The Future Speaks Chinese
nÇ huìbúhuì jiÇŽng guóyÅ/huáyÅ/pÅtÅnghuà ? (Do you speak Mandarin?)
The future speaks chinese.
These are the lessons taught at The China Institute on 65th street in New York. This summer, a class of 18 high school students signed up to take part in an intensive Chinese language course called “Star Talk”.
The goal of the program is the broaden students knowledge of foreign languages and cultures through a total immersion program.
For eight hours a day, five days a week, throughout the month of August these students lived in Mandarin. The goal of the program? To have each student participate in a five minute skit, completely in Mandarin. Not only did they need to learn the language in order to properly communicate with one another, but on their last day of class, they were brought to the Chinese neighborhood in Flushing, Queens to purchase goods using their newfound language skills.
Programs like these seem particularly timely in a age where China is rapidly progressing as a global economic power. With more and more jobs being outsourced to countries where it is cheaper to do business, and major US companies beginning to realize the raw untapped power of the Chinese media, it seems that more and more of our children will have a need to learn one of the most dominate languages on the planet.
yīzhǒng yǔyán yǒngyuǎn bùgòu! (one language is never enough!)
Jason Kichline is ScribeMedia's project manager and producer of ScribeMedia's Emmy Award winning series Reporting AIDS. He likes typos, fast food and MacGyver like solutions to life's nagging problems.
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