Chinese classes catch on

Learning Mandarin gives area students a global edge

Sandra Pedicini | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 30, 2006


PHOTOS

Mandarin class (JACOB LANGSTON, ORLANDO SENTINEL)
Aug 22, 2006

Yin-Fang Wang (JACOB LANGSTON, ORLANDO SENTINEL)
Aug 23, 2006
EASY TO SPEAK
The Chinese language's character set makes learning how to read and write it difficult, linguists say. But speaking the language can be relatively easy.

That's because, while reading and writing involves memorizing thousands of characters, the spoken language is more streamlined than, say, Spanish or English. For example, it doesn't use different forms of verbs.

"Spoken Chinese, I would argue, is one of the easiest languages on Earth," said Cynthia Ning, executive director of the Chinese Language Teachers Association. "It has almost no grammar."

Chinese, unlike other languages such as Spanish, also does not assign genders to nouns.

Some educators and leaders have suggested replacing Chinese characters with the Roman alphabet, already frequently used in typing and text-messaging. But "there's huge resistance" to that idea in the general population, Ning said

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At Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando, teenagers pass around pictures of gardens in the Chinese city of Suzhou and learn the subtle differences between two greetings, Ni men hao and nin hao.

At StarChild Academy in Apopka, Hannah Khong sings "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" in Mandarin to children as young as 6 weeks old.

China is positioning itself as a major player in the global economy. And courses in Mandarin, the official Chinese dialect, are being added at private and public schools -- even preschools -- nationwide "at a rapid pace," said Steve Ackley, director of communications for the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

China's government is spending millions of dollars to promote its language and culture around the world. Earlier this year, President Bush unveiled a $114 million National Security Language Initiative to promote the teaching of several "critical-need" languages, including Chinese.

Still, while more than 200 million children in China are studying English, only 24,000 of 54 million elementary and secondary-school children in the United States are learning Chinese, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Florida's Department of Education says no school districts in the state offered Mandarin until 2004, when Palm Beach County began doing so. Broward and Miami-Dade followed in 2005, though classes were small. In 2005-06, fewer than 100 students were signed up for the classes in all three districts.

But interest is growing fast. Orange County is following suit with its first school, Timber Creek High, adding Mandarin to its roster of foreign languages this fall. Seventy students have signed up.

The school district is considering expanding the class to more schools -- from elementary on up -- perhaps as early as the next school year.

"We're really looking aggressively into this," said Dianne Lovett, the district's senior director for advanced studies. "We believe it's important for our kids to be able to compete globally."

Lovett and another Orange County school administrator traveled to China this summer with about 350 school officials from throughout the United States. The Chinese government paid for virtually the entire trip, Lovett said, except for airfare to Los Angeles.

China's National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, also called Hanban, earlier this year announced a five-year partnership with the College Board, a nonprofit educational group that administers the SAT and the Advanced Placement program in the United States, to teach more students Chinese before they graduate from high school.

The College Board this fall expanded its language offerings with Advanced Placement programs in Chinese and Japanese for U.S. high schools.

The response: About 2,400 schools expressed interest in offering Mandarin in a recent survey. In contrast, Japanese and Italian, which started last year, piqued the interest of fewer than 300 schools apiece.

There aren't enough teachers in the U.S. qualified to teach Chinese, so Hanban and the College Board plan to bring in 250 guest teachers from China.

China is trying to "make a statement they are a major nation, they are a major culture," said Oded Shenkar, an Ohio State University professor and author of The Chinese Century, about China's rising economy.

"They are hoping to build . . . a constituency that will be perhaps more supportive of China, more open to things Chinese, that is not going to look at Chinese products, Chinese companies coming into this country and so forth as an invasion of sorts."

China has more than 1.3 billion people, and Chinese is the world's most widely spoken language.

Still, Yin-Fang Wang, who has taught Mandarin at the private Lake Highland Prep since its program began four years ago, said China and its culture remain a mystery to many Westerners.

"If I ask: 'What do you think about Chinese culture? What do you think about Chinese civilization? Can you say some Chinese celebrities or historical figures?' Basically, not many people can give me a very good answer," she said.

Nine students took Chinese the first year at Lake Highland. This year, 41 have signed up for Chinese I, with the course offered to eighth-graders for the first time.

"My dad told me I should take it," said Mia Jakubisin, a ninth-grader. "We read articles that said Mandarin is the rising language to take."

Foreign-language experts say parents and educators realize the importance of teaching children other languages and cultures -- and not just the standards, such as Spanish.

"The business sector is crying out for people who can help them . . . do more business and better business in the global economy with the major players, and certainly the Middle East and the Chinese and the Russians are, more and more, major players," said Ackley of the foreign-languages council.

"There's a lot to be said for being able to converse with them on their terms."

At StarChild Academy, administrators are trying to get children started as early as possible. Everyone at the child-care center's Wekiva location is taught Chinese in some way for about 15 minutes a day.

Even the infants and toddlers participate, learning songs and rhymes in Mandarin.

"They are mesmerized by it," StarChild co-owner Cindy Zimmermann said.

Denise Bennett-Walls said she saw evidence the program works when her eldest son, Jefferson, thanked a waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Mandarin. Jefferson was only 4.

Sandra Pedicini can be reached at 407-322-7669 or spedicini@orlandosentinel.com.