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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] They don't seem to know that most Chinese immigrants speak Cantonese, not Mandarin, or what Cantonese is. [/quote]

There is no way this is true, so I don't really trust anything you say.[/quote]

What I meant by this is not that most Chinese immigrants speak Cantonese. But that YY parents "don't know what Cantonese is" as Taiwan Dad asserted.  That has to be bullshit.[/quote]

A good many YY parents don't really know what Cantonese is - where it's spoken, that it has seven tones, that most Chinese immigrant families in the country speak it, or did in a previous generation. Some YY parents do, lots don't, partly because there isn't an immigrant community behind the school.

When we go to the odd YY event, I find that that the kids' ability to communicate in Mandarin is all over the map for age. There are a few whose Chinese is seriously good. These are kids from families where an adult in the home speaks Mandarin, generally an au pair (some YY families have hosted a series of them). But many of the kids, including 3rd, 4th and 5th graders who've been at YY since PreK4 or K, don't knock it out of the park with immersion Mandarin, and that's putting it mildly.

What I see happening with the IB Diploma Chinese tests in the long-run is this. Families with the resources and motivation to supplement in a big way, particularly via immersion camps in China, and hosting Mandarin-speaking au pairs who speak only Chinese to the kids, and only accept it from them in reply, through MS, will produce children who score high on the standard level Chinese test. Nobody will pass the higher level test (with a score of 4+), unless they've spent a high school year as an exchange student in Taiwan, Hong Kong or China.

The YY/DCI Mandarin program simply isn't set up to generate top scores on the higher level test. But I can't imagine this bothering the great majority of longtime YY and DCI parents. For a high-octane public IB Diploma program, you must look to privates like WIS and the burbs.

[/quote]

I looked into WIS and do not agree that their IB program is all that. I also have an IB diploma. I am uninterested in sending my children to the suburbs for any reason, especially since I believe my feeder school is true immersion unlike those of moco. Also I do not want my Hispanic children to be discriminated against in moco. They do not take care of their Hispanic population. Why would I move to the segregated suburbs?  No thanks. http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/22444/segregation-is-causing-montgomery-county-schools-achievement-gap-but-josh-starr-wont-admit-it/[/quote]

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