Ideologies about Chinese Programs in American Public Schools

— A sociolinguistic research project based on a survey of people

in the Monterey region

1. Introduction and Rationale of the Research

On one hand, it is beyond doubt that English possesses the hyper-centric status globally among world languages. With this conventional wisdom in mind, many people might be surprised to learn that the United States of America, where the majority people speak English as their first language, doesn’t have English as its official language. More surprisingly, the United States has no official language at all. On the other hand, the coexistence of the dominant language – English – and multilingualism is definitely a distinct feature of the modern American society, especially the stream of immigration from Asian nations, including China, South Korea and Vietnam, has brought an influx of non-English speakers to the United States. The earliest Asian settlements in the United States can be traced to the mid- 1700s, when sailors from the Philippines and China arrived on Spanish ships that were part of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. They debarked on Mexico’s west coast and eventually settled in Louisiana (Okihiro 2001, 21). In 1870, nearly 9 percent of California’s population was of Chinese origin (Takaki 1998,35).

While English retains its status of lingua franca, “China’s rapid development and growing engagement with the rest of the world have prompted much discussion and debate about the Chinese language, especially in its prospects for becoming a global language” (Gil, 2011). Graddol (1997) even predicted that by the “by the year 2050 Chinese will be one of a small group of languages, including English, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish and Arabic, at the very top of the world language hierarchy.”

With the growing interest in and need for learning and teaching Mandarin Chinese, this paper aims to report the results and interpretations of a small-scale survey of ideologies about Chinese language programs in American public schools. Additionally, the researcher, majoring in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, hopes to hear perceptions of the general public toward Chinese language and culture in general through sociolinguistic perspectives.

2. Data Collection

• Participants of the Survey

The participants of this survey were people currently living in the Monterey Peninsula region, including the City of Monterey, Pacific Grove, Seaside, Sand City, and Carmel-By-The-Sea. Focusing on ideologies about foreign language programs in the context of American public schools, the researcher was intentionally looking for opinions from U.S citizens and permanent residents who are taxpayers when selecting the population. Non-citizens were filtered out leaving 15 out of 25 responses to form the data for the study.

• Methods and Tools

During the data collection process for this sociolinguistic project, the researcher aimed to balance quantitative and qualitative data. Therefore, the questionnaire consisted of multiple-choice questions and commentary sections, in addition to informal mini interviews with local people. To send out the questionnaire, both internet and paper-based versions were administered. The online survey software used in this research was Google Forms, which is user-friendly for distributing surveys out to a wide target audience. It is easy to access for survey takers who don’t have a Google account or are unwilling to log in, and most importantly, it automatically generates entries in an Excel spreadsheet to track every new response after the form is submitted.

It took the researcher five days to collect data, including distributing the online survey through emails and phone calls, as well as inviting customers at different cafes and residents of the local communities to fill out the questionnaire.

3.Findings and Analysis

The survey contained eight questions starting with more general ones such as the first question “Please rank the importance of having the following language programs in Monterey public schools: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Korean, and Spanish” down to those targeted at Chinese language specifically as the second to last question goes “Do you agree with the following statement: ‘After taking Chinese classes, local students will be more competitive applying to colleges.’” Overall, the eight questions aim to explore participants’ preferences between Chinese programs and other programs in American public schools, their perceived importance and degree of acceptance of having Chinese programs, and how would students benefit from studying Chinese in public schools. The following analyses are based on the most interesting findings from the survey.

• Social Changes, Technology Advances and Education

Ongoing changes happening in politics, economy, diplomatic relations, culture and social life within a country will inevitably shape its education system‘s foci. Nowadays, the popularity of online academies and distance learning, the application of technology in the traditional classrooms, and the enduring popularity of computer-science related professions are all evidence of the influence of technology advances on American education. Therefore, it is not surprising that when asked to choose their top priority for a new program in Monterey public schools, more than half of the survey takers would like to see Computer Science introduced while only 3 out of 15 of participants chose Chinese instead as the graph shown below:

Figure 1. Responses to “Which of the following programs would you most like to see introduced in Monterey public schools?” (Mark only one option)

There were a handful of participants who even explicitly equated computer programming with foreign language, saying “Don’t you think computer programming is a new language?” or “Computer programming language is definitely a foreign language for kids at school.” Although computer science programs aren’t the focal point in this ideology project, getting to know how people categorize it was a fresh lesson for the researcher.

• Understanding the Nature of A Language

In addition to the responses under each prescribed question, the informal follow-up interviews about knowledge and understandings of Chinese language also served to voice the “non-linguistic” opinions held by people outside the MIIS community. Topics covered in the interview include people’s exposures to Chinese language, general impressions of Chinese and if their kids or relatives are currently studying Chinese and such. The researcher, as a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, was startled by some respondents’ knowledge of and understanding about her mother tongue. One of the prominent views is that Chinese is a homogeneous language system, with any variations within this language being mutual intelligibilite, thus knowledge of one dialect can be transferrable to all. This conclusion is derived from some interesting comments with a prominent one, which stated as “I don’t see why not Chinese, I mean, it is hard to learn but it’s more like ‘buy one get one free’, cause you could also learn Cantonese and more stuff at the same time; but if you learn Japanese, it would only be Japanese, same thing with Korean.”

Regarding ideologies about foreign language learning, the research also gathered certain interesting data. For instance, four participants expressed a certain degree of unwillingness to invest in the Chinese programs in American public schools, because they held that it is impossible for native English speakers to achieve the native-like proficiency due to the tonal nature of the Chinese language. Even though learners could polish their language skill by studying abroad, acquiring Chinese doesn’t mean it would be easier for them to assimilate with Chinese speaking communities. In other words, being able to speak fluent Chinese still wouldn’t help in shutting down their identity as a “foreigner” in China or Taiwan.

Figure 2. Responses to “How difficult would it be for students to learn Chinese in local public schools?”

4.Implications for Language Teaching and Assessment

It can be safely deduced even from a small-scale survey with limited responses that ideologies behind learning and teaching a foreign language in a region are manifold, even to the extent that some misunderstandings and myths existing in the general public’s ideologies. It will be helpful for language teaching if teachers explore students’ (or even their parents’) ideologies towards the target language instead of assuming what their opinions might be. Therefore, conducting a needs assessment before class starts should never be underestimated and skipped; instead, it must be the very first step of initiating a new foreign language program or designing a foreign language curriculum.

Regarding teaching Chinese in American public schools specifically, it is the job responsibility of a language program administrator (LPA) to conduct a needs survey among students’ parents or guardians, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding about their hopes and concerns. As implied from the data analysis section, the general public lacks a deeper understanding of foreign language teaching, so to give students and their parents an orientation workshop will be helpful in clearing myth and improving teaching outcomes. For example, applying differentiated instruction in language classrooms are often restricted in public schools; however, informing parents this fact and providing them with supplementary learning options, such as hiring private tutors and attending online courses, will greatly enhance the transition from school to home and collaboration between classroom instruction and students’ self study. Moreover, since the foreign language programs in U.S. public schools are mostly government funded, LPAs are supposed to keep their eyes open for available outside funding and resources. Typical examples are: funds and faculty provided by Hanban (as known as “Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOTCFL)”); potential opportunities for students to study abroad with the ongoing implementation of 100,000 Strong Educational Exchange Initiatives¹ launched in May 2010; professional development plans for teachers funded by national foreign languages conferences such as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL); the Chinese faculty training programs supported by the government of Republic of Taiwan; willingness of public schools in China to establish a collaborative international partnership with American schools (i.e. to become brother or sister schools).

As for Chinese teachers, doing a needs assessment before writing a syllabus and designing curriculum is also vital to performing satisfactory teaching. Currently, most foreign language programs are offered in secondary education in American public schools and this fact divides students who take Chinese as a foreign language into two groups: one is motivated to learn Chinese by their own interests and the other is driven by the Advance Placement (AP) test in order to apply for higher education institutes. Therefore, administrating an online survey or doing informal interviews with individual students at the beginning of the semester will avail teachers in selecting textbooks, designing quiz and proficiency assessments/tests, and making other teaching decisions that are most applicable to their own students and schools.

Notes:

1. Citing the strategic importance of the U.S.-China relationship, in November 2009, President Barack Obama announced the “100,000 Strong” initiative, a national effort designed to increase dramatically the number and diversify the composition of American students studying in China. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially launched the initiative in May 2010 in Beijing. The Chinese government strongly supports the initiative and has already committed 10,000 “Bridge Scholarships” for American students to study in China. The 100,000 Strong Initiative has transitioned into an independent, non-profit organization external to the State Department. Updates on the Initiative’s programs can be found at http://100kstrong.org/.

Reference

Gil, J. (2011). A comparison of the global status of English and Chinese: Towards a new global language? English Today, 27(01), 52-59.

Graddol, D. (1997). The future of English? A guide to forecasting the popularity of English in the 21st century. London: British Council.

Okihiro, G. Y. (2001). Common ground: Reimagining American history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Takaki, R. T. (1998). Strangers from a different shore: A history of Asian Americans (Revised and Updated edition ed.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.