My daughter attends a Mandarin immersion kindergarten. That means 80 percent of her six-hour day is in Chinese. Math, social studies, science, and arts are all taught exclusively in Mandarin by one teacher. When the teacher wants the kids to sit on the rug, she says it in Mandarin. When it's time for lunch, she tells them in Mandarin. The kids aren't even aware that their teacher speaks English.
Did most of the students in the class have some exposure to Mandarin before kindergarten? Practically none of them. The program is designed for non-Mandarin speaking families and for students who are bilingual or native speakers of Mandarin but nearly all--except maybe one student--speak English as their first language. Many of the kids walked into the class knowing only how to say "Ni Hao," which means hello.
So how do the kids know what the teacher is saying? She uses pictures, drawings, and lots of props to communicate. She's also highly animated and humorous and acts out what she's saying in front of the kids. She might meow and crawl around on the ground to teach the children the word cat. She has to teach twice as hard as a typical teacher since she can't depend only on words.
The children were clueless the first few days and my daughter told me that she had no idea what was going on in class. But after a week, she got the hang of it and now after two months she's counting to 30, rattling off the names of shapes and colors, singing songs. She knows how to say, "Wake up sleepy head," and "Stop that right now!" She gets mad at her brother in Chinese and she tells our cat, "I love you." I'm told that she'll be fluent by third grade.
The kids also go to an hour of English language arts every day taught by a different teacher. In this hour, reading and writing are emphasized. Of course, my daughter loves this time of the day because the teacher speaks English. But only an hour? Is this enough time for the kids to learn English? In kindergarten the kids get only one hour but the amount of instruction in English increases every year until half the day is in English by the 4th grade. In the earlier years, the students proficiency is typically a little lower than that of those in general education. But after three or four years, the immersion students typically do as well or better than their peers in general education. In fact, research actually shows that the immersion experience advances English language development.
Stay tuned for more stories about my daughter's experience in a Mandarin immersion program...
San Francisco
What school does she attend?
Posted by: Sarah | January 29, 2009 at 03:41 PM