Reply to Yu Ying - advice please

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Reply to "Yu Ying - advice please"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What is the point of Mandarin immersion if you have no family connection to the Chinese language? Chinese won't be of much use for 99% of careers in the US. Chinese people learn English becuase:

It is useful at an international level - business,science, travel, politics, etc; They are interested in setting their children up to go to school in the West; They want to emigrate.

None of these reasons hold for Americans and Mandarin - you really want your kid to go to college in China? Do you think getting a Chinese law degree or medical degree will be of value in the US for all but a small number of people? You planning to emigrate to China?

This focus some have on Chinese immersion is silly[/quote]

Agree in large part. But then when American kids apply to competitive colleges, they will need decent AP or IBD language scores to have a shot of being admitted, and it's much easier to learn languages as a little kid than a teen. I remember big stress trying to learn enough Spanish to pull a 4 or 5 on the Spanish AP exam as as teen, coming in with no background (because languages weren't taught in public schools in my town before 9th grade).

If the DC immersion kids can continue with whatever language through HS to give them a boost in applying to college, the early work will pay off. But I don't see the point of any kind of language immersion without a cohort of native-speaking peers. I get what Oyster, Lamb, Mundo Verde etc. are doing, and why parents are on board, but not YY. [/quote]

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