Tech fosters Chinese language learning

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From  http://www.eschoolnews.com

Tech fosters Chinese language learning
Number of K-12 students learning Chinese on the rise

>>From eSchool News staff and wire service reports
January 13, 2006

As Mandarin Chinese language instruction becomes more popular in U.S.
schools, a lack of qualified teachers has caused some schools to consider
using distance-education technologies to conduct classes. Mandarin Chinese
is the world's most widely spoken language, but it's only just beginning
to surface in U.S. classrooms, especially at the elementary level. Like
most educators whose schools have started Chinese language programs
recently, officials with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS)--which launched
a Mandarin Chinese language program in 1999--hope their program will help
prepare students for life and work in the new global economy, one where
emerging nations such as China and India are expected to play a key role,
experts say.

Though CPS relies primarily on face-to-face instruction to deliver Chinese
language courses, administrators there are looking for technological
solutions that can help bridge certain cultural and language barriers in
the classroom. "We're looking into distance learning, but funding is an
issue right now," said Robert Davis, who works with the district's Chicago
Chinese Connection Program. "We do use distance learning to teach other
languages between multiple schools in our district, but the Chinese
program is new and growing. It's something we'd like to do."
Unfortunately, for a school system the size of Chicago--the nation's third
largest--finding a solution that meets its needs, and the needs of its
students, isn't easy.

Though the market for technology-based learning tools is growing, Davis
said, the district is cautious about implementing new solutions and tries
to research each new product thoroughly. Currently, the district's Chinese
program makes use of a multimedia program called Chengo Chinese, a joint
venture of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the Chinese Ministry
of Education. The web-based, flash-based tool is aligned with district
curriculum and uses quizzes and games to help students grasp the Chinese
language. Chicago's Chinese program began with three schools and is now
present in 20 district elementary schools (grades K-8) and high schools
(grades 9-12). Chinese language instruction begins in kindergarten. The
district has a total of 613 schools. "Twenty schools isn't huge, but it's
significant," Davis said.

So far, the number of students nationwide who are learning Mandarin
Chinese is minuscule--about 24,000, most of them in high school. Compare
that with the 3 million or so who study Spanish, the most popular language
in the nation's schools, followed by French and German. But that number is
growing as policy makers and school leaders aim to prepare students for
life and work in the new global economy. Several large school districts in
addition to Chicago's have launched Mandarin programs recently, including
Philadelphia, Houston, and Boston.

"Clearly, using technology for this generation of kids, who are so
familiar with it, is going to be helpful," said Michael Levine, education
director for the Asia Society in New York City. "We haven't broken the
mold for how to use technology in languages, and these early projects
represent a very good--if inadequate-- start in what we hope will become
an extremely important use of technology in the future." The Kentucky
Virtual International High School, launched this year, will allow students
from any public Kentucky school to receive an international curriculum and
diploma. The school was a 2005 co-recipient of the Goldman Sachs
Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education, a program to
promote international knowledge and skills in the nation's schools and
communities.

The school signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese Ministry
of Education to help create a virtual Chinese course and to help expand
Chinese language and cultural professional development activities
statewide. Students will have to demonstrate proficiency in a language,
complete courses in international economics and comparative government,
and participate in an international travel experience and service project.
High schools across the country were asked by the College Board's world
language initiative whether they'd consider adding Advanced Placement (AP)
courses in Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese--and the organization
was amazed at the results, said Tom Matts, initiative director.

Fifty schools in the 2003 survey said they'd offer the Russian option,
about 175 said Japanese, and 240 said Italian. "And for Chinese, it was
2,400--10 times the number of any of the other three," Matts said. "We had
no idea there was such an incredible interest out there. Of all the new AP
courses, certainly Chinese shows the most promise for growth." In the U.S.
Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee is considering a proposal to
allocate $1.3 billion to boost Chinese language and culture classes in
public school--and China, too, is doing its part, Levine said.  China's
education ministry has formed partnerships with states such as Kentucky
and Kansas, as well as the countries of Brazil, Australia, and the United
Kingdom, to boost teacher exchanges and training.

"Distance learning [is a] great possibility for language courses, because
now you can have live chats using the technology, and you can accomplish
quite a bit," said Mary Abbott, the director of education for the American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. "In previous years, there
was quite a bit of skepticism about distance learning, because we didn't
have the capabilities we have now, and teachers are more comfortable using
the technology," she said. "I think we're just starting to see the
explosion of Mandarin Chinese, and I think within the next year we'll see
more distance-learning programs [for studying the language]," Abbott said.

At Woodstock Elementary School in Portland, Ore., students in teacher Shin
Yen's kindergarten class quickly learn the Mandarin Chinese names for
different shapes."Yuan," her students chant as she holds up a circle,
without missing a beat. A triangle comes next, and they call out,
"San-Jiao." Then a square--"Zheng-fangxing"--and so on down the line. The
Woodstock class is on the front lines of the effort to get more students
learning Mandarin, a nod to China's emergence as a global superpower of
the unfolding century.

The Oregon program, though, is the first in the country to track students
from kindergarten to college. The school district and the University of
Oregon won a $700,000 grant from the U.S. Defense Department for the
program last fall. The idea is for students to move from the Portland
school system to the university, where scholarships will be offered to
students who will take a standard college curriculum taught largely in
Chinese. Students also can opt to spend their junior year abroad, studying
at Nanjing University in China. The goal, organizers say, is for the
program to be a model that other schools and universities can duplicate,
and for students to emerge ready for the workforce, with a native fluency
in Chinese.

Eight years ago, when the Woodstock program began, the majority of
students were of Asian descent, Woodstock principal Mary Patterson said,
many of them adopted daughters whose parents wanted them to feel some kind
of connection to their native country. Now the program is increasingly
mixed ethnically, she said; for the first time this year, the program had
a waiting list, and interested parents had to be turned away. It's long
been accepted that the younger a child is, the easier it is to introduce
him or her to a second language, said Patterson.

In September, most of Yen's 24 students couldn't speak a single word of
Mandarin, one of the most difficult languages to learn. But three months
later, the students were singing songs in Mandarin, laboriously printing
Chinese characters, and following Yen's instructions, delivered in
Mandarin, with no need for any English translation--jumping up to
impersonate trees, mountains, and frogs at her command. Teaching begins
slowly, Yen said, with repetition of about 20 to 25 Chinese characters,
since Mandarin has no alphabet in the Western sense--just 3,500 base
characters that are then combined to form other words. Each year, students
learn about 150 characters, she said, via constant repetition and
memorization.

By the time students get to fourth grade, they are relatively fluent; Lily
Rappaport, 9, said she sometimes dreams in Mandarin, after five years in
the program. Being in the program has its disadvantages, she said; for
one, her parents can't be much help with her homework. "I am the only one
in my family who really speaks it," she said. "I have to figure it out by
myself." In the higher grade levels, students at Woodstock take not just
language-learning classes but also math and science courses that are
taught in Mandarin.

In Jessica Bucknam's fourth-grade math class, students answer her
questions on graphing and remainders in easy, practiced Chinese. She mixes
in some language learning with the math as well, asking students whether a
wrong answer needs a smiley face or a frown next to it and waiting for
their answer in Chinese. Yen and Bucknam are both native Mandarin
speakers, but finding teachers for the program is among the greatest
challenges, Patterson said. Levine, of the Asia Society, agrees. Where to
find the teachers to meet the increasing demand for Chinese classes is the
"$64,000 question," he said. "For the Chinese language, or any other kind
of critical language, we're going to need to find many, many more
teachers."

That's where some experts say technology can help, especially in the most
rural and remote locales, where tapping instructors with special skills is
difficult, if not impossible. "Technology can play a really critical,
supportive role, and in some instances it can spread one teacher's
expertise much more judiciously, particularly in rural areas," explained
Levine. "Some [distance-education] programs are supplementary, and some
will help home-schooled children who wouldn't normally have access."

Education officials should try for more teacher exchanges with China, he
said, and consider alternative certification programs for some of the many
Chinese speakers who live in the United States but are not licensed as
teachers. Teacher preparation programs at universities also could ramp up
efforts to train language educators. "There are great big multiples of
kids who are studying the European languages, but when we think about our
economy, and the new markets we are expanding into, it is time to
recalibrate some of our attention," Levine said.

President Bush recently announced a national initiative, the National
Security Language Initiative (NSLI), to help U.S. students master
critically needed foreign language skills to help the nation remain
competitive. NSLI is a partnership between ED, the U.S. Department of
State, and the Department of Defense. The initiative aims to expand the
number of U.S. citizens beginning and mastering critical-needs languages
at a younger age, increasing the number of advanced-level foreign language
speakers, and expanding the number of critical-needs foreign language
teachers.

"It is not simply a matter that not enough Americans are learning these
foreign languages--we don't have enough teachers to teach these foreign
languages," said Barry Lowenkron, assistant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights, and labor, during a briefing on the initiative.
"We were struck by the fact that less than 2 percent of high school
students in the United States combined today study Arabic, Farsi, Urdu,
Korean, Japanese, Russian, or Chinese. We need programs to help them
study. We also need teachers to teach these critical languages," he said.


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