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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It comes up because a lot of parents wonder what the point of doing it is l, if a.) you’re risking your kid not understanding the fundamentals really well because they’re being taught in a foreign language and b.) the odds are that your child will never become fluent anyway.[/quote]

Yes, this is my basic concern. A couple years later, the ephemeral language gains are mostly lost, and the sum total of it might just be lost time on core subjects. I know there could be a lot of huffing about boiling it down to this but... if you're a teenager without Chinese speaking context, little language ability anyway, and a need to spend your time on your subjects or grades....could you really say it was worth it?

It's unclear enough to me to say, "Nah."[/quote]

You're a smart cookie, PP, the rare "non-native" voice on a YY board assessing risks before taking the plunge.

The risk of a YY or DCI kid growing into a "teenager without Chinese speaking content" you identify is real. Parents who don't speak Chinese but score in the YY lottery tend to assume that the program will be "worth it," partly because the Mandarin screens out FARMs kids to the same degree as JKLM, Brent etc. without high-end DC real estate in the mix. Not a safe assumption.

Another problem is that, without bilingual ABC classmates, or classmates from Chinese-speaking countries, YY and DCI kids are at risk of lacking the peer connections to embrace target language instruction as teens. It's one thing to have an ES-age child who doesn't have native-speaking friends, or a strong family connection to the relevant culture and geography, to study a language intensely, but another thing to ask a 13-18 year-old. When I attend the annual ATDLE (Association of Two-Way and Dual Language Education Conference) on the West Coast, there's invariably a symposium on this topic. Bilingual ed specialists from Canada talk about the serious problem that country has with English dominant students in ES French immersion, and MS partial immersion, programs outside Quebec and Ottawa (around 10% of students nationwide) rebelling against HS French studies.  [/quote]

We know several YY families who take their kids to a heritage language program in MoCo on weekends to help ensure that can really speak AND have a native speaking peer group in the area. They've been doing this for 4 or 5 years.

Everybody in the school community isn't oblivious to the risks![/quote]

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