<p>With a little bit of luck my son may have a difficult choice between two excellent prep schools. A strong selection of courses and teachers in both Chinese and classics will be very important to him. What questions should he be asking to evaluate their offerings? Thanks in advance for any advice.</p>
<p>Bump, just in case.</p>
<p>Does the Chinese program contain a study abroad section?
How many characters are learned in how many years of the language?
Is the course focused on grammar or total immersion?</p>
<p>Chinese and classics? what is more classic than Chinese?</p>
<p>he should ask questions he wants to, and if they dont accept parent questions, then he should also ask ur questions</p>
<p>characters a year... that has got to be a joke, cuz it better be >500</p>
<p>learning grammar is useless, cuz w/o immersion u not even gonna get that right</p>
<p>I know the correct method...but with the way some foreign language teachers teach, they do just what I described-go over large amounts of lists of vocabulary and grammar, without actually integrating it all, particularly in first year. Of course, the education amounts to **** as the student is able to remember little or nothing of the language.
And there are some programs that learn around 1000 after three years, and some in one. The latter usually move exceptionally slowly and many times are not very good.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions that have come in so far. My son is currently attending a Chinese school on Sundays. He is way in the minority because he does not have even one Mandarin speaking parent, but he loves it and feels it offers him more of an immersion experience. He supplements this with one hour a week with a tutor. He has been learning Mandarin using traditional characters. When you talk about how many characters you learn in a year do you mean reading and writing and do you mean traditional or simplified?</p>