<p>I wonder if this NY Times article is worthy of discussion, in which it profiles the Chinese-American International School in San Francisco, where students from grades 1-8 learn in Mandarin Chinese and English. This includes non-Chinese background (read white) students.</p>
<p>I'm an Australian student learning Mandarin (I've done so all through school, from Grade 1-12) and will continue to do so in a gap year program in China in 2007, and then into university. Is the language learnt commonly in the U.S.? What trends do you see in the future for Mandarin, and interest in China generally, among universities and their students? How important is this going to be to education and to careers?</p>
<p>There's at least one school system in my area that's giving Mandarin as a language option; starting in the middle school.</p>
<p>Interest is obviously growing, as China is now making everything we use.</p>
<p>However, in the long run, I don't really know how useful learning Mandarin will be for many of us here. There are Lots of Chinese Americans who are already bi-lingual from early childhood and (more) bi-cultural, who one would imagine would be ahead of the line for many opportunities where this could be most useful. The Chinese learn English in school I believe, probably better than most of us are likely to learn Mandarin. The people I know who've had business dealings in China have used interpreters; point being they got on without knowing the language themselves.</p>
<p>My S began studying Mandarin in middle school. His high school offered Mandarin as well, but he found it lacking. Instead he took a distance learning course, then spent a summer in Beijing studying prior to his senior year. He is in his second year of Mandarin study at college and will be back in China next summer. His accent is quite good and he reads both simplified and traditional characters. He isn't doing it for a job, but because he loves east Asian civilization.</p>
<p>I've met several people studying Chinese in college. Some like that it's different than the languages more commonly studied while others believe it will be useful for a future career in business or other area.</p>
<p>Our high school's weakest department was languages, offering only French and Spanish, and not even teaching those very well, so Chinese study was not open to my daughter before college. She is now a college sophomore and began studying Chinese last year. It is very intense and challenging, but she loves it. Hopefully, it will also be useful to in her future career.</p>
<p>Isn't language learning more than a communication tool? I'm no expert, but I think it benefits the thinking process, as music learning does; "lights up" different areas of the brain and makes new connections. Doesn't learning another language help us to understand different worldviews? A translater can do only so much.</p>
<p>Chinese and Arabic are the two languages being pushed by the govt. (can't remember the name of the spy branch -- not CIA but something similar) -- as in providing scholarships for students to study these. Largely because these are two of the largest people groups of influence. I encouraged my D toward Chinese as I am uncomfortable with the idea of my D in any Arab countries.</p>
<p>My 8th grade S has been after me to arrange Chinese language lessons for him. His school offers only Spanish, French, and Italian (he's in his 3rd year of French). He wants to take it because it's different from European languages, and he is also interested in studying Arabic. I've heard great things about rosettastone.com, but my S wants a real class rather than an online program. I'm not sure where to find something for a 13-year-old beginner.</p>
<p>I didn't intend to demean the study of language in general, or Mandarin in particular. Indeed, my own daughter is learning Mandarin, and picked her college in part with the excellence of its Chinese instruction in mind.</p>
<p>But it has been a long haul, and it has occurred to me whether this particular effort will, in the end, actually be worth (in her estimation) the very substantial time she has invested over a lot of years. It has been harder for her than Romance languages, particularly writing I think. </p>
<p>This particularly occurs to me before each semester, when she discusses her prospective class schedule and inevitably encounters the course she can't take because it conflicts with Chinese.</p>
<p>My daughter is going into her fourth semester of college (and Chinese study) and has been very lucky so far in that none of the other classes she hoped to take conflicted with Chinese. I think there are two sections at her school, which makes scheduling easier.</p>
<p>Binx, are you thinking of the "National Security Language Initiative"? I can find a page for "CRITICAL LANGUAGE SCHOLARSHIP" information for Arabic but I haven't found one yet for Chinese. </p>
<p>I think it is the National Security Agency that has student program scholarships that include studies in Arabic and Chinese. ("WHERE INTELLIGENCE GOES TO WORK"...)</p>
<p>D is now living in China teaching English to Chinese students. She did a semester abroad in Beijing while in college and then a stint during the summer doing research with a faculty member. Although she took chinese language courses in college, she would not have been able to take college level courses in Chinese, so she was at an island program in Beijing for her semester abroad. In New York State there is a considerable push to add chinese to the high school language curriculum, but figuring out the certification issues and getting quality teachers has been a problem. In China they do offer English in their schools, but many Chinese send their children to after school and weekend classes to learn English, hence my D's job. The time committment to learn Chinese is considerable and I think you really have to love the culture to make it worthwhile to seriously undertake it as an academic subject.</p>
<p>mol10e - would you mind saying what program your D is working with in China? My S graduates this May and is looking to spend a year teaching English in either China or Japan - there are so many programs now, its hard to know which are good.</p>
<p>In re: the gummint and foreign languages. I work with a former intelligence officer who enlisted in the Air Force, where they discovered he was really bright and shipped him off to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey (where, much to his regret now, they talked him into accepting a commission). A young family friend just had much the same thing happen after enlisting in the Army. He did well on his aptitude tests and was sent to Monterey. Both of them learned Arabic.</p>
<p>I just started taking Mandarin Chinese this year, my senior year in high school in addition to Russian and it is the hardest language I have studied. Grammar-wise it is very easy, and I think that if people used pin yin (the romanized version of the language) instead of characters, it would be very easy to learn. However, the problem I have with Chinese (and I think most westerners probably do) is that it basically has 3 sets of things to memorize: the word and its meaning, the tones associated with the word, and the characters. I have a great deal of admiration for Chinese children because it must take a lot of patience and hard work to learn to read. No wonder it is a culture that is so passionate about education and devoted to learning! Anyway, I have noticed that there does seem to be a great deal of expansion into Mandarin and I think this is great~ it shows that we are becoming more globally concerned. We should not take language for granted!</p>
<p>Ctmom my daughter works for Teach in China which can be found at teach-in-china.cn. This is an English company and the teachers are from the US, Great Britain and Australia. They have sites in various cities in china. My d is in jinchou which is about 4 hours north of Beijing. It has been a very good experience so far as she is able to take Chinese language courses at the local university for a nominal fee.</p>
<p>Re: The people I know who've had business dealings in China have used interpreters; point being they got on without knowing the language themselves</p>
<p>Even with interpreters it is much better to have some level of understanding of the language. My husband works here (Shanghai) in a JV partnership and there is often confusion during meetings - imagine being in a meeting where the discussion is supposed to be in English but when an issue comes up there is a flurry of Mandarin spoken then the interpreter gives you a 2 word translation and a decision is made.</p>