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Learning Chinese is Hot
April 26, 2011
What kind of people do we want to be? As human as we can be, in support of children being as human as they can be.
-Ann Pelo and Margie Carter, From Teaching to Thinking
Spanish is still the most popular language taught in schools in the U.S., with over 6 million students.  However, the fastest growing language is Mandarin.  The number of students taking it — 60,000 — while still small, increased by 195% from 2005 to 2008.  Education Week (April 6, 2011) reports that just over 1 million students are studying French; 395,000 German; 205,000 Latin; 73,000 Japanese, and 12,000 Russian.

Two aspects of the report may be seen as concerns.  First, in this age of globalization where today's students will likely be engaging with people all over the world as adults, less than one in five U.S. K-12 students are enrolled in foreign-language education, and fewer than one in three in middle and high school levels.  Second, most students still take their language instruction in the upper grades, while research suggests that children are more able to learn a second language in their early years.






The Beginnings Workshop Book on Literacy contains insightful articles on creating readers, children's conversations, multi-language programs, bilingual education, storytelling and much more.

 

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Comments (1)

Displaying 1 Comment
Gwen Morgan · April 26, 2011
Wheelock College
Lincoln, MA, United States


In one of Shakespeare's plays, a noble is being exiled from England to France. He is bemoaning his fate "never to speak again." It doesn't occur to him that he could learn French. In the United States, children who already speak a different language are forced to learn only in English. Yet the world over, young children speak at least two languages and sometimes
more. Learning these languages while young, and retaining their home language, improves brain functioning. Here in the United States we have a treasure trove of children who speak other languages, who could be national assets when they are older. Yet our goal is that they speak only English;
what a short-sighted policy! Change is happening; we need a complete change.



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