Good thing so many of us are learning Chinese!
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from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=general
he Bilingual Advantage
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: May 30, 2011
A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions to social science. We spoke for two hours in a Washington hotel room in February and again, more recently, by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.
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Chris Young for The New York Times
MENTAL WORKOUT Ellen Bialystok with a neuroimaging electrode cap.
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Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?
A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.’s. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.
As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.
Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?
A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.
But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.
Q. How does this work — do you understand it?
A. Yes. There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.
If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.
Q. One of your most startling recent findings is that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. How did you come to learn this?
A. We did two kinds of studies. In the first, published in 2004, we found that normally aging bilinguals had better cognitive functioning than normally aging monolinguals. Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks. That was very impressive because it didn’t have to be that way. It could have turned out that everybody just lost function equally as they got older.
That evidence made us look at people who didn’t have normal cognitive function. In our next studies , we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer’s patients. On average, the bilinguals showed Alzheimer’s symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn’t mean that the bilinguals didn’t have Alzheimer’s. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer.
Q. So high school French is useful for something other than ordering a special meal in a restaurant?
A. Sorry, no. You have to use both languages all the time. You won’t get the bilingual benefit from occasional use.
Q. One would think bilingualism might help with multitasking — does it?
A. Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles. We wondered, “Are bilinguals better at multitasking?” So we put monolinguals and bilinguals into a driving simulator. Through headphones, we gave them extra tasks to do — as if they were driving and talking on cellphones. We then measured how much worse their driving got. Now, everybody’s driving got worse. But the bilinguals, their driving didn’t drop as much. Because adding on another task while trying to concentrate on a driving problem, that’s what bilingualism gives you — though I wouldn’t advise doing this.
Q. Has the development of new neuroimaging technologies changed your work?
A. Tremendously. It used to be that we could only see what parts of the brain lit up when our subjects performed different tasks. Now, with the new technologies, we can see how all the brain structures work in accord with each other.
In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centers to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.
Q. Bilingualism used to be considered a negative thing — at least in the United States. Is it still?
A. Until about the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that bilingualism was a disadvantage. Some of this was xenophobia. Thanks to science, we now know that the opposite is true.
Q. Many immigrants choose not to teach their children their native language. Is this a good thing?
A. I’m asked about this all the time. People e-mail me and say, “I’m getting married to someone from another culture, what should we do with the children?” I always say, “You’re sitting on a potential gift.”
There are two major reasons people should pass their heritage language onto children. First, it connects children to their ancestors. The second is my research: Bilingualism is good for you. It makes brains stronger. It is brain exercise.
Q. Are you bilingual?
A. Well, I have fully bilingual grandchildren because my daughter married a Frenchman. When my daughter announced her engagement to her French boyfriend, we were a little surprised. It’s always astonishing when your child announces she’s getting married. She said, “But Mom, it’ll be fine, our children will be bilingual!”
A version of this interview appeared in print on May 31, 2011, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Conversation With | Ellen Bialystok.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Why Aren't More American Students Learning Chinese?
The Challenges of Creating a Chinese Program for Multi-Cultural Students
Susan Serven, President, Chinese Language School of Connecticut
Daisy Chen Laone, Principal, Chinese Language School of Connecticut
Here’s a riddle: If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and one who speaks three languages is trilingual, what is someone called who speaks no foreign languages at all?
Answer: an American.
Sad but true, most Americans student are not required to learn a foreign language to graduate high school. Some schools require a minimum two year period of study in a foreign language to graduate; many students in these schools then pick the simplest Western language to learn, normally, Spanish.
Why U.S. Students Don’t Place a Greater Importance on Foreign Language Study.
How can such an innovative country’s students not recognize the importance of studying a foreign language? First, it’s in our history. Let’s face it, for two hundred years America was, first, breaking away from the British (who spoke English) and establishing itself as an independent nation. Second, most developed nations throughout the last hundred years, at least, used English as one of their primary languages to conduct trade, so U.S. students felt they did “not have to” learn other languages. Third, the U.S. is a big country; Europeans by necessity speak several languages, but, conveniently, our next closest trade neighbor is Canada, which is English [and French] speaking. Fourth, it’s harder, and more expensive, for U.S. residents to travel to different countries, so most students aren’t aware that a majority of the world’s population speaks more than one language (in Europe and Asia, most speak several).
The above distinctions are primary reasons why, historically in the U.S., foreign language learning less of a priority and more of an “elite” perk for highly educated students. So, because of this, foreign language study was not a priority for most schools, and, for a long time students lucky enough to go on to higher education studied the “romance languages” such as French or Italian.
Lastly, we get what we ask for; if most U.S. parents value sports over language learning, then schools will put a higher priority on athletics and less of a priority on foreign language learning.
In addition, a recent Newsweek article (December 6, 2010 available at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/not-much-progress-in-america-s-chinese-problem.html) explains how, in response to (or because of) the above, the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act placed a large emphasis on math and reading, which resulted in cutbacks in arts and foreign languages. The lack of funding especially affects Mandarin instruction, which requires instructors and materials which are often more expensive than other languages (for example, Spanish).
This article goes on to note that:
“According to the Center for Applied Linguistics, in 2008 only 4 percent of middle and high schools that offer foreign-language instruction included Mandarin. That’s up from 1 percent in 1997. While that initially seems like respectable growth, the same survey reveals that 13 percent of schools still offer Latin and a full 10-fold more schools offer French than Mandarin.
We Know Chinese is Important, But…
If asked, most educated parents, and older high school students, in the U.S. will agree that China’s growing economic growth during the last 10 years necessitates the need to learn Mandarin in order to be better prepared to succeed in the global economy.
However, there are two key challenges to overcome in order for students to develop a global competency in Chinese: study time (it normally takes close to four times the amount of study needed to become as fluent in Chinese as in a Western language (such as French or Spanish), and teachers (there is a lack of dynamic, engaging, effective teachers).
According to the ACTFL, foreign languages are divided into 4 categories, category I being the easiest, and category IV being the most difficult. Chinese (category IV) takes four times the amount of study time than French, Italian, or Spanish (which are all in category I).
Category I
Dutch, English*,
French, Haitian Creole,
Italian, Norwegian,
Portuguese, Spanish,
Swahili and Swedish. + Category II
German, Hindi,
Indonesian,
Punjabi and Urdu. + Category III
Cambodian, Czech, Hmong,
Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao,
Polish, Russian,
Serbo-Croatian**, Slovak,
Tagalog, Turkish, Thai,
Ukrainian and Vietnamese.+ Category IV
Arabic, Cantonese,
Japanese, Korean
and Mandarin. +
Source: http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3642
Dealing with the amount of time needed to become proficient is the easier part. If students are motivated and have teachers who are dynamic and engaging, and who are using a curriculum which is effective and robust, students will learn. (Info on the National Standards for Foreign Language teaching includes information on the “5Cs” framework, which is required for curriculum design in public schools. http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392 )
Identifying, recruiting, training and retaining the most highly effective teachers are the trickier part. In many situations, the first challenge a Chinese teacher faces while working in a public or private school is to overcome the cultural differences and learn how to interact within the new culture.
Stereotypes are often based in fact. Some are:
Chinese teachers are often quiet, sometimes rigid, and lack passion, so learning Chinese can be boring
American students can be disrespectful, so having to deal with them is frustrating
American parents are difficult (and sometimes litigious) so beware of them
During the last ten years, more students from China have come to the U.S. in order to teach. However, most have been raised in one-child homes, often without siblings or many cousins to engage with daily, so may not intuitively understand how to interact with children. Most of these teachers have come from a school system which values the teaching profession; respect for teachers is instilled from a very early age, so may find it hard to deal with the lack of respect teachers receive in the U.S. Those teachers who have grown up in China will have experienced larger classrooms, with a more “rote memorization” method of learning, little classroom interaction, and highly motivated students (due to cultural expectations, very strict standardized testing systems, and a great deal of competition due to lack of university spaces). Lastly, due to the growing need for Chinese teachers, many come here as students from China, are young, and do not have children of their own, so don’t understand the U.S. school system or U.S. teaching styles.
Americans (parents in particular, especially those on the East and West coasts) are culturally direct; Asians in general tend to use culturally indirect methods of communications.
From Brooks Peterson, Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures (Boston: Intercultural, 2004, p 40):
A direct style means people prefer to
• be more direct in speaking and be less concerned about how something is said,
• openly confront issues or difficulties,
• communicate concerns straightforwardly,
• engage in conflict when necessary,
• express views or opinions in a frank manner, and
• say things clearly, not leaving much open to interpretation.
An indirect style means people prefer to
• focus not just on what is said but on how it is said,
• discreetly avoid difficult or contentious issues,
• express concerns tactfully,
• avoid conflict if at all possible,
• express views or opinions diplomatically, and
• count on the listener to interpret meaning.
These cultural challenges result in miscommunications and misperceptions which can only be overcome by each group reaching out to understand the other, but which are most effectively (and quickly) overcome by a comprehensive training program and ample opportunity for Chinese faculty members to engage with other teachers and participate in regular workshops, and observe classes / participate in teaching. This, however, results in a greater investment of resources by the school looking to implement the Chinese program.
Mandarin is easier than other Western languages in many ways: Chinese has negligible grammar - there is no need to conjugate verbs, worry about tenses, or match gender or number. What is much tougher for U.S students, however, is the number of characters students have to memorize and the mastery of tones (depending on the inflection, the word ji could mean “chicken” or “to remember”).
However, as most parents of U.S. students know, China will probably be the world's largest economy within twenty years and a monumental force in every dimension of life. Studying Chinese gives U.S. students insights into one of the world's great civilizations and creates a wealth of economic opportunities for those who can master the language and have an understanding of the culture.
As the Chinese economy surges, so does global interest in Mandarin. According to the Economist magazine [available at http://www.economist.com/node/17522444?story_id=17522444&fsrc=rss] the Chinese government estimates some 40m people currently study Mandarin outside the country, up from 30m in 2005. A tight job market in the West is partly responsible.
From this same report,
“According to a survey in September by Rosetta Stone, 58% of Americans believe the lack of foreign-language skills among native workers will lead to foreigners taking high-paying jobs. “The recession has focused people on where growth is going to come from,” says Tom Adams, the firm’s chief executive. Among existing corporate customers logging into the company’s multi-language programme, the number learning Mandarin increased by 1,800% between 2008 and 2010.”
The U.S.. needs to do better job training a culturally savvy workforce. However, according to Newsweek [available at www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/not-much-progress-in-america-s-chinese-problem.html] even though those 40 million foreigners are studying Mandarin outside of China, only 50,000 of them are in the United States.
How to Teach Chinese to a Multi-Cultural Class of American Students?
What can we do? How can we ensure that our children will be able to take advantage of the opportunities that learning Chinese offers? At our organization, the non-profit Chinese Language School of Connecticut, we have always believed outreach is key. If parents, teachers, staff, students and volunteers can reach out to groups such as China Institute, Asia Society, Ascend Pan-Asian Leadership, Committee of 1,000, Families with Children From China, and others, the synergy will create a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
However, more actionable steps include:
1. Create a tight curriculum with relevant, engaging, hands-on, age-appropriate activities, which is integrated into other school programs
Remember that you are teaching American students; very young children are used to being encouraged to “express themselves” all the time. Preschool teachers routinely sing and dance with children. This approach has many merits, but also means young children are not taught to sit still, and won’t be happy in a class where they are required to do a lot of sitting. (Parents won’t be happy, either.)
Make sure your materials conform to age-appropriate, relevant, topics. At CLSC, in some cases we had tried to use books supposedly designed for very young children, but these materials discussed topics such as “telling time” in their books for 4 and 5 year olds (which meant that we had to design our own material). For elementary-age and older students integrate tools such as SmartBoards, iPods (which offer Chinese applications) and real-time chat activities to help students practice when they’re not in class.
2. Integrate history, art and culture into the classroom to keep things engaging and provide historical perspective
This doesn’t mean only “correct, Ancient Chinese culture,” but, depending on students’ ages, should include the history of the Chinese court, warlords, and the Boxer Rebellion. American students (and parents) like debate: China takes a more positive view of the Boxers than Western countries do (probably because Western countries were the ones doing the invading), so have students debate the issues. Field trips to museums and restaurants are terrific, and can put learning in context. Creating art based on periods in Chinese history, or developing models of items the Chinese invented is interactive and fun, and can give students a sense of the global power China held for much of its 5,000+ history.
3. Bring in facets of modern day Chinese society
All students are interested in what children of their own age in other countries are doing each day. Have them learn about and discuss food, school, pop music, and modern history. Include details on the huge Chinese presence all over the world, such as in Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Canada, and Malaysia. Engage your school in developing a sister school program with another school in China. Younger students can write (or email) pen pals. Older students can debate human rights, economic freedoms, and environmental issues.
Again, these activities are engaging for students of varying ages, but also put their Chinese language learning in context.
4. Teachers
Most important is recruiting and training teachers.
For younger students, preschool to grade 1, make certain the teachers are well-trained and focused on the curriculum, of course, but even more important should be the understanding of how they should interact and relate to the children. Smile, a lot. Laugh with them, sit on the floor and show interest in what they’re doing. Play music, sing songs, explain each word and then sing again. Do activities with music playing in the background. If teachers are hired who genuinely love children, and teaching, this will be relatively easy.
For older students, teachers should try to engage with them. This is relatively easy with first through fourth graders; they’re normally fairly easy going, friendly, and want to please their teachers. However, engaging with older students gets progressively harder, through the high school years. At CLSC we often see many teachers working diligently to engage with older students, they try and try, but often fail. Especially for older students, the teachers that normally accomplish the most are those who are friendly, but firm. Who establish and reinforce guidelines, lesson plans, and measurements. You may not be the most popular teacher, but you will gain students’ (and parents’) respect.
The best training for any teacher (indeed, anyone wishing to learn U.S. culture) is probably to “just do it” – get out there and experience as much as you can. Learn new topics in different areas, participate in as many professional development workshops as you can. Make friends with lots of different people. Ask other teachers (math, language arts, Spanish teachers) if you can observe their classes (they’ll be happy you asked). Share your culture and childhood experiences with your students.
5. Parents
Remember that most U.S. parents do not know anything about Chinese (except that they’ve heard it’s “really hard”). Many do not know there is no Chinese “alphabet.” They think each Chinese character is a “letter” that makes up a word. They don’t understand the idea of a tonal language, and often cannot even differentiate between tones; they literally don’t hear the difference.
If the children are young, and parents are with them in the class (or are expected to help them do homework or follow up with lessons), teachers need to communicate regularly, clearly, on what is expected. Parents are used to hearing from their children’s teachers regularly, and they will need to hear from you in order to understand what their child is learning. Provide ideas and links for educational materials they can purchase in order to help their child learn.
This goes for older students’ parents, as well, but you might additionally email relevant articles of interest, such as Goldman Sachs’ forecasts of how the Chinese economy will overtake the U.S.’s by 2027 (a good reason for their children to continue with Chinese), or how learning Mandarin can help them with standardized test-taking (the College Entrance Examination Board reported that "students who averaged 4 or more years of foreign language study scored higher on the verbal section of the SAT than those who had studied 4 or more years in any other subject area,” from
http://www.chineselanguageschool.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=37).
When communities, schools, teachers and parents work together to help students understand China’s enormous (and growing) global economic presence, they will be more likely to understand the importance of learning Chinese in order to develop a sense of Chinese history and culture, while cultivating a global worldview.
Susan Serven （江华）is co-founder, president, and Board member of the non-profit Chinese Language School of Connecticut. She adopted daughters Emily （华 铭娟）from Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, in August 1996, and Rebecca (江玉风)from Gao Ming City, Guangdong Province, China, in October 2000. Susan founded the Chopstix pre-school program in 1998 so her daughters and other children could learn Chinese; all Chopstix proceeds were donated to help fund various non- profit groups working with Chinese orphanage programs. She continued running Chopstix until it joined CLSC in 2003.
Susan Serven, President, Chinese Language School of Connecticut
Daisy Chen Laone, Principal, Chinese Language School of Connecticut
Here’s a riddle: If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and one who speaks three languages is trilingual, what is someone called who speaks no foreign languages at all?
Answer: an American.
Sad but true, most Americans student are not required to learn a foreign language to graduate high school. Some schools require a minimum two year period of study in a foreign language to graduate; many students in these schools then pick the simplest Western language to learn, normally, Spanish.
Why U.S. Students Don’t Place a Greater Importance on Foreign Language Study.
How can such an innovative country’s students not recognize the importance of studying a foreign language? First, it’s in our history. Let’s face it, for two hundred years America was, first, breaking away from the British (who spoke English) and establishing itself as an independent nation. Second, most developed nations throughout the last hundred years, at least, used English as one of their primary languages to conduct trade, so U.S. students felt they did “not have to” learn other languages. Third, the U.S. is a big country; Europeans by necessity speak several languages, but, conveniently, our next closest trade neighbor is Canada, which is English [and French] speaking. Fourth, it’s harder, and more expensive, for U.S. residents to travel to different countries, so most students aren’t aware that a majority of the world’s population speaks more than one language (in Europe and Asia, most speak several).
The above distinctions are primary reasons why, historically in the U.S., foreign language learning less of a priority and more of an “elite” perk for highly educated students. So, because of this, foreign language study was not a priority for most schools, and, for a long time students lucky enough to go on to higher education studied the “romance languages” such as French or Italian.
Lastly, we get what we ask for; if most U.S. parents value sports over language learning, then schools will put a higher priority on athletics and less of a priority on foreign language learning.
In addition, a recent Newsweek article (December 6, 2010 available at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/not-much-progress-in-america-s-chinese-problem.html) explains how, in response to (or because of) the above, the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act placed a large emphasis on math and reading, which resulted in cutbacks in arts and foreign languages. The lack of funding especially affects Mandarin instruction, which requires instructors and materials which are often more expensive than other languages (for example, Spanish).
This article goes on to note that:
“According to the Center for Applied Linguistics, in 2008 only 4 percent of middle and high schools that offer foreign-language instruction included Mandarin. That’s up from 1 percent in 1997. While that initially seems like respectable growth, the same survey reveals that 13 percent of schools still offer Latin and a full 10-fold more schools offer French than Mandarin.
We Know Chinese is Important, But…
If asked, most educated parents, and older high school students, in the U.S. will agree that China’s growing economic growth during the last 10 years necessitates the need to learn Mandarin in order to be better prepared to succeed in the global economy.
However, there are two key challenges to overcome in order for students to develop a global competency in Chinese: study time (it normally takes close to four times the amount of study needed to become as fluent in Chinese as in a Western language (such as French or Spanish), and teachers (there is a lack of dynamic, engaging, effective teachers).
According to the ACTFL, foreign languages are divided into 4 categories, category I being the easiest, and category IV being the most difficult. Chinese (category IV) takes four times the amount of study time than French, Italian, or Spanish (which are all in category I).
Category I
Dutch, English*,
French, Haitian Creole,
Italian, Norwegian,
Portuguese, Spanish,
Swahili and Swedish. + Category II
German, Hindi,
Indonesian,
Punjabi and Urdu. + Category III
Cambodian, Czech, Hmong,
Hebrew, Hungarian, Lao,
Polish, Russian,
Serbo-Croatian**, Slovak,
Tagalog, Turkish, Thai,
Ukrainian and Vietnamese.+ Category IV
Arabic, Cantonese,
Japanese, Korean
and Mandarin. +
Source: http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3642
Dealing with the amount of time needed to become proficient is the easier part. If students are motivated and have teachers who are dynamic and engaging, and who are using a curriculum which is effective and robust, students will learn. (Info on the National Standards for Foreign Language teaching includes information on the “5Cs” framework, which is required for curriculum design in public schools. http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392 )
Identifying, recruiting, training and retaining the most highly effective teachers are the trickier part. In many situations, the first challenge a Chinese teacher faces while working in a public or private school is to overcome the cultural differences and learn how to interact within the new culture.
Stereotypes are often based in fact. Some are:
Chinese teachers are often quiet, sometimes rigid, and lack passion, so learning Chinese can be boring
American students can be disrespectful, so having to deal with them is frustrating
American parents are difficult (and sometimes litigious) so beware of them
During the last ten years, more students from China have come to the U.S. in order to teach. However, most have been raised in one-child homes, often without siblings or many cousins to engage with daily, so may not intuitively understand how to interact with children. Most of these teachers have come from a school system which values the teaching profession; respect for teachers is instilled from a very early age, so may find it hard to deal with the lack of respect teachers receive in the U.S. Those teachers who have grown up in China will have experienced larger classrooms, with a more “rote memorization” method of learning, little classroom interaction, and highly motivated students (due to cultural expectations, very strict standardized testing systems, and a great deal of competition due to lack of university spaces). Lastly, due to the growing need for Chinese teachers, many come here as students from China, are young, and do not have children of their own, so don’t understand the U.S. school system or U.S. teaching styles.
Americans (parents in particular, especially those on the East and West coasts) are culturally direct; Asians in general tend to use culturally indirect methods of communications.
From Brooks Peterson, Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures (Boston: Intercultural, 2004, p 40):
A direct style means people prefer to
• be more direct in speaking and be less concerned about how something is said,
• openly confront issues or difficulties,
• communicate concerns straightforwardly,
• engage in conflict when necessary,
• express views or opinions in a frank manner, and
• say things clearly, not leaving much open to interpretation.
An indirect style means people prefer to
• focus not just on what is said but on how it is said,
• discreetly avoid difficult or contentious issues,
• express concerns tactfully,
• avoid conflict if at all possible,
• express views or opinions diplomatically, and
• count on the listener to interpret meaning.
These cultural challenges result in miscommunications and misperceptions which can only be overcome by each group reaching out to understand the other, but which are most effectively (and quickly) overcome by a comprehensive training program and ample opportunity for Chinese faculty members to engage with other teachers and participate in regular workshops, and observe classes / participate in teaching. This, however, results in a greater investment of resources by the school looking to implement the Chinese program.
Mandarin is easier than other Western languages in many ways: Chinese has negligible grammar - there is no need to conjugate verbs, worry about tenses, or match gender or number. What is much tougher for U.S students, however, is the number of characters students have to memorize and the mastery of tones (depending on the inflection, the word ji could mean “chicken” or “to remember”).
However, as most parents of U.S. students know, China will probably be the world's largest economy within twenty years and a monumental force in every dimension of life. Studying Chinese gives U.S. students insights into one of the world's great civilizations and creates a wealth of economic opportunities for those who can master the language and have an understanding of the culture.
As the Chinese economy surges, so does global interest in Mandarin. According to the Economist magazine [available at http://www.economist.com/node/17522444?story_id=17522444&fsrc=rss] the Chinese government estimates some 40m people currently study Mandarin outside the country, up from 30m in 2005. A tight job market in the West is partly responsible.
From this same report,
“According to a survey in September by Rosetta Stone, 58% of Americans believe the lack of foreign-language skills among native workers will lead to foreigners taking high-paying jobs. “The recession has focused people on where growth is going to come from,” says Tom Adams, the firm’s chief executive. Among existing corporate customers logging into the company’s multi-language programme, the number learning Mandarin increased by 1,800% between 2008 and 2010.”
The U.S.. needs to do better job training a culturally savvy workforce. However, according to Newsweek [available at www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/not-much-progress-in-america-s-chinese-problem.html] even though those 40 million foreigners are studying Mandarin outside of China, only 50,000 of them are in the United States.
How to Teach Chinese to a Multi-Cultural Class of American Students?
What can we do? How can we ensure that our children will be able to take advantage of the opportunities that learning Chinese offers? At our organization, the non-profit Chinese Language School of Connecticut, we have always believed outreach is key. If parents, teachers, staff, students and volunteers can reach out to groups such as China Institute, Asia Society, Ascend Pan-Asian Leadership, Committee of 1,000, Families with Children From China, and others, the synergy will create a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
However, more actionable steps include:
1. Create a tight curriculum with relevant, engaging, hands-on, age-appropriate activities, which is integrated into other school programs
Remember that you are teaching American students; very young children are used to being encouraged to “express themselves” all the time. Preschool teachers routinely sing and dance with children. This approach has many merits, but also means young children are not taught to sit still, and won’t be happy in a class where they are required to do a lot of sitting. (Parents won’t be happy, either.)
Make sure your materials conform to age-appropriate, relevant, topics. At CLSC, in some cases we had tried to use books supposedly designed for very young children, but these materials discussed topics such as “telling time” in their books for 4 and 5 year olds (which meant that we had to design our own material). For elementary-age and older students integrate tools such as SmartBoards, iPods (which offer Chinese applications) and real-time chat activities to help students practice when they’re not in class.
2. Integrate history, art and culture into the classroom to keep things engaging and provide historical perspective
This doesn’t mean only “correct, Ancient Chinese culture,” but, depending on students’ ages, should include the history of the Chinese court, warlords, and the Boxer Rebellion. American students (and parents) like debate: China takes a more positive view of the Boxers than Western countries do (probably because Western countries were the ones doing the invading), so have students debate the issues. Field trips to museums and restaurants are terrific, and can put learning in context. Creating art based on periods in Chinese history, or developing models of items the Chinese invented is interactive and fun, and can give students a sense of the global power China held for much of its 5,000+ history.
3. Bring in facets of modern day Chinese society
All students are interested in what children of their own age in other countries are doing each day. Have them learn about and discuss food, school, pop music, and modern history. Include details on the huge Chinese presence all over the world, such as in Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Canada, and Malaysia. Engage your school in developing a sister school program with another school in China. Younger students can write (or email) pen pals. Older students can debate human rights, economic freedoms, and environmental issues.
Again, these activities are engaging for students of varying ages, but also put their Chinese language learning in context.
4. Teachers
Most important is recruiting and training teachers.
For younger students, preschool to grade 1, make certain the teachers are well-trained and focused on the curriculum, of course, but even more important should be the understanding of how they should interact and relate to the children. Smile, a lot. Laugh with them, sit on the floor and show interest in what they’re doing. Play music, sing songs, explain each word and then sing again. Do activities with music playing in the background. If teachers are hired who genuinely love children, and teaching, this will be relatively easy.
For older students, teachers should try to engage with them. This is relatively easy with first through fourth graders; they’re normally fairly easy going, friendly, and want to please their teachers. However, engaging with older students gets progressively harder, through the high school years. At CLSC we often see many teachers working diligently to engage with older students, they try and try, but often fail. Especially for older students, the teachers that normally accomplish the most are those who are friendly, but firm. Who establish and reinforce guidelines, lesson plans, and measurements. You may not be the most popular teacher, but you will gain students’ (and parents’) respect.
The best training for any teacher (indeed, anyone wishing to learn U.S. culture) is probably to “just do it” – get out there and experience as much as you can. Learn new topics in different areas, participate in as many professional development workshops as you can. Make friends with lots of different people. Ask other teachers (math, language arts, Spanish teachers) if you can observe their classes (they’ll be happy you asked). Share your culture and childhood experiences with your students.
5. Parents
Remember that most U.S. parents do not know anything about Chinese (except that they’ve heard it’s “really hard”). Many do not know there is no Chinese “alphabet.” They think each Chinese character is a “letter” that makes up a word. They don’t understand the idea of a tonal language, and often cannot even differentiate between tones; they literally don’t hear the difference.
If the children are young, and parents are with them in the class (or are expected to help them do homework or follow up with lessons), teachers need to communicate regularly, clearly, on what is expected. Parents are used to hearing from their children’s teachers regularly, and they will need to hear from you in order to understand what their child is learning. Provide ideas and links for educational materials they can purchase in order to help their child learn.
This goes for older students’ parents, as well, but you might additionally email relevant articles of interest, such as Goldman Sachs’ forecasts of how the Chinese economy will overtake the U.S.’s by 2027 (a good reason for their children to continue with Chinese), or how learning Mandarin can help them with standardized test-taking (the College Entrance Examination Board reported that "students who averaged 4 or more years of foreign language study scored higher on the verbal section of the SAT than those who had studied 4 or more years in any other subject area,” from
http://www.chineselanguageschool.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=37).
When communities, schools, teachers and parents work together to help students understand China’s enormous (and growing) global economic presence, they will be more likely to understand the importance of learning Chinese in order to develop a sense of Chinese history and culture, while cultivating a global worldview.
Susan Serven （江华）is co-founder, president, and Board member of the non-profit Chinese Language School of Connecticut. She adopted daughters Emily （华 铭娟）from Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, in August 1996, and Rebecca (江玉风)from Gao Ming City, Guangdong Province, China, in October 2000. Susan founded the Chopstix pre-school program in 1998 so her daughters and other children could learn Chinese; all Chopstix proceeds were donated to help fund various non- profit groups working with Chinese orphanage programs. She continued running Chopstix until it joined CLSC in 2003.
Coaching and Much More for Chinese Students Looking to U.S
You think your kids have it rough? Read the below to find out how Chinese students are preparing themselves for top U.S. universities.
Coaching and Much More for Chinese Students Looking to U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/global/30college.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
BEIJING — In December 2009, a rejection letter from Columbia University found its way to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. It was addressed to Lu Jingyu, a top student and member of her school’s student government. As she read the disheartening words, Ms. Lu immediately began to panic. Where had she gone wrong? How could she fix this?
For answers, she turned to ThinkTank Learning, a college admission consulting company from California that had recently opened an office in Shenzhen, next door to Hong Kong.
“I wanted American professionals to look at my application and shed some new light on how I could make it better,” she said.
The price was steep: 100,000 renminbi, or $15,000. But it came with a 100 percent money-back guarantee — if Ms. Lu was rejected from the nine selective U.S. universities to which she applied, her family would get a full refund.
Ms. Lu brainstormed with a ThinkTank consultant on ways to redo her admissions essay, which had originally been about playing badminton. The new version she came up with focused on a cross-strait dialogue conference that Ms. Lu had organized with high schoolers in Taiwan.
Happily for Ms. Lu and for ThinkTank, the approach worked. She has just completed her first year at the University of Pennsylvania.
As a record number of students from outside the United States compete for a limited number of spots at the most selective American colleges, companies like ThinkTank are seeking to profit from their ambitions.
In the United States, students have long turned to independent college counselors, but in recent years, larger outfits have entered the market, offering full-service designer courses, extracurricular activities and focused application assistance. These services have spread to the fast-growing and lucrative market in China.
With China sending more students to American colleges than any other country, the competition for spots at the top schools has soared. During the 2009-10 academic year, 39,947 Chinese undergraduates were studying in the United States, a 52 percent increase from the year before and about five times as many as five years earlier, according to the Institute of International Education, a U.S. organization.
But students from China can find themselves ill-prepared for the admissions process at American colleges. The education system in mainland China focuses on assiduous preparation for the national university entrance exam, the gaokao, often at the expense of extracurricular activities.
About 400 overseas education agencies — including joint Chinese-foreign schools, language training centers and college application consulting agencies — are certified by the Chinese Ministry of Education. The ministry is affiliated with the two largest application consulting agencies in China, the China Center for International Education Exchange and Chivast Education International.
Some of these agencies offer to write their clients’ college essays from scratch, train them for alumni interviews and even modify student transcripts, consultants have said.
Capitalizing on the increasingly globalized education system, ThinkTank Learning has tapped into the market in the United States and China.
The founder of the company is Steven Ma, 32, a former Wall Street analyst who started the company as a business for preparing students for college entrance tests in 2002 before expanding into application consulting in 2006, starting with seven students. In 2010, that number had risen to 300, including 75 from China. The company said it made about $7 million last year, with 50 percent from admission consulting.
ThinkTank said it was able to distill the college admissions process into an exact science, which Mr. Ma compared with genetic engineering. “We make unnatural stuff happen,” he said.
Students, whose parents often pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, are molded by ThinkTank into well-rounded, socially conscious overachievers through a regimen often beginning as early as the year before entering high school. The company designs extracurricular activities for the students; guides them in essay writing; tutors them for the SAT, the U.S. college admission exam; and helps them with meet-and-greet sessions with alumni.
“There’s a system built by colleges designed to pick out future stars and we are here to crack that system,” Mr. Ma said.
LuShuang Xu provides an example of that approach. Ms. Xu, who was born and raised in China before emigrating to suburban California at age 9, had high hopes that she would be the first in her family to go to college. But poor results on a practice SAT and a dearth of extracurricular activities convinced Ms. Xu, 17, that she needed a scholastic makeover if she were to make it into a school her parents could brag about to relatives.
ThinkTank sent her to a public speaking camp, helped her improve her college essay and gave her the e-mail addresses of all the members of the Stanford University history department. At the company’s prompting, she found two internships with department professors. She also enrolled in ThinkTank’s college prep courses, which helped improve her SAT score 410 points to 2160 out of 2400. Next autumn, she will start at Harvard University.
ThinkTank’s success with students in California’s Asian-American community, which accounts for 90 percent of the company’s American clients, has drawn interest from wealthy parents in China. Mr. Ma opened an office in Shenzhen in 2009 and another in Beijing last year.
The company entered China at a time when the college consulting industry on the mainland was booming, with numerous agencies promising to make Chinese student’s academic dreams come true, often through questionable practices.
One company, Best Education, has offices across China and charges clients an average of 500,000 renminbi for writing clients’ essays, training them for the visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and providing career guidance.
“The students just supply their information and we do all the work,” said one representative, who requested anonymity to protect his job. Best Education offers a 50 percent refund if an applicant is rejected by the student’s chosen schools.
Chinese agencies may not want to alert colleges to their involvement, because applications that clearly appear to come from agencies are rejected by U.S. colleges, but the agencies promote their success in Mandarin. The Future Boshi Overseas Education Agency in Beijing gives a tally on its Web site of clients admitted by each university, including two to Harvard in 2010 and one in 2011.
Reached by telephone, an agency representative said the company did a lot more than just polish résumés. “If a client’s English is poor, our trained professionals can write the essay to make sure it looks perfect,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions from her employer.
The industry’s aggressive practices have been condemned by many American colleges, which say they disapprove of students’ families hiring consultants.
“Students have a responsibility to identify their own path toward future goals, rather than keying in how to get into a certain school,” said Barbara Knuth, the vice provost at Cornell University in New York State, who oversees undergraduate admissions.
Harvard said in an e-mail that it “reviews every application individually and has no interaction” with college admission consulting firms, “though we are certainly aware of their existence.” The University of Pennsylvania, which accepted Ms. Lu from Shenzhen, did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the universities’ unease with these practices, application consulting has proved too profitable to ignore.
Mr. Ma said that out of 110 mainland students, only one has needed a refund, though two clients have been granted admission only if they pay full tuition.
Helping students from China clear the college entry hurdles has presented ThinkTank with a fresh set of challenges. Often they have poor English language skills and have done little with their free time beyond homework. Yet their parents often demand the Ivy League.
“We really have to hold their hand and do everything along with them,” Mr. Ma said, including deliberately leaving spelling mistakes on college essays so they look authentic, training them for the Test of English as a Foreign Language and building extracurricular activities from the ground up.
ThinkTank has founded Model United Nations groups, built a Web site for a Shanghai student’s photography project to get news media coverage and helped another obtain funding to build a hydroelectric generator. For ambitious Chinese parents, ThinkTank’s sales pitch is difficult to resist. Li Manhong, a homemaker from Beijing, has planned for years to send her 17-year-old son to an American college, going so far as to enroll him in a private high school in Portland, Oregon, for the past two years to improve his English and his résumé.
After learning about ThinkTank from a neighbor, Ms. Li persuaded her husband to sign a contract for 90,000 renminbi, which focuses on nine selective U.S. schools. ThinkTank will train her son for the SAT and help him pick internships and even college courses once he becomes a freshman. Ms. Li sees the cost as an investment in her son’s future.
“Whatever it takes to reach his maximum potential,” she said. “It’s worth it.”
Coaching and Much More for Chinese Students Looking to U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/global/30college.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
BEIJING — In December 2009, a rejection letter from Columbia University found its way to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. It was addressed to Lu Jingyu, a top student and member of her school’s student government. As she read the disheartening words, Ms. Lu immediately began to panic. Where had she gone wrong? How could she fix this?
For answers, she turned to ThinkTank Learning, a college admission consulting company from California that had recently opened an office in Shenzhen, next door to Hong Kong.
“I wanted American professionals to look at my application and shed some new light on how I could make it better,” she said.
The price was steep: 100,000 renminbi, or $15,000. But it came with a 100 percent money-back guarantee — if Ms. Lu was rejected from the nine selective U.S. universities to which she applied, her family would get a full refund.
Ms. Lu brainstormed with a ThinkTank consultant on ways to redo her admissions essay, which had originally been about playing badminton. The new version she came up with focused on a cross-strait dialogue conference that Ms. Lu had organized with high schoolers in Taiwan.
Happily for Ms. Lu and for ThinkTank, the approach worked. She has just completed her first year at the University of Pennsylvania.
As a record number of students from outside the United States compete for a limited number of spots at the most selective American colleges, companies like ThinkTank are seeking to profit from their ambitions.
In the United States, students have long turned to independent college counselors, but in recent years, larger outfits have entered the market, offering full-service designer courses, extracurricular activities and focused application assistance. These services have spread to the fast-growing and lucrative market in China.
With China sending more students to American colleges than any other country, the competition for spots at the top schools has soared. During the 2009-10 academic year, 39,947 Chinese undergraduates were studying in the United States, a 52 percent increase from the year before and about five times as many as five years earlier, according to the Institute of International Education, a U.S. organization.
But students from China can find themselves ill-prepared for the admissions process at American colleges. The education system in mainland China focuses on assiduous preparation for the national university entrance exam, the gaokao, often at the expense of extracurricular activities.
About 400 overseas education agencies — including joint Chinese-foreign schools, language training centers and college application consulting agencies — are certified by the Chinese Ministry of Education. The ministry is affiliated with the two largest application consulting agencies in China, the China Center for International Education Exchange and Chivast Education International.
Some of these agencies offer to write their clients’ college essays from scratch, train them for alumni interviews and even modify student transcripts, consultants have said.
Capitalizing on the increasingly globalized education system, ThinkTank Learning has tapped into the market in the United States and China.
The founder of the company is Steven Ma, 32, a former Wall Street analyst who started the company as a business for preparing students for college entrance tests in 2002 before expanding into application consulting in 2006, starting with seven students. In 2010, that number had risen to 300, including 75 from China. The company said it made about $7 million last year, with 50 percent from admission consulting.
ThinkTank said it was able to distill the college admissions process into an exact science, which Mr. Ma compared with genetic engineering. “We make unnatural stuff happen,” he said.
Students, whose parents often pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, are molded by ThinkTank into well-rounded, socially conscious overachievers through a regimen often beginning as early as the year before entering high school. The company designs extracurricular activities for the students; guides them in essay writing; tutors them for the SAT, the U.S. college admission exam; and helps them with meet-and-greet sessions with alumni.
“There’s a system built by colleges designed to pick out future stars and we are here to crack that system,” Mr. Ma said.
LuShuang Xu provides an example of that approach. Ms. Xu, who was born and raised in China before emigrating to suburban California at age 9, had high hopes that she would be the first in her family to go to college. But poor results on a practice SAT and a dearth of extracurricular activities convinced Ms. Xu, 17, that she needed a scholastic makeover if she were to make it into a school her parents could brag about to relatives.
ThinkTank sent her to a public speaking camp, helped her improve her college essay and gave her the e-mail addresses of all the members of the Stanford University history department. At the company’s prompting, she found two internships with department professors. She also enrolled in ThinkTank’s college prep courses, which helped improve her SAT score 410 points to 2160 out of 2400. Next autumn, she will start at Harvard University.
ThinkTank’s success with students in California’s Asian-American community, which accounts for 90 percent of the company’s American clients, has drawn interest from wealthy parents in China. Mr. Ma opened an office in Shenzhen in 2009 and another in Beijing last year.
The company entered China at a time when the college consulting industry on the mainland was booming, with numerous agencies promising to make Chinese student’s academic dreams come true, often through questionable practices.
One company, Best Education, has offices across China and charges clients an average of 500,000 renminbi for writing clients’ essays, training them for the visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and providing career guidance.
“The students just supply their information and we do all the work,” said one representative, who requested anonymity to protect his job. Best Education offers a 50 percent refund if an applicant is rejected by the student’s chosen schools.
Chinese agencies may not want to alert colleges to their involvement, because applications that clearly appear to come from agencies are rejected by U.S. colleges, but the agencies promote their success in Mandarin. The Future Boshi Overseas Education Agency in Beijing gives a tally on its Web site of clients admitted by each university, including two to Harvard in 2010 and one in 2011.
Reached by telephone, an agency representative said the company did a lot more than just polish résumés. “If a client’s English is poor, our trained professionals can write the essay to make sure it looks perfect,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions from her employer.
The industry’s aggressive practices have been condemned by many American colleges, which say they disapprove of students’ families hiring consultants.
“Students have a responsibility to identify their own path toward future goals, rather than keying in how to get into a certain school,” said Barbara Knuth, the vice provost at Cornell University in New York State, who oversees undergraduate admissions.
Harvard said in an e-mail that it “reviews every application individually and has no interaction” with college admission consulting firms, “though we are certainly aware of their existence.” The University of Pennsylvania, which accepted Ms. Lu from Shenzhen, did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the universities’ unease with these practices, application consulting has proved too profitable to ignore.
Mr. Ma said that out of 110 mainland students, only one has needed a refund, though two clients have been granted admission only if they pay full tuition.
Helping students from China clear the college entry hurdles has presented ThinkTank with a fresh set of challenges. Often they have poor English language skills and have done little with their free time beyond homework. Yet their parents often demand the Ivy League.
“We really have to hold their hand and do everything along with them,” Mr. Ma said, including deliberately leaving spelling mistakes on college essays so they look authentic, training them for the Test of English as a Foreign Language and building extracurricular activities from the ground up.
ThinkTank has founded Model United Nations groups, built a Web site for a Shanghai student’s photography project to get news media coverage and helped another obtain funding to build a hydroelectric generator. For ambitious Chinese parents, ThinkTank’s sales pitch is difficult to resist. Li Manhong, a homemaker from Beijing, has planned for years to send her 17-year-old son to an American college, going so far as to enroll him in a private high school in Portland, Oregon, for the past two years to improve his English and his résumé.
After learning about ThinkTank from a neighbor, Ms. Li persuaded her husband to sign a contract for 90,000 renminbi, which focuses on nine selective U.S. schools. ThinkTank will train her son for the SAT and help him pick internships and even college courses once he becomes a freshman. Ms. Li sees the cost as an investment in her son’s future.
“Whatever it takes to reach his maximum potential,” she said. “It’s worth it.”
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
CLSC and 7th Annual St. Jude's Salsa Fest
Thanks to CLSC parent Soraya Martino and the 7th Annual St. Jude's Salsa Fest for allowing CLSC to participate in their festivities this year!
http://www.ctsalsafest.com/St_Jude.html
For more information on the Salsa Fest (held over Memorial Day weekend, in Stamford), or for information on the Chinese Language School of Connecticut's programs, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.
http://www.ctsalsafest.com/St_Jude.html
For more information on the Salsa Fest (held over Memorial Day weekend, in Stamford), or for information on the Chinese Language School of Connecticut's programs, please visit www.ChineseLanguageSchool.org.
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