Inspired by the pioneering work of Dr. G. R. Tucker and colleagues on French Immersion in Canada, later known as the St. Lambert experiment (Lambert & Tucker, "Journal of Educational Psychology," 65(2), 141-159, 1972), language immersion education also proliferated in the United States in the last decades. Research in the U.S.…

Purpose: Auditory training is important in pedagogical and clinical settings. In search of a more effective perceptual program for training new suprasegmental categories, this study examined the effect of two auditory programs that incorporated five elements that have previously been identified to be effective for training nonnative segmental and…

The number of elementary Mandarin dual language immersion (MDLI) programs continues to grow across the United States. The lack of available and proven effective Mandarin language arts curriculum and assessments aligned to state and world language standards, including age-appropriate and high-quality reading materials, remains a serious issue for…

This paper focuses on British news reports on the Mandarin Excellence Programme carried out in England by educational institutions at various levels. This research systematically examines the ways in which the learning and teaching of Mandarin Chinese is portrayed as important in English secondary schools due to globalisation and economic demands…

This article reports on a study that investigated the effectiveness of one out-of-school activity: "China Club". China Club, an initiative of Scotland's National Centre for Languages and the Confucius Institute for Scotland's Schools, was established with the central aim of teaching Mandarin language and Chinese culture to young people…

Many educators and policy makers look to two-way dual language immersion as one of the most promising options to close achievement gaps for English learners. However, the programs' effectiveness depends on the quality of their implementation. This article reports on a large-scale study of the implementation of dual language immersion across a…

Many educators and policymakers look to two-way dual language immersion as one of the most promising options to close achievement gaps for English learners. However, the programs' effectiveness depends on the quality of their implementation. This article reports on a large-scale study of the implementation of dual language immersion across a…

This study compared the Mandarin performance of elementary immersion program students and high school world language program students in the same school district. A cross-sectional design was employed to gather information on Mandarin proficiency of fourth and fifth graders and Level 4 and Level 5 (AP Chinese) high school students who took the…

This study compared two groups of high school students in their learning of a third-year Mandarin level 3 class under two conditions: an intensive four-week (85.5 hours) summer program and a 22-week (88 hours) regular semester program. Students in both conditions had been classmates through four semesters of Mandarin instruction and had similar…

This article describes a STARTALK intensive summer high school Mandarin language and culture program that was conducted for three summers. Participants across the three years included 40 Mandarin Level II and 53 Mandarin Level III high school students. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented to show the effectiveness of the program.…

While Chinese language learning in Australian schools is characterised by predominantly second language programs for learners who have had no prior exposure to the target language, there is increasing participation by Australian-born children who speak Putonghua (Mandarin) or another dialect at home. Curriculum and assessment frameworks and…

The impetus to begin Bilingual Buds came about six years ago when the author, pregnant with twins and commuting into New York City, was reading about the numerous cognitive benefits for children of acquiring a second language early in their lives. She was surprised to learn that even by the age of six months, children begin to lose the ability to…

In this article, the author describes her experience of teaching Mandarin Chinese at Stopher Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky. Through growing and learning with her students, the author has become a firm believer in the importance of early childhood language acquisition and a passionate advocate for world language education.

This implementation guide is intended to support the Grade 4 to Grade 6 portion of the Chinese Language and Culture Nine-year Program (the program of studies). It was developed primarily for teachers, yet it includes information that may be useful for administrators and other stakeholders in their efforts to plan for and implement the new Chinese…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…