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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP Here: I was a fluent mandarin speaker that lived in China for four years. No skin in the YY discussions with Taiwanese dad - we are at a spanish immersion feeder to DCI.

I did, however, want to comment on that discussion because I thnk Taiwanese dad has made some valid points and they are getting lost because of cultural differences. In 2004, I completed a year of graduate school entirely in Mandarin after living in China for four years. My Written and spoken mandarin rocked. When I came home for the summer and chatted at the Chinese restaurant, the waitresses oohed and aahed over my mandarin and said how fantastic it was. Fair point, it really was good and I had worked hard to earn that. Since then, I have barely used my mandarin and it has declined dramatically. Last night, we went to AJs restaurant in Rockville where I attempted poorly and briefly to say a few things to the waitresses in Mandarin. It was BAD, I kept mixing in Spanish, which is my current best foreign language because we speak it at home. The waitresses oohed and aaahed over my mandarin and said how fantastic it ws just like they did in 2004. Exact same reaction, separated by 15 years, and a LOT of language decline.

Chinese people compliment foreigners profusely on their mandarin skills - it is a cultural habit. This is particularly true for non-Asian foreigners, which impress Chinese people the most when they eek out a few words in Mandarin. My four year old says "Ni Hao!" and "Xie Xie" and you would think he has just given a discourse in Chinese by how they react.

I have no doubt that the YY kids are learning  to speak mandarin and in particular, theatthey will have good accents by learning it at a a young age. But whenever a Chinese person tells you how impressed they are by your kids mandarin, I would recognize that there may be some exaggerating and that giving these types of compliments to mandarin speaking foreigners is customary. Testing would be a better reflection of the true learning going on and how good the mandarin is getting.....[/quote]

Great post. When the intl baccalaureate Chinese test scores are finally out for the current YY and DCI kids, I fear that the naysayers will be vindicated.  I took the Mandarin higher level test at a public hs schol in Cal some 20 years ago.  After a year as an exchange student in Tapei, I assumed that I'd easily score 6 or 7 but only got a 4.  I'm not even sure that I'd have scored 6 or 7 on the standard level test.[/quote]

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