BYU Chinese Flagship Announcements

Two recent news articles talk about the growing presence of Chinese education in Utah schools.

Provo’s Daily Herald reports about an elementary school that is planning a six-year Chinese Immersion Program.

 Provo School District recently received a six-year grant to start an immersion program in Chinese at Wasatch Elementary School, across the street from Brigham Young University. Children in select classrooms will learn most of their subjects in Chinese, beginning in kindergarten or first grade, through the end of sixth grade. The school has a year to research curriculum and set up the program, which is slated to begin in the fall of 2009.  (Read the rest of the article.)

KUTV News reports on a classroom participating in BYU Chinese Flagship Center’s EDNET program:

Welcome to Chinese class. It’s the first year of a pilot program at Olympus high school it’s small and was a last minute addition to the curriculum but teachers say the demand is slowly growing. (Read the rest of the article and watch the video.)  

Brendan McMonagle reports on this year’s “Chinese Bridge” competition:

The 7^th “Chinese Bridge” competition for foreign college students is set up with the purpose to stimulate enthusiasm and interest for learning Chinese while helping foreign students of Chinese improve understanding of the Chinese language and culture. The Office of Chinese Language Council International and the University of Maryland Confucius Institute sponsored the competition. The theme for this year, 2008, was “Fervor with the Olympics, fun with Chinese.”

The competition is divided into three parts: speech, question and answer as well as a performance. The most points are awarded in the speech portion of the competition. To prepare for the competition students give a speech pertaining to China, the Olympics or one’s own experience while studying Chinese. The topic of my speech was, “Welcoming the Olympics, looking to the future.” The second part of the competition was a question and answer session with questions coming from four categories: The Olympics, Chinese culture, Chinese language and the state of China. In order to prepare, students are given a packet containing 400 questions from each of these topics. The final part is a performance where students may perform a song, dance, martial arts, poem, etc. Although I do not consider myself a singer, I became fond of karaoke on my study abroad in Taiwan and hence chose to perform a song by Wang Li Hong called “Descendants of the Dragon.”

In order to prepare for the competition, I wrote and memorized a speech regarding my own experiences studying Chinese as well as the Beijing Olympics. I had to spend many hours studying the questionnaire packet as well as practicing the song. In all, it was a very worthwhile experience and I was glad to have the opportunity to represent BYU and the Chinese program at the University of Maryland. It was great to meet and converse with the many Chinese professors, diplomats and fellow contestants representing other universities.