FW: Chinese K-16 Flagship project

[Bruno Aeschbacher]

Could be of interest to Seelangers, Russian being mentioned further down:

BR,

Bruno Aeschbacher
Geneva, Switzerland


-----Original Message-----
From: Interpretation (and) translation [mailto:LANTRA-L at SEGATE.SUNET.SE] On
Behalf Of Paul Frank
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 7:36 AM
To: LANTRA-L at SEGATE.SUNET.SE
Subject: CHAT: Chinese K-16 Flagship project

San Jose Mercury News, CA - May 3, 2005
Feds mull national Chinese-language program

By Dana Hull

Mercury News

The federal government, alarmed by the lack of expertise in languages
considered critical to national security, announced today that it wants to
establish a comprehensive Chinese language instruction program for students
in kindergarten through college.

The Chinese K-16 Flagship project will create a sequential course of
instruction with the goal of graduating students who are linguistically and
culturally fluent in Chinese. The request for proposals has attracted
enormous interest from Bay Area educators and institutions who are anxious
to see the program housed in northern California.

Universities are likely to partner with schools that serve elementary,
middle- and high-school students as they collaboratively bid on the
proposal, which currently dedicates $750,000 for the first year. But because
the Bay Area already has a number of intensive Chinese-language programs in
place, some hope the region will have an edge against competitors from
elsewhere around the country.

``We are very excited that the federal government has finally recognized the
importance of Chinese as an area of study and of beginning to learn the
language while you are young,'' said Andrew Corcoran, head of the Chinese
American International School in San Francisco. CAIS, which serves students
from preK-8th grade, is the oldest Mandarin immersion program in the
country. ``There's a lot of opportunity here. I hope the decision makers
look West.''

The new program is part of the ``National Flagship Language Initiative''
which urges advanced skills in languages deemed critical to U.S. national
security. A number of Arabic, Mandarin, Korean and Russian programs already
exist, but security experts now realize that multi-language literacy is best
achieved when instruction starts in the early grades.

``This is the first time that anyone, not just the Department of Defense,
has addressed the issue of a fully articulated program in a critical
language like Chinese,'' said Bob Slater at the National Defense University,
who is overseeing the proposal. ``Too often the programs are not designed
for all years, or the handoff from elementary to middle school is not based
on the same standards. This design is K-16, so you are basically at fourth
level Chinese by the time you even get to college.''

The request for proposals will be available Wednesday online at
www.nflc.org/nfli. Proposals are due by July 8 and will be reviewed by an
independent merit review panel. Only one grant will be awarded, and that
announcement should come in early September.

Contact Dana Hull at dhull at mercurynews.com or (408) 920-2706.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------