Language Education—The Surge in Chinese Language Classes

This week, the New York Times reported that in American schools, both private and public, primary and secondary, there is growing interest in Chinese language education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/education/21chinese.html?hpw

The article says:

“The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Chinese, introduced in 2007, has grown so fast that it is likely to pass German this year as the third most-tested A.P. language, after Spanish and French, said Trevor Packer, a vice president at the College Board.

….

Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.”

Foreseeing this growing interest, Panda Land started to offer lessons and private tutoring for Chinese language education to children from 3 years old to high school students since January 2009. Currently several classes are offered each week. We use the textbook series published in China and endorsed by the Chinese government for teaching children of overseas Chinese families around the world. It is a very structured series with 4 books covering preschool levels and 12 books for grade levels. We started with the preschool level books to teach children in Panda Land as the introduction phase. We teach reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The Pinyin system is taught to facilitate the speaking. In addition to this formal textbook series, we also integrate materials from other sources, including the Ni Hao series published in Australia and used by many international schools around the world, as well as activity books to add cultural elements to the education. For private tutoring, we offer lessons to meet each individual’s interest and need, including working with schoolteachers to help students to meet school standards.

Many parents had told me that they wanted their children to learn Chinese. Some hope their children will be able to go to China for study once they get in college; others simply hope their children will be smart and have a good future. They all understand that learning Chinese is a long term pursuit and they need to get their children to start it now and keep studying. I am like these parents and have my own children learn Chinese.

Panda Land was established a full year ago, and we wish to provide Chinese education to more and more children. If you want your child to study Chinese or you know someone who wants their children to learn Chinese, Panda Land would like you and your friends to enjoy us today.

Scramble the Cognitive Egg with Mandarin Chinese

This morning I was snowed in, like most people on the North Shore, and felt cold and hungry. This is the first Sunday of the New Year and I was thinking of scrambled eggs for breakfast. Before doing that, I started my usual morning routine of having a cup of lemon tea and logging in to my computer. With the scrambled eggs on my mind, I was intrigued by the suggestion of scrambling the cognitive egg as described in the most emailed article in the NY Times, How to Train the Aging Brain, and want to share some of it with you.

In the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03adult-t.html?hp , the author says that, for “brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s”,

The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.

“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”

Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.

Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.

“There’s a place for information,” Dr. Taylor says. “We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”

……

Such new discovery, Dr. Mezirow says, is the “essential thing in adult learning.”

“As adults we have all those brain pathways built up, and we need to look at our insights critically,” he says. “This is the best way for adults to learn. And if we do it, we can remain sharp.”

And so I wonder, was my cognitive egg scrambled by reading that book on Thomas Jefferson? Did I, by exploring the flaws in a man I admire, create a suitably disorienting dilemma? Have I, as a result, shaken up and fed a brain cell or two?

In Panda Land, we have several adults who have put a lot of effort into learning Mandarin Chinese over the past year. Relating to their experience, I am trying to apply the suggestion and the method from this article to the situation of adults learning Mandarin Chinese.

If this article makes sense to you, let me ask you a few questions. Since Chinese language and culture are so different from those of the West, their different perception of the world can certainly provide you a challenge: Could you scramble your cognitive egg by learning Mandarin Chinese, as the article suggested learning a foreign language? Could you create a suitably disorienting dilemma by immersing yourself in the language and culture? Could you shake up and feed your brain a cell or two at a time by learning Chinese characters one by one?

I hope this will make some sense to you or at least get you thinking in the New Year. Well, I am going to make scrambled eggs for my breakfast and I like to scramble them using olive oil with lots of vegetables—onions, green and red bell peppers, tomatoes and Herbes de Provence. As a Chinese, I need to pay attention to the color, smell, and taste of the dish.

Whether you like scrambled eggs or not, let’s wish everyone in Panda Land:

A Happy and Healthy New Year! 新年快乐!

寻根(xún gēn )—Seeking Roots

Today, I found an article online, http://www.mitbbs.com/news_wenzhang/Headline/31280685.html, about the American Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman Jr., and his wife who took their adopted Chinese daughter to visit her hometown Yangzhou on Dec. 3, 2009. It said that this was her first trip back since their daughter left Yangzhou 10 years ago.

In Panda Land there are many girls from China who are learning Chinese language and culture. I hope someday when they go to China, they will feel comfortable connecting to the people and culture.

感恩节快乐(gǎn ēn jié kuài lè ) -- Happy Thanksgiving!

This past week in Panda Land, we learned how to say Happy Thanksgiving in Chinese and how to say all different food we like for Thanksgiving dinner. The Chinese word for Turkey is 火鸡 (huǒ jī ). Literally it translates to “fire chicken”. When I told students about the name they laughed and asked why. Frankly I don’t really know where the name is from. I can only relate fire to the color of the feathers of a wild turkey. When I was growing up in China, I never saw a turkey and never knew anyone who ate turkey in China. I thought it was a kind of chicken that grows in America and only Americans eat that. Now I eat turkey every Thanksgiving. In addition to learning to say turkey and other food in Chinese, we also compared Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival -- 中秋节 with American Thanksgiving and wrote about their similarities and differences. Many students related the two holidays with their celebration of harvest, gathering of families and friends, gratefulness and happiness. We learned that despite having two different cultures, Chinese and Americans celebrate their lives in a fundamentally similar way.

On the Thanksgiving Eve, I would like to give my sincere thanks to all who have been supportive to Panda Land this year.

Mandarin--The Sound of the Future

As the world is changing so is Chinatown. Earlier this year, the Boston Globe reported a story on Boston Chinatown Chinese schools whose students were starting to learn Mandarin instead of Cantonese (see “Mandarin – The Language of the 21 Century” on my blog in February). This week the New York Times has a story on Manhattan’s Chinatown adapting to the sound of Mandarin starting with the young generation http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?em .

Keeping up with current globalization and looking into the future, Panda Land brings the sound of Mandarin to Americans on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Every week we have children and adults from all walks of life actively learning Mandarin and enjoying its sound, characters, and culture.

The sound of Mandarin has come from Beijing to you closer than ever before.

“Little White Rabbit”—An Internationally Known Chinese Children’s Song

“Xiao bai tu, bai you bai, liang zhi er duo shu qi lai…” This afternoon in the second floor reading room at the Salem Athenaeum, a group of children were reading a song in Chinese with me, “little white rabbit, white and so white, two little ears go up upright…” The beautiful chorus of voices sent my mind back to my own kindergarten in Beijing. The voices seem the same, but the faces of children are different. Here these 6 cute children age 5 to 7 are all Americans, but they are speaking Chinese with me. I felt like I was in a wonderland.

I actually don’t remember if I learned this very song in my kindergarten since then we spent so much time learning Chairman Mao’s poems. The first time I heard this song was when I lived in Paris. One day I went to a friend’s house for afternoon tea. My friends told me that her son was studying Chinese in school. Then she asked her son and his school friend to recite a Chinese song to me. That was this song of “little white rabbit.” The two boys were French, now this group of children is American. I must say this little white rabbit is quite international.

The Salem Athenæum Press Release

Chinese Classes for CHILDREN AND Adults

AT THE Salem Athenæum

Since the spring of 2009, the Salem Athenaeum has hosted classes in Mandarin Chinese for both adults and children. Because of their popularity, the Athenæum plans to schedule four classes this fall.

The leader will be Judy Wang Bedell, who was born, raised, and educated in Beijing, China. She has been an instructor in Chinese and in cultural enrichment; she wants to help people make connections with her native country. For more information, you can contact Judy directly at (978) 998-9317; at judy.bedell@gmail.com., or at her web site, www.pandalandchinese.com.

Free information sessions will be held at the Salem Athenæum, 337 Essex Street in Salem, on the following dates: Children: Saturday, September 26, 11:30 AM to noon; or Wednesday, September 23, 3:30 to 4 PM. Adults: Saturday, September 26, 11 to 11:30 AM.

Enrollment for the fall is open now, and membership in the Athenæum is not required. Schedule for children: Wednesdays, 3:30 to 4:30 PM; or Saturdays, 12 AM to 1:00 PM. Two adult classes: Thursdays, 7:15 to 8:15 PM; or Saturdays, 10 to 11 AM.

About The Salem Athenæum

In accordance with its articles of incorporation granted in 1810, The Salem Athenæum was founded to promote literature, the arts and the sciences. As the successor to The Social Library founded in 1760 and The Philosophical Library founded in 1781, it is one of the oldest membership libraries in the United States. The Athenæum has nurtured generations of readers including author Nathaniel Hawthorne and self-taught mathematician and astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch. Today, The Athenæum serves as a lifelong learning resource and community for Salem and the North Shore. It is located at 337 Essex Street in Salem. Program information is available on the Web site: www.salemathenaeum.net

For more information, contact:

Jean Marie Procious, Director

(978)744-2540 or info@salemathenaeum.net

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