Private school offers Chinese
By RITA FARLOW
Published January 3, 2007
In just a few short months, Mandarin Chinese teacher Victor Xue has become a campus favorite at Admiral Farragut Academy.
"He's popular with the staff, the students and parents. People come up to him and engage him, and the kids are really enthusiastic," said headmaster Capt. Robert Fine.
Fine hired Xue, 33, last summer to teach Chinese to the private school's 400 students, from grades prekindergarten to 12.
Fine was part of a delegation created by the National Association of Independent Schools that recruited 22 Chinese teachers for private schools across the country. The teachers have one-year renewable contracts through the program, which is co-sponsored by the Chinese government.
The job is perfectly suited for Xue, who taught English as a second language to students in his native China.
Now he teaches the younger students about Chinese culture through games, songs and art projects, as well as language basics such as numbers. Middle division students get more in-depth lessons on culture and language, and have mastered basic phrases.
"It's very new to me and it's different, which makes it very interesting," said sixth-grader Sara Casagrande.
Her mom, Rebecca, said she was pleased with the language offering. "I think it's phenomenal. It's nothing that I grew up with. I'd love for her to be fluent in it and maybe go (to China) someday," she said.
Upper division students are learning to recognize Chinese characters and speak the language, as well as learning the craft of pinyin - translating Chinese characters into phonetic representations to spell out words.
There are about 150,000 Chinese characters. "Usually, we only use about 5,000 to 8,000," Xue said.
Xue said his greatest challenge since his arrival in late August has been adapting to the American style of teaching. "Here, I should make students more involved. It's more interactive," he said.
In China, where class sizes are much larger, students generally raise their hand only if they are certain of the answer, he said. Here, students are more inclined to engage in discussion.
The United States is different from his homeland in many ways, he said. "People here serve the community very well and pay more attention to family," he said.
In China, a large population and competitive work force means people spend more time working and less time on leisure, he said. They're focused on getting a job, he said, or keeping the one they have.
He's also noticed that Americans are more expressive with their emotions in public, where the Chinese maintain a level of stoicism. "People here are very happy, or at least on the outside," he said.
One tradition Xue has tried to impress upon his students is the idea of harmony through symmetry.
"Everything is balanced," he said. "We want to live in a harmonious society."
DID YOU KNOW?
Chinese on the rise
Mandarin Chinese is the primary language of more than 800-million people and is spoken by more people than any other language besides English. Between 1990 and 2000, Chinese went from the fifth to the second-most spoken non-English language in the United States. Spanish is the first.