Reply to International trip for 5th graders?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "International trip for 5th graders?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If I were a Yu Ying parent not connected some other way to Chinese, I'd welcome this opportunity. Lest there is a real and emotional exposure to the context of a language, it's really hard to learn and sustain it in a meaningful way. Children have to experience that it's meaningful. Us parents telling them so (your future job, income, life etc.) doesn't carry that meaning. In the absence of intrinsic meaning such as Chinese heritage, such a trip can really help. It can make the difference between creating that contextual foundation or not. As someone sending my kids to Europe in the summer for $3000 a pop, precisely to nurture that contextual connection to their second language and culture, the price tag seems okay.
[b]Or else, honestly, parents with no connection to Chinese really have to stop fooling themselves about the usefulness of sending a child to a Chinese immersion school.[/b][/quote]

Well said.  I'm have a child at YY and hope they offer this kind trip annually for 5th graders.  Learning a language has to be in context to culture.  I think visiting a country whose language you've been studying since you are 4 yrs old makes sense.  What's the point of studying a language at all if you have never visited the place that speaks it?  When my child is a 5th grader, DC will go and it won't the first or last time he's going to China.  It'll be nice to go with the friends he's learned the language with since preK.[/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