Beyond Tourist Language

In her piece "Calibrating Content and Language in the Immersion Classroom," Heather Clydesdale of Asia Society gets it right about the challenges of any language immersion program. This challenge is particularly pronounced during the Elementary grades for immersion programs, not only because of the developmental stages of the students, but also because of the American educational curriculum framework. In fact, it is the same framework of most formal educational infrastructures around the world.

During elementary years, while there might be distinct subjects like Math or Reading or Social Studies, in practice, this learning can be integrated into projects and not distinct subjects. This gets a little harder to do as one progresses up the line through middle and high school grades. Progressive educators might argue against the dominance of single-subject teaching, but it is what prevails in the older grades.

Despite all the great work Asia Society has been doing to educate people across this landscape, it is truly unfortunate that San Francisco Magazine made this big splash recently regarding Mandarin Immersion programs:

See "So You Want Your Kid to Speak Mandarin" in the April 2015 issue of San Francisco Magazine.

Learning Mandarin, or as I often hear it so crassly stated by these plebes, "doing Mandarin" - has become so trendy that it is somehow a signal of wealth, luxury and being "on trend." What a mess.
Meanwhile, dual language immersion programs that were designed to on-board immigrant ESL kids to more successful English proficiency has been turned on its head, twisted around, and spat out as no more than a luxury accessory.

More profoundly twisted is that these programs are being perverted into targets as anti-diversity engines. Says Rachel Levin, the writer of this very misinformed article in SF Magazine:

That’s not to say that everyone’s a happy customer. Some white parents just want a more multicultural experience for their kids—and then are shocked by what being a minority in middle school can actually mean.

Language immersion programs were not designed to be "diverse." They were designed in response to the pivotal lawsuit Lau v. Nichols and the highly contentious battle over language in the education field, itself. But sure, never mind these "minor" details when you're writing for a magazine whose parent company is Modern Luxury. No wonder the parents quoted in this article are so deluded by what they think they are doing. I hope they know the end result of their kids' educations will be sub-par. If there is a weak curriculum and no support for the coherent DLI model, or no literacy pathway, or weak enforcement of the pathway, or the pathway sputters out by 4th grade, or the parents don't care about homework (not to mention that they literally are not able to track the homework because they are so illiterate in Chinese), then there will be no success.

Who are the culprits committing all these offenses in Mandarin Immersion? Put 2 and 2 together... ;)

Meanwhile, let's turn our attention back to some people who know what they are talking about. All that Clydesdale's article points out, and thus what the teachers, themselves, point out - all is relevant in both directions, for learning English and for learning Mandarin. The point is not lost on French Immersion educators in this country. But it is certainly lost on those who sign up for Mandarin. And that precious point is that

Immersion is based upon the premise that learning content through a new language builds proficiency in both the content and language. Yet, whatever the model (ranging from 80 to 50% of instruction in the target language), the reality is that teachers must carefully calibrate what they teach in order to realize these two goals.

“Why? Because we have to teach not just the language, we also have to teach the content,” asserts Pat Wen-Tsui Lo, a Resource Specialist of the New York State Statewide Language Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network (Language RBERN) at New York University. “That is our balancing act. Math, social studies, and science on one hand, and Chinese language arts on the other.”

Lo notes that “language arts” goes beyond vocabulary, characters, and grammar. It encompasses structuring main ideas, supporting details and sequencing, as well as manipulating rhythm and rhyme. 

I've been trying to make this point over and over again in this blog. But don't take it from me. Take it from the experts.

Too many parents and educators have approached this entire Mandarin Immersion affair as if the goals were nothing more than what kids now achieve in high school level Mandarin 1, 2, 3 and AP classes, or even what kids might achieve as college undergraduates. This is horribly wrong. Imagine if those textbooks dictated the entirety of what your kid would learn during elementary years. When Mandarin Immersion goes wrong, this is how, where and why it is going wrong.

Your elementary school child must learn far more during these years than what is laid out in a Chinese school or even college level Chinese language textbook that might be used here in America, whether in a Saturday Chinese school setting or an elite university. Without learning all that content, then your kid will be in trouble by middle school years. Your child will not have the foundation to do well in other subjects at that time, let alone doing well during high school. Why? Simply because your child didn't learn enough math, English language arts, social studies, science and all the critical thinking skills that come with those subjects. Your kid has to learn these subjects quite intensively at the elementary level in order to comprehend those same subjects during 6-8th grades, while preparing to do those subjects during 9-12th grades. But with only a foundation of knowledge that has been dictated by ACTFL (hence my overriding objection to using the ACTFL standards for elementary immersion all together), then your kid has simply not gotten a good education with sufficient content that would serve as an adequate springboard to the subsequent grades.