A hard time learning the lingo
0 
Last Sunday, I visited the University of Cincinnati's Raymond Walters College campus. It was the opening day of the new semester of the Greater Cincinnati Chinese School.
Over 18 weeks, the more than 200 students, aged between 5 to 17, will spend three hours every Sunday taking classes to learn to speak, read and write Chinese, as well as brushing up their skills in Chinese painting, calligraphy, dance and other aspects of Chinese culture.
I met an American couple, who sent their three children to the school to learn Chinese. Tracy Stammer, the mother, told me that she and her husband, Todd, have chosen home schooling for their children. However, they decided to send their children to the Chinese school to "learn something different", as China is becoming more and more important in the world these days, Stammer told me.
Most of the teachers are volunteers and most of the students are children of Chinese origin whose parents came from the Chinese mainland.
After the children were ushered into the classrooms with their new textbooks, more than a dozen parents - members of the school's council - gathered together to discuss plans for the Chinese New Year celebration scheduled for Jan 22.
Other parents were playing cards, and still others were shopping in the Chinese grocery market.
Obviously, the parents were having a good time socializing, but I was not so sure about the children.
I sat in a classroom in its main building for about 10 minutes, observing more than a dozen children taking their first lesson after a few weeks' break.
The text seems simple: "I am in a Chinese language school. My teacher is teaching us to speak Chinese, write Chinese characters, narrate nursery rhymes, and draw pictures. And I love learning Chinese."
Go to Forum >>0 Comments