11/28/2006 6:34:00 AM Chinese language education expands in western suburbs
By Kelly Westhoff
Offered for nearly two decades at Minnetonka, now Wayzata High School is teaching Mandarin Chinese
At Wayzata High School, students are doing morning exercises. Their arms sweep in overhead arcs. Their legs bend at the knees; their torsos twist from the hips. Their collective limbs move in steady coordination with one another. They are practicing an ancient art form. They are learning the traditional tai chi of Chinese students.
This year, 54 students are enrolled in two sections of Chinese language class at Wayzata High. They are learning Mandarin, the official language of China, along with Chinese history and culture. This is the first year Mandarin Chinese has been taught in Wayzata.
"More and more people in the United States are realizing that China is growing rapidly," said Xin Heng, Wayzata's Chinese teacher. "Some of my students say they are taking Chinese because it is fun and different from Spanish, but lots say Chinese is good for their future. They want to study Chinese in university and get into business."
Wayzata's first-year Chinese students are not the only Minnesotans thinking about possible future business relationships with China.
In November 2005, Gov. Tim Pawlenty led a group of roughly 200 business, government and education leaders on a trip to China. The trip was designed to bolster existing Minnesota-China trade relationships and identify new areas for trade growth.
Once in China, however, the Minnesota delegation was struck by the number of Chinese children they saw learning English.
Upon returning from China, Pawlenty proposed an initiative to develop a statewide Mandarin Chinese curriculum that would help prepare Minnesota students for a future world in which a strong and booming Chinese economy will be a reality.
The governor's proposal also addressed the shortage of Mandarin Chinese teachers and called on the state to develop training and licensure programs. The Minnesota Legislature passed the initiative this past spring.
Minnesota Education Commissioner Alice Seagren, along with Department of Education staff and Minnesota teachers, have been meeting since the summer to develop Mandarin-Chinese curriculum guidelines, text book recommendations and assessment benchmarks. Their recommendations will be presented to the Legislature in February 2007.
To help energize Minnesota's educators about the new Mandarin Chinese initiative, a group of 13 Minnesota superintendents, principals, curriculum directors and teachers traveled to China in June.
Wayzata High School Principal Dr. Craig Paul was among the travelers. The group visited Chinese schools and met Chinese educators.
Nearly 2 million Chinese students are studying English. Yet in the United States, only 24,000 students are studying Mandarin Chinese, Paul told the Wayzata School Board in a presentation about his trip.
His district is now working to increase the number of American students learning Mandarin Chinese.
But Wayzata is not the only area district to offer the language. The Minnetonka School District has been offering Mandarin Chinese since 1988.
Minnetonka students may begin studying Mandarin Chinese in eighth grade. This year, 200 middle and high school students are enrolled in Mandarin Chinese classes, said Dr. Michael Lovett, assistant superintendent for human resources.
The district employs one full-time and two part-time Mandarin Chinese teachers.
The Minnetonka district also participates in the Minnesota/China Teacher Exchange Program, which has been run through the department of education since 1985.
The program gives Minnesota teachers an opportunity to swap a semester or a school year with a teacher in China. The Minnetonka teachers who have participated in the program teach English and American culture in China, while the Chinese teachers who come to Minnetonka teach Chinese language and culture here.
Xin Heng, Wayzata's Mandarin Chinese teacher, used to teach Chinese in Minnetonka. She did not, however, come to Minnesota as an exchange teacher. She is a resident of Minnesota and has lived here for eight years. She grew up in Xian, China, which is home to the famous Terra Cotta Warriors.
"Chinese is considered one of the hardest languages to learn, but I tell the students Chinese isn't hard, it's just different," said Heng.
"Looking at it, the symbols and characters are hard because they do look different," she said.
Many of the characters are pictographs, meaning they represent images, she explained. For example, the character for the word "territory" is shaped like a square. It is easy to imagine the square character as a fence. Plus, Heng said, in Chinese, each character is pronounced as just one syllable.
Students in Heng's class are learning to read and write Chinese characters, but they are also learning to read Pinyin, which is the language written in Roman letters.
The Chinese government adopted Pinyin in 1979. The system spells words in an alphabet that looks familiar to English speakers, even though all the letters don't correlate to English sounds.
Another aspect of Chinese that makes the language easy to learn, Heng said, is that the verbs never change forms. While in English, for instance, the verb "to be" changes to "am," "is" and "are" depending on the subject, in Chinese, the verb "to be" never changes.
"The hard part of Chinese is the tone," conceded Heng. "Chinese is a tonal language and the students have to pay attention to the tone. I really emphasize tone in class. It's the most important element of the language."
She added, "Sometimes the students get so excited that they can finally say the words correctly, that then they forget all about the tone. But I have to remind them. They can't forget the tone."
For example, explained Heng, the word "ma" in Chinese can be pronounced in four different ways depending on the accent placed on the letter "a." Say the word one way and it means "mother." Say it another way and it means "hemp." Say it a third way and the word means "horse." Say it the final way and the word means "scold."
"I remind students not to call their mother a horse," Heng said with a smile.
Beyond language skills, Wayzata's Chinese students are also learning about Chinese culture. "The students are really into the culture lessons," said Heng, "sometimes even more than the language. As soon as I introduce something about the culture of China, they are so interested."
Heng explained, "I teach about Chinese history. I taught them about Confucius, who he is and his golden rules. I taught about Marco Polo and when he went to China for trade, and that is how Italy and China have similar foods like noodles. I introduced them to the original layout of Beijing and we learned about ancient Chinese architecture."
Students also learn about Chinese culture directly through the language. When the school year first started and students learned basic conversation starters like "What's your name?" they learned that in Chinese, people state their last name first.
They also learned that a very common question in Chinese culture is "How old are you?"
Heng smiled. "You don't ask that in the United States."
