An American School Immerses Itself in All Things Chinese

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An American School Immerses Itself in All Things Chinese

By JANE A. PETERSONOCT. 26, 2014

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Students drawing examples of Mandarin words for geographical terms is a social studies class at Yinghua Academy. Credit Jane Peterson

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MINNEAPOLIS — On weekday mornings, a stream of orange buses and private cars from 75 Minnesota postal codes wrap around Yinghua Academy, the first publicly funded Chinese-immersion charter school in the United States, in the middle-class neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis. Most pupils, from kindergarten to eighth grade, dash to bright-colored classrooms for the 8:45 a.m. bell, eager to begin “morning meeting,” a freewheeling conversation in colloquial Mandarin.

Meanwhile, two grades form five perfect lines in the gym for calisthenics, Chinese style. Dressed neatly in the school’s blue uniforms, the students enthusiastically count each move — “liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi.”

By 9:15, a calm sense of order pervades the school as formal instruction begins for math, reading, social studies, history and science. Instructors teach in Mandarin, often asking questions that prompt a flurry of raised hands. No one seems to speak out of turn. “We bring together both East and West traditions,” explains the academic director, Luyi Lien, who tries to balance Eastern discipline with Western fun.

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Yinghua’s academic director leads a Chinese-style morning calisthenics. Credit Jane Peterson

Ms. Lien helped start Yinghua, which means “English Chinese,” with just 76 students and four teachers in 2006. This autumn a new addition opened that doubled capacity to handle the growing numbers of students. The school now has 660 students, all awarded tuition-free places by lottery. Yinghua is expected to be at its full capacity of 800 students by 2021.

The student-teacher ratio is 10 to one, and 78 percent of the teachers hold advanced degrees, many of them from American universities; three have Ph.D.’s. All receive training in the United States, including two teachers paid for by Hanban, an affiliate of China’s Ministry of Education.

Yinghua Academy is among a handful of total-immersion schools, though the United States has 175 Chinese-immersion programs within regular schools across the country, 18 begun this academic year alone. While immersion programs have a mix of English and Chinese classes, Yinghua teaches all academic subjects in Chinese through fourth grade before moving to a half-English model for grades five to eight.

Total-immersion schools groom students with deeper cultural understanding and stronger Mandarin skills, particularly in reading and writing, Ms. Lien said. “Our goal is real bilingualism by eighth grade, which is near native,” she said.

At Yinghua, the process is intense. Just ahead of snack time in kindergarten, the teacher, who speaks only in Mandarin, thrusts an orange plastic disk in the air and 28 little hands shoot up. She points to one girl who answers correctly — “chengse” — before dashing to the nearby sink to wash her hands. In just minutes, all the students have identified a color and are happily tearing open their snacks. One 5-year-old asks, “Can you open this?” The teacher replies, “bangmang dakai?” On cue, the child repeats and then says, “xie xie” — thank you.

“Yinghua is the best of the best,” according to Hattie Bonds, the mother of two children at the school and a former associate superintendent for Minneapolis public schools. “The first week my son came home from kindergarten and taught my 3-year-old to count to 10 in Chinese,” she recalled. “High expectations are yoked to high results.”

In Minnesota standardized tests, Yinghua students perform at least as well or better than their public school counterparts, even though English classes begin only at age 7. In Minnesota’s Multiple Measure Rating system, Yinghua has ranked within the top 15 percent of all Minnesota public schools for the past three years. (That includes the Focus Rate ranking, which measures the school’s reduction in the achievement gap between higher and lower socioeconomic groups.)

A primary reason, according to the executive director, Susan Berg, is the students’ home environment. Parents who choose immersion are often well educated themselves, and are highly committed to the school’s goals, including nightly homework.

Math results, which are particularly strong, are partly attributed to the Singapore Math curriculum and its eight-step approach to word problems, as well as the Chinese-educated teachers who move through material more quickly than their American peers.

Mathematical terms in Mandarin are also clearer. The word for “triangle,” for instance, “sanjiaoxing,” means three-sided. And when counting to 100, the Chinese use only 10 numbers to build all others; 71, for instance, is written 7-10-1. “The number system is easier to work with,” said Mary McDonald, a seventh-grader who takes an extra university math class once a week. “It’s faster and more organized.”

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A Yinghua teacher congratulating a student. Credit Jane Peterson

Research also shows that early immersion produces cognitive benefits. “These students are better at nonverbal problem solving,” said Dr. Tara Fortune, of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota. “They have better executive control to focus on relevant information, and better listening skills.”

Yinghua’s retention rate this autumn was 93 percent. Asians and Pacific Islanders comprise 47 percent of the student body; Caucasians, 46 percent. At the school, 13 percent qualify for free or reduced school lunches and 8 percent are special-education students. According to Mrs. Berg, almost all the students flourish in immersion, including those with special needs. “These students do well, relatively speaking,” she said. “They are so proud they know Chinese.”

Chinese immersion is apparently an American phenomenon, fueled since 2000 by impressive French and Spanish immersion test results, new charter schools that tap local school district funds, federal grants and, notably, substantial infusions of Chinese government support, particularly since 2004.

But the scope is broadening. China will highlight immersion for the first time at a conference in Europe early next year. “Immersion is still new to the Chinese,” said Joan Brzezinski, executive director of Minnesota’s Confucius Institute. “But they see the results and they now want to reach out to their Confucius Institutes in other countries.”

Since 2004, China has set up 465 Confucius Institutes and 713 Confucius classrooms in 123 countries. The institutes, mostly on university campuses, offer schools compelling incentives. China will cover budget costs for teacher training, materials, top-notch cultural programs and student exchanges. China also offers $10,000 grants to all schools that start teaching Mandarin.

No figures exist for Chinese immersion efforts outside North America, according to an email response from a Hanban spokesman.

While Ms. Brzezinski knows of several immersion programs in Canada, and one in Britain, she says other countries still teach Mandarin as a second language, albeit with impressive results in certain countries, such as Singapore. (Chinese Singaporeans begin Mandarin at an early age and continue through high school.)

Dr. Shuhan Wang, director of the Asia Society’s Chinese Early Language and Immersion Network, based in New York, calls Minnesota a “hidden gem” in the immersion movement. (Other key states include Utah, California, Delaware, Washington, Oregon and North Carolina.) She credits Minnesota’s Concordia College Language Villages for the model of an immersion laboratory. In 1984, it opened the Sen Lin Hu, or “Lake of the Woods,” Chinese village as part of its summer camp immersion programs. “Sen Lin Hu proved that immersion works,” Dr. Wang said. “It gave us both knowledge and best practice.”

The United States Department of Education stopped funding Chinese immersion in 2012, Dr. Wang said, though the Department of Defense still contributes a minimal amount. These days additional support comes from state budgets and from China. “By having people learn Chinese, it becomes a global language,” she said.

After school at Yinghua, preparations are underway for Grandparents’ Day, in line with the Chinese tradition of honoring family elders. Banners are already hung as teachers meet with students to hone speeches and parent volunteers prepare food. Also on the agenda: a presentation on a middle school trip to China, where students visit a sister school and stay with Chinese families.

Once students leave Yinghua to attend various high schools, they now have the option of continuing Chinese. Dr. Lien developed an online credit course that debuted in September, which includes chat rooms. “These students are well positioned to compete in a global market,” Dr. Fortune said. “The language is a key part of what they will offer.”

Correction: October 27, 2014

Earlier versions of picture captions misspelled the name of a Chinese-immersion charter school in Minneapolis. It is Yinghua Academy, not Yiunghua or Yianghua.