With an estimated 1.2 billion speakers worldwide,
Mandarin Chinese outnumbers any other language in the world, and Sherwood Middle
School students are getting a jump on what is already one of the most
sought-after languages around.
This is the first year the school has offered the language
class now being taught to about 35 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.
What makes the language class so unique is that students not
only learn how to speak a few phrases but delves into all phases of the
language.
“It’s everything,” said Julie Afshai, who teaches the middle
school course. “It’s listening, speaking, reading and writing.”
The students’ challenge is to learn how to write Chinese, an
often difficult task considering there are thousands of characters that have to
be learned, each representing a word as opposed to letters found in the English
alphabet.
“They’re (students) still really studying the writing because
it’s really hard,” said Afshai. “They have weekly quizzes solely on the
characters, how to write the characters.”
A Stanford University graduate, Afshai took four years of
Mandarin Chinese, spending a year after graduation in Beijing serving as a field
coordinator for the university’s Volunteers in Asia. Last summer, she joined
Sherwood Middle School students on a trip to China where they spent 10 days in
Yishang, the middle school’s sister city school, and other cities.
Next year the plan is to take even more students to
China.
“The demand to go to China is really great,” she said.
Afshai said there’s a major initiative underway in Oregon to
teach more foreign languages.
“Chinese is the language they talk about (teaching) most,”
she said.
Assisting Afshai with the SMS class is Brendan Brown, a
Sherwood High School senior.
“He lived in Taiwan one year and his Chinese is phenomenal,”
said Afshai.
Brown spent the previous year in Taiwan as part of a student
exchange program with the Sherwood Rotary Club. Brown said he already has an
affinity for foreign languages, being fluent in both French and Spanish.
He said he didn’t know any Chinese before traveling to Taiwan
but learned through being immersed in the language. Now he's having fun helping
the middle school students.
“I love it,” said Brown. “I love teaching kids. That’s what I
want to do with my future career.”
Students in Afshai’s class said they enjoy the class as
well.
Cami Hashimoto, a sixth-grader, said she’d like to keep
taking more Mandarin language classes, saying she finds it interesting.
“It’s really fun because you get to learn a lot of new things
and characters even though they’re hard to write, they’re fun to write,” she
said. Hashimoto also likes creating the Chinese characters through
calligraphy.
Amelia Young, an eighth-grader, said she’s enjoying the
Chinese class as well.
“I’m hoping I get to do Chinese next year because I hope to
go to China,” said Young.
She admits, however, that it is a difficult language to
master.
Fluent in Spanish, Jorge Figureoa, also an eighth-grader,
hopes to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
“It’s challenging but that's what makes it exciting,” he
said. “The toughest part is memorizing every single character, how they
sound.”
He said Afshai has promised that students will be able to
speak 500 words by the end of the year.
Afshai said hopes are to add an upper level Chinese class at
the middle school next year as well as creating an upper and lower-level Chinese
language class at Sherwood High School.