Chinese as a Second Language
Thu Sep 1, 2005 at 5:01 pm |
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Here is a portion of an article I found in the Local and State section of The Charlotte Observer today:
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools plans to teach Chinese at several schools, a move that would make the district among the first nationwide to offer the language of the emerging economic superpower.
Mandarin Chinese debuts this year at Independence and Olympic high schools, and Smith Academy of International Languages. Next month, the school board is expected to launch an immersion program for kindergarten and first grade.
I think this is great! Hopefully more school districts will begin to teach Chinese as a second language **cough** our town **cough**.
The article concluded with this paragraph:
“Chinese is rated a Category IV language—considered the toughest to learn. Instead of a 26-letter alphabet of phonetic sounds, it has about 10,000 symbols. To be literate, students need to learn 3,000 to 5,000 and how they can be combined.” said Scott McGinnis of the Defense Language Institute which provides language training for the military.
