New Zealand opens opportunities for children to learn Mandarin Chinese

In 2010 all 7-10 year old children will have the opportunity to learn another language including Mandarin Chinese.

Learning a language brings positive benefits

More New Zealanders may be speaking another language in the years to come, thanks to an upcoming initiative that will require a second language to be offered to all students in Years 7-10. The new curriculum, which comes into effect in 2010 in New Zealand schools, states that all children should receive the opportunity to learn another language. Promoting a multi-lingual society is a priority for the government as it benefits international trade and the economy, and promotes positive interaction between cultures in our communities. Many educators also believe that learning another language can increase the potential for success in other subjects at school.

West Auckland resident Tom Essex was introduced to Chinese, Japanese and German as an 11 year-old at Te Atatu Intermediate School, and decided to continue studying the Chinese language at Rutherford High School. "I guess I had a bit of fascination with China, so I decided on Chinese," he says. Although widely reputed to be a difficult language to learn, Tom says it "wasn't too difficult" because he started learning at a young age. He says that although his parents don't speak a second language, they were very supportive and this was something that helped his progress.

Learning a second language is beneficial for a number of reasons, says Tom.
Not only does it help people become more aware of the outside world, but it also develops empathy for other cultures.

“It broadens your horizons and opens up a whole new section of society that you might not previously have associated with,” he says, “and in the case of Chinese, I've suddenly gained access to nearly a third of the world's population.”

Ohio take Mandarin Chinese for children seriously developing with FLAP

... (the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language Assistance Program goals and outcomes as well as Professional Development Modules

Project Goals

The goals for our (Ohio) K-4 Content-Enriched Mandarin Curriculum Project are:

To develop an age-appropriate Chinese language program that reinforces content and skills from the regular curriculum and spirals vocabulary, sentence patterns and cultural content so that all children can be successful learning Chinese;
To build the capacity of teachers to use the curriculum and to adapt it for their particular teaching settings through Web-based professional development modules;
To pilot the curriculum in 10 Ohio sites to garner feedback to revise the curriculum for wider distribution; and
To establish a network of elementary Chinese language teachers to support professional growth and the exchange of ideas.

KEVIN Rudd has called on Australians to .. make their nation the most Asia-literate country in the West.

In a major speech in Singapore, the Prime Minister declared his dream of Australian children learning Chinese or Japanese and reaching out to the region.

"I am committed to making Australia the most Asia-literate country in the collective West," he announced.

Labor went to the last election promising $62 million for new Asian language courses in schools.

But Mr Rudd's new promise raises the commitment and there is sure to be a push for extra funding.

Mr Rudd last night said the time had come for Australians to be more active in Asia.

"My vision is for the next generation of Australian businessmen and women, economists, accountants, lawyers, architects, artists, film-makers and performers to develop language skills which open their region to them," he said.

The call came as Mr Rudd tried to rev up his plan for a new regional body called the Asia Pacific Community.

Mr Rudd outlined the proposal two months ago and has been selling it during his recent tour of China, South Korea and Singapore.

The Opposition have been scathing of the plan, calling it a flop, and there has been no groundswell of major support from Asian countries.

But Mr Rudd has hit back, saying there are no major "roadblocks" to the idea and saying it was a long-term project.

The speech came after Mr Rudd and Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday signed a new defence deal for greater cooperation between the two nations.

Singapore is due to soon send a medical team to work with Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Earlier in the day, Mr Rudd opened a new junior section of Australian International School Singapore where he spoke to children about the value of Asian languages.

Mr Rudd speaks Mandarin, which he uses often when touring in the region and did it again yesterday at a press conference.

It was Rudd's first prime ministerial visit to Singapore and he has now visited most of the major nations in Asia - including China and Japan twice.

Children stuck with English only langauge skills will find themselves less valuable in the job marketplace

Security Language Initiative" to "dramatically increase the number of Americans learning, speaking and teaching critical-need foreign languages. Foreign language skills are essential to engaging foreign governments and peoples, especially in critical world regions, to promote understanding, convey respect for other cultures, and encourage reform. These skills are also fundamental to the economic competitiveness and security interests of the nation."

Sounds like there's something on which Bush and Obama agree: Nothing could be more dangerous for an America already losing its edge in the world than to teach its children to disdain other languages and distrust other cultures, to skip geography, to forget about travel abroad. If the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians and the Russians are busy learning English so they can do business with us, doesn't it behoove us to learn their languages, too? (In China, all elementary school students must study English.) At a time when the West is threatened by Arab jihadists, don't we need many more intelligence agents and soldiers who speak Arabic?

While activists alarmed about illegal immigration have spent the last decade supporting "English-only" codes and decrying the loss of cultural touchstones associated with western Europe, the actual harm to the nation lies in our refusal to acknowledge the growing economic competitiveness of other countries. South Koreans aren't shunning English. It's one more weapon in their arsenal as they advance in commerce, engineering and the sciences.

So the next time you hear some smart-mouth pundit acting as though foreign language fluency is a sign of decadence or an unbecoming Frenchy-ness, don't fall for it. That pundit likely has a passport. If he has college-age kids, he has probably worked hard to help them study abroad.

Do as he does, not as he says. Enroll your kids in Spanish or Russian or Mandarin classes.

Children aged 15-16 take first Mandarin access exam in Scotland.

Record numbers of children passed their Higher Grade exams. For the first year children ages 15-16 could take Mandarin at Access 3 level.Mandarin Chinese continues to be very active in schools in Scotland. In May 2008, the first Confucius classroom opened in St George's School Edinburgh. Scotland plans to have eight Confucius classrooms in a networked hub.

BBC journalist raises question as to whether testing primary school children is fruitful

Tests - do we still need them?

Do we still need national tests in primary schools in England?

I asked that question at the end of last week's column on the Sats fiasco and I want to return to it.

Judging by your responses, many of you think England should be like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and simply have tests that are marked in schools by the children's own teachers.

These "teacher assessment" should then not be used for league tables.

Many see the current problems with marking of the Sats as symptomatic of an overloaded testing system.

The swell of opinion opposed to externally marked, national tests has been growing.

Ofsted and Ed Balls praise new initiative by top innovative schools teaching curriculum Mandarin Chinese.

The first and second schools to make Mandarin Chinese a compulsory part of the curriculum have been noticed once more for their innovation. This time the partnership between the schools has been praised by Ed Balls and Ofsted.

Pupils from Kingsford Community College in Beckton can win scholarships to top independent school Brighton College. Head teacher Ms Delandes and Mr Cairns Headmaster of Brighton College are sharing their educational expertise as governors on each other's school boards. Once an innovative school you continue to be innovative it seems.

The links between the schools have already won over one body more often noted for its trenchant criticisms of state schools – the aforementioned Ofsted. In a recent report on Kingsford, the inspectors declared: "The school has introduced a variety of initiatives that have raised the school's profile both locally and nationally. Some, such as the introduction of Mandarin and the link with an independent school to provide scholarships into their sixth-form, are highly innovative."

We share our experiences in teaching Mandarin Chinese young including Mandarama at the SSAT Chinese network conference

Please come and see us either at our exhibition stand or during our workshop. Get guest access to Mandarama at our stand and learn about how children learn languages young at our workshop. We are sharing our experience in teaching Chinese young and would like to hear your views too.

Virtual worlds can be valuable places where children rehearse what they will do in real life, reveals research.

Virtual worlds can be valuable places where children rehearse what they will do in real life, reveals research.

They are also a "powerful and engaging" alternative to more passive pursuits such as watching TV, said the BBC-sponsored study.

Chinese and English use different parts of the brain

Chinese- and English-speaking dyslexics have different neurological deficits, according to a study released Monday which suggests that dyslexia may be different brain disorders in the two cultures.

At the functional level, it's easy to understand why Chinese and English speakers use different parts of the brain to read language," said Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and neuroscience at the University of Hong Kong, and author on the paper.

"The different brain networks accommodate the different features of English and Chinese. The two systems are dramatically different. Chinese is pictographic and English is more phonological, or sound-based."