District Administration - April 2007 - (Page 44)

COVER: CURRICULUM Chinese is a category 4 language—a designation developed by the Foreign Service Institute— which means it can take an English-speaking American as much as four times longer to learn than a Romance language such as Spanish or French. The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is the ofﬁcial language of mainland China and Taiwan, as well as one of four ofﬁcial languages of Singapore. The language is based on characters, not letters, which must be memorized. While an educated person might recognize 7,000 characters, the language has more than 50,000. And spoken Chinese does not differentiate according to gender or number or tense—though written Chinese does. The most difﬁcult aspect of learning Chinese may be understanding the tones: In Chinese, the same word might be pronounced four different ways, each with a different meaning. Depending on which tone is used, for example, the Chinese word that we might pronounce as “ma” could mean “mother” or it could mean “horse.” There are two writing systems deployed in the Chinese-speaking world. Here’s a visual example: Traditional → Simpliﬁed 對→对觀→观 Traditional characters are used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, whereas simpliﬁed characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia. Andrew Corcoran, head of the Chinese American International School, started learning Chinese in 1999—two years before he took the job at CAIS. He continues to study, although he has far from mastered it. “I started to learn it in my mid-50s, and I consider myself a testament to why you need to start at a young age,” Corcoran says. “I’ve been here for six years, and my students and my teachers tell me I’m at about a second-grade level.” Tongue Tied guages, says Paula Patrick, coordinator of foreign language instruction. Of its 164,000 K12 students, 45,000 study a foreign language, and of those, 764 are taking Chinese, about 13 times as many as ﬁve years ago. Last fall, the Fairfax district received a $188,000 federal grant, part of the National Security Language Initiative, to help more than 1,500 students studying Arabic and Chinese. The three-year grant will be used in part to hire a new Chinese teacher at Providence Elementary School, where ﬁrst-graders will study the language this fall, and two new Chinese teachers for high school. The grant will also help pay for Chinese teachers to travel to Beijing this summer for study. “When we ﬁrst started Chinese in 1996, most of the students ﬁlling the classes were heritage speakers, so they had a Chinese Gateway has everything you CONSULTING Together, we will assess your current technology landscape and dene the scope of your 1:1 initiative, making plans to meet your academic goals. FINANCING From grants to bond initiatives to leasing,1 your Gateway team will help you evaluate the best available options for funding your solution. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Our professional development experts will work with you to implement a training program that leads to smooth technology integration. 866-553-9956 | www.gateway.com/1to1/Dist2 | WSCA Contract #A63308 District Administration ® 44 April 2007 G162-006881_DstrctAdm_2pg_Half.i1 1 http://www.gateway.com/1to1/Dist2 http://www.gateway.com/1to1/Dist2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2007

Editor's Letter
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
“See You in Court!"
Lost in Translation
Bonding Agents
Certifying AP Courses
Hunting for Talent - Part 2
Buying Power
The Musty Bookshelf
New Products
Leadership
Speaking Out
The Online Edge
Problem/Solution
Calendar of Events
Overheard On The Pulse

District Administration - April 2007