From the Asia Society report "Expanding Chinese Language Capacity in the United States: What Would it take to have 5 percent of high school students learning Chinese by 2015?"
Increasingly leaders from different sectors are recognizing the rise of Asia as one of the central facts of the twenty-first century. China, with its tremendous economic growth and emergence as a social and political leader in the region, is fundamental to this shift. China’s entry into the global market had profound effects on U.S. economy, foreign policy, culture, and society. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2004 total U.S. trade with China exceeded $230 billion, second only to trade with Canada and Mexico. For American entrepreneurs and multinational corporations, China’s population is an immense potential market for U.S. goods and services. As an emerging political power, China’s cooperation is needed to solve a range of issues. And, as the most enduring world civilization, China has a major international cultural presence, drawing on a tremendous heritage in literature and the arts. Chinese Americans are among the fastest growing minority groups, in the United States. Taking these dramatic trends together, the task of increasing the number of American students who can demonstrate a functional proficiency in the Chinese language is undeniably urgent. Indeed, interest in Chinese language has been growing rapidly, albeit from a small base. For example, between 1998 and 2002, the number of college students studying Chinese rose 20 percent to just over 34,000. In a 2004 College Board survey, 2,400 schools expressed interest in offering the Advanced Placement (AP) Course and Examination in Chinese (Mandarin) Language and Culture....
What would it take to have 5 percent of American high school students (approximately 750,000) learning Chinese by 2015? To reach this goal and to build the infrastructure to support a K–16 pipeline of Chinese language learners to meet national needs, three critical issues must be addressed:
• creating a supply of qualified Chinese language teachers;
• increasing the number and quality of school programs; and
• developing appropriate curriculum, materials, and assessments, includinge
Comments