Teaching Chinese a bow to the future

MOUNT PLEASANT -- The small class rises in unison when teacher Wei Ma enters the room.

The seven students bow and greet her in a language that's heard infrequently, if ever, in Lowcountry classrooms. These elementary school students take Mandarin Chinese, and they're starting their lesson the same way as their counterparts in China.

Ma teaches at two private schools, the University School of the Lowcountry in Mount Pleasant and the Cooper School in West Ashley, and those appear to be the only two sites where local students can learn Chinese.

Statewide, only 10 public schools teach Chinese, and just five years ago not a single public school in the state offered it. Interest in the language is a recent phenomenon that can be attributed to the growing economic force China has become, said Ruta Couet, who oversees foreign language programs for the state Department of Education.

Chinese students are learning English at a rapid rate, and American students who want to compete in a global market will need to be able to communicate in their language, she said.

Chinese is one of five languages designated by the federal government as critical to national security, and it provides seed money for schools and districts that will offer these languages.

But schools are reluctant to start Chinese programs because they fear not being able to find a teacher, and budget cuts make it difficult to justify beginning a new program when existing staff has been cut, Couet said.

"I think there's great interest out there," she said. "The economic crisis has really put the brakes on any plans to innovate because schools are just focused on the day-to-day survival.

"There are certainly administrators and communities that would like to expand their foreign languages, and many do recognize the need to start this much earlier."

A growing number of state colleges and universities, including The Citadel, the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina, offer Chinese. Also, two Confucius Institutes, which are partnerships with Chinese agencies to promote education about Chinese language, culture and society, have opened in the state since November 2008.

In Mount Pleasant, the University School of the Lowcountry offers Chinese instruction to its third- through fifth-graders twice a week, and it will expand to middle school students next school year. Students also can take Latin and Spanish.

Headmaster Jason Kreutner said it seemed obvious that this small private school housed on the campus of Hibben United Methodist Church needed to offer Mandarin Chinese.

The increasing importance of China's relationship with the United States, as well as the minimal number of Americans who speak Chinese, reinforced his belief that the least the school could do was teach this language.

He learned of Charleston's sizeable Chinese community once he began searching for an instructor, and he eventually found Ma, a native of China who lives here and tutors adults and students.

Some educators consider Chinese among the most difficult languages to learn because of its multiple tones -- the same word said with a different tone can have an entirely different meaning -- but Ma said younger students can learn it more easily.

In her class at the University School on Tuesday, students introduced themselves, named colors and sang songs in Chinese. They translated simple sentences into English and enthusiastically repeated words spoken by Ma.

Fourth-grader Ford Rougny said he initially felt scared about learning Chinese because he'd heard it was "super hard," but after he learned a few characters, he said it wasn't that bad.

It's the hardest of all his language classes, and he said it sometimes feels as if he's repeating magical words without meaning because they sound so different.

Fifth-grader Jeanne Marie Martin said Chinese is her favorite language class, but she has to work to learn it.

"The more you practice at it, the easier it gets," she said. "It's hard sometimes, but after a while, you get kind of used to it."

What is offered

The state collected information from its more than 1,100 public schools on the foreign languages they offer this school year:

Language / Number of schools

Spanish / 420

French / 200

German / 50

Latin / 38

Chinese / 10

Arabic / 0

Korean / 0

Japanese / 0

Russian / 0

Source: S.C. Dept. of Education

Reach Diette Courrégé at 937-5546 or dcourrege@postandcourier.com.