What is your vision of Cary Chinese School?

We consider our school as a NEW TYPE of Chinese School. We do share the common objectives of our sister schools, to promote Chinese language literacy and cultural exchange for enriching cultural diversity in our community. On the other hand, there are some CCS specific characteristics that we would like to share with you:

• We believe earlier is better.

In terms of language, earlier is always better. Long term, children who have gone through an early childhood immersion experience in languages show great cognitive flexibility, greater facility in concept formation, great creativity and problem-solving skills in verbal and math problems, and, obvious, a greater facility of vocabulary.  Research indicates that young children are highly receptive to language acquisition, and second language learning comes most easily early on in a childs life.

To have our kids conceive Chinese language systemically at a younger age, we offer classes to kids as young as 4 years old. We have written our own textbooks for those little ones: small 8x5 books, to ensure easy access for small hands. Each book contains a small illustrated rhythm or story, a little bit math, in class and take-home exercises, and a summary list for parent to follow, etc. Kids will be excited by receiving those cute little books every week. Each weeks class is broken down into three 30-minute teaching sections, one 10-minute break, and one 20-minute snack break.

• We believe teaching methodology can make a big difference.

There is nothing wrong if you think no matter which textbook is being used, whatever methodology is behind it, with the right teacher, certain learning goals can always be reached. But would you agree a good textbook with more appropriate teaching strategy will make everything easier?

Most traditional textbooks and teaching methods adopted in US Chinese Schools, learning  Chinese character through Pinyin, require memorizing a lot of writing characters. Unfortunately, most of those words do not show up anywhere else, coupled with insufficient appropriate reading material to backup what students have learned. Very often, students intend to read Pinyin other than the character even though they already know the character by heart. Eventually, they lose their reading ability; they memorize the required characters each week, but forget them months later.  With the lack of fresh reading material, their effort reaps little reward.

With Ma Liping book, we see solutions to those problems: kids learn characters first, through fun rhythm, story, they learn to WRITE some of them, but just RECOGNIZE the rest. With extensive supplemental reading material, composed of 95-98% of characters that they have learned, its like rolling a snow ball, their vocabulary build up fast, so they are capable of reading materials at their right age and knowledge level. Their reading ability is not hurdled by Pinyin, their interest is boosted by the fun and accomplishment brought by reading those interesting stories that mostly cannot be found in English! Besides, Ma lipings CD-ROM homework (besides its light paper-pencil homework) is a huge plus to attract students  to their Chinese studies too.

* Ma liping textbook does not target students with non-mandarin background.

• We believe each child is different, there is no such thing that one size fits all.

Together with other sister Chinese Schools, we are glad to provide another option to serve our next generation, to better suit their individual Chinese language learning need.

• We believe learning should be fun.

Chinese School learning activity should motivate kids interest, it should be fun. We have put a lot of emphasis and efforts in this aspect. Please let us know if you have any good suggestions and ideas, hope we can work together to make some positive difference in our kids.

• We believe introducing Chinese culture and language to non-Chinese nationality is equally important.

By introducing non-Chinese students into the Chinese school, there would be positive reinforcement among students of different nationalities in Chinese learning.   

We have very strong CSL teaching expertise in CCS.  Yi Sun holds ESL master degree, and she has been teaching CSL class for Chinese School at Chapel Hill in the past. Her teaching is full of new ideas, with great knowledge and consistency.

• We have very strict legal and financial system, with a thin admin team.