Chinese becoming popular with US learners
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-23 05:32

On top of that, Chinese culture also has its own allure. "Many youngsters take a natural interest in China because of its mystique," said Tina Wu, another teacher of Chinese in Houston.

She and others are trying to cultivate this kind of curiosity into a lifelong love.

Wu teaches at Westside High School. "I'm the only one teaching Chinese here, and I have 70 students on five different levels."

Besides the language, she takes her students to Chinatown, letting them play with chopsticks, looking at Chinese paintings and practising calligraphy with brush pens. "I want to broaden their horizons beyond fried rice," she laughed, referring to the standard item on Chinese menus in the West.

"The popularity of Japanese in the past two decades is mostly due to the influx of Japanese cultural products, such as comics and cartoons," Wu said.

"But in our school, Chinese enrolments have already exceeded those for Japanese."

Grades count

Overall data for high school students taking Chinese in the United States is sketchy, but the curriculum will go through some big changes later this year.

Starting from the fall semester, Chinese will be counted as a course for Advanced Placement (AP), which means the grade points earned in high school will be included in college.

That is expected to bump up enrolment in Chinese considerably because students will then be able to lessen their academic and financial burdens in college, Wu said.

However, she cautioned against misinterpreting the change. "It does not mean every high school will offer AP Chinese," she said. "You have to have the resources. A typical high school Chinese programme is a one-woman operation."

Qualified teachers are in short supply. "Where can they be found"  Teachers with a Chinese heritage are a ready talent pool, but they will need appropriate training in methodology. Teachers from outside the United States are available, but will they have the necessary US classroom management skills" Yulan Lin of Boston Public Schools asked at a recent forum for Chinese language education.

Wu revealed that China has trained many teachers who are ready to go abroad, but their efforts are often thwarted by the US consulates, which reject their visa applications. "Now we get a few experienced teachers from China and have training sessions here," she said.

But there is another pool of Chinese language enthusiasts. Running beneath the formal training in high schools is an even larger number of students at "heritage schools," which are operated by ethnic Chinese communities and enrol mostly students of Chinese descent.

Huaxia Chinese School in Houston is one such example. "We have 1,540 students and 150 teachers, the largest such school in the city, and we're growing at a 10 per cent annual rate," principal Wendy Zheng said.

"And there are over 20 Chinese schools of this nature, though smaller, in our municipality."

Most children are sent by their parents, who want them to appreciate their "roots," Zheng said. But about 10 per cent of them are special cases: They are either adopted by non-Chinese parents or of interracial marriages. In other words, they don't hear a word of Chinese at home, "so we teach them Chinese in English," Zheng said.

Both Zheng and Wu admitted that there is a practical side to choosing Chinese. For an ethnic Chinese it would be easier to pick up the language. With the added incentive of college grade points, why not learn Chinese if you are supposed to master a second language anyway."

The same is true for students of Latin American origin who enrol in Spanish classes.

The interest in Chinese among all levels of American students, including non-ethnic Chinese, is very real and rising.

Ninety per cent of Wu's beginning class is non-ethnic Chinese. "Spending one hour each day in a regular high school is very different from three hours at a weekend heritage school. They'll have to love it to continue."

And through passion and perseverance, teachers like Wu have transformed many Americans" interest in Chinese from a casual curiosity into a force that helps cross the cultural divide and bring the two cultures closer.

"My greatest comfort," Wu said, "is to have non-Chinese love the Chinese culture."

(China Daily 02/23/2006 page1)