Innovation in Language Learning

This paper will report on an intensive summer Mandarin language enrichment program for middle school students (11 – 13 year olds) who spoke English and a second language, but not Mandarin.  Students were from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, 45% were Latino (Spanish English bilinguals). The goal of the program was to encourage and challenge students, who might otherwise not pursue the study of Chinese in high school, and provide them with rich learning experiences that would enable them to successfully acquire basic knowledge of the fundamentals of Chinese and that would peak their interest to continue with the study of Chinese. 

The program was 4-weeks in duration for 4.5 hours per day.  Four experienced Mandarin teachers used a communicative based immersion methodology and the curriculum was based on traveling the Silk Road between China and Italy. Students learned greetings, counting, descriptive words, names of fruits and animals, telling time, plus simplified characters and pinyin for reading and writing.  Students in the program were administered a pre- and post survey to assess their motivation for learning Mandarin, the role of parents in their study of Mandarin, strategies for learning the language, and intercultural sensitivity.  In addition, students were interviewed about their experiences for wanting to learn Mandarin.  Indices of Mandarin learning were also obtained using Lingua Folio and student class work.  The program was offered for 3 consecutive summers with the same curriculum and taught by the same teachers; student data was pooled over the 3 summers resulting in a total of 90 student participants in the program.  Interview data indicated that most students offered reasons for learning Mandarin that were based on instrumental motivation (e.g., want to travel, want to talk to Chinese people, need for high school requirement) and also that expressed an interest in multilingualism and learning more languages. These qualitative data corresponded to survey results.  Survey findings showed a significant pre- and posttest increase in instrumental motivation and intercultural sensitivity.

Keywords:  language enrichment, intensive summer program, immersion, Mandarin, multilingualism.