NEW MANDARIN SETTINGS FOR NEWCOMERS: A CASE OF A CHINESE LANGUAGE SCHOOL

Over the past two decades, Mandarin teaching strategies of Chinese language schools in the United States underwent several changes to accommodate the growing number of students with Chinese heritage who cannot speak Mandarin fluently. This study aims at exploring the Mandarin listening policy of a Chinese language school as it welcomes these newcomers. Utilizing case study as its research design, the current paper examined the language policy in two areas: language practices and language beliefs. It selected from the school one teacher, the class this teacher taught, two non-Mandarin-speaking students in this class, the parents of these two students, and four school administrators as participants in a language school in New York City. Participant observation, interviews, and document collection were used as data gathering methods. The findings indicated that two major listening activities were present when teaching Mandarin to these new students namely: (1) listening to textbook CDs, and (2) watching various Mandarin language movie DVDs. Given that, the school established a Mandarin environment where these new students could more easily understand Mandarin messages with the help of visual contexts, such as textbook pictures and videos with English subtitles.