Mandarin and not only speaking but reading at age level. [/quote]

There are YY posts addressing these issues.  But, in a nutshell, Mandarin instruction isn't the only issue for a Chinese parent at YY; it's a strange scene for us.   As for the Mandarin spoken by YY kids, whose families tend to have/build no connection to China or Chinese outside the school, it isn't as "sophisticated" as an outsider might think.  In this day and age, technonology, travel and social networks are on your side in developing your kid's language skills- we have Skype, DVDs, Direct TV, summer visits with family in China etc.  When your child grows up with a firm grounding in a dialect, as mine does (all we speak at home) you're in a different boat than the YY parents - no rush for your kid to learn Mandarin.  My sister only learned it in college/grad school and scored a 4 (of 5) on the State Dept. exam on joining the Foreign Service.  The charter law, as written, doesn't serve bilingual families well, maybe it is set in stone, but the DC ABC community will march on anyway.  We have reason to doubt that most of the YY kids will keep up their Chinese later.  
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