Attention BETTY BROWN – Learn Mandarin!!!!
“Studies have shown that since Mandarin Chinese, as well as other tonal languages such as Vietnamese, engage both brain hemispheres, these languages encourage neural building, just by hearing the languages. In other words, Chinese may increase your child’s brain power even before he learns to talk.”
According to ABC News’ Dr. Jamie Wells, (ABC News, Bilingual Babies May be Brainier, April 14, 2009 http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=12972958&ch=4226723&src=news) children are easily able to distinguish between English and other languages, and learning at least one foreign language while young will support babies’ neural development.
And, according to Dr. Sophie Scott, a psychologist at the Wellcome Trust, and colleagues from hospitals in Oxford and London who performed brain scans on volunteers as they listened to their native languages, when English speakers heard English, their left temporal lobes lit up on screen. When Mandarin Chinese speakers heard their native tongue, both right and left lobes buzzed with activity. [BBC News and the Guardian, June 30, 2003]
The left temporal lobe is normally associated with piecing sounds together into words; the right with processing melody and intonation.
"Speech really is a complex sound," said Dr Scott. "As well as understanding words, the brain uses the way in which words are spoken, such as intonation and melody, to turn spoken language into meaning. This system has to be robust and flexible enough to deal with variations in speech sounds such as regional accents. We think Mandarin speakers interpret intonation and melody in the right temporal lobe to give correct meaning to the spoken words."
Each Mandarin Chinese syllable has four tones that can mean different things. For example, "ma" in the first tone means "mother," while spoken in the third tone means "horse." Younger children find it much easier to learn a tonal language such as Chinese because they can mimic sounds much easier than older children or adults.
According to the Connecticut Department of Education, the number of public school students studying Mandarin, mostly non-Asian, has seen a more than ten-fold increase from 2004 to 2006. As more public and private schools offer Mandarin classes at the middle school and high school level, students who have studied Chinese will have an educational advantage right through their teenage years.
In addition, for those students whose schools only offer Chinese once or twice per week, regular exposure to Chinese via tutoring and small private classes will enhance their overall Chinese learning experience.
Mandarin Chinese is spoken by nearly one out of every four people in the world. As China grows in economic and political importance, it is critical that U.S. students are given the opportunity to become global citizens, to communicate in Chinese and to be familiar with Chinese customs and culture.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, commentator and fund manager Jim Rogers, former president of Goldman Sachs John L. Thornton, and News Corp’s chairman Rupert Murdoch are just a few of the world’s leaders that speak Chinese or realize the importance of learning Mandarin.
Goldman Sachs famously predicted that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy by 2050; China is now the world’s third-largest trading nation. With the emergence of China as a global economic superpower, (the importance understanding China’s global relevance cannot be understated.
Source www.chineselanguageschool.org
BETTY BROWN ARE YOU AND “YOUR CITIZENS” LISTENING?