Student Interest Leads To Creation Of Chinese Club At WCHS
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
With the Chinese program at Warsaw Community Schools continuing to grow, it has given rise to Chinese Clubs, including the one started this year at the high school. Dr. Shu-Chun Tseng, WCS’s teacher for Chinese, said the Warsaw Community High School Chinese Club started as a collaboration between her and students who wanted to promote the Chinese language and culture. Junior Jacob Reynolds is the club’s president and is highly interested in the language. Not only will he continue to study Chinese next school year, but he’s also going to Beijing, China, this summer. During his five-week stay in China, he will teach English for two or three weeks and then live as an exchange student for the remainder of his stay. In level two this year, he started taking Chinese his sophomore year for business use after high school. He is looking out for colleges that offer a Chinese program. “I love the language and I’m interested in it. It’s a good language to know. China is growing very rapidly. It’s a very valuable class and I don’t think the people in Warsaw know how valuable it is,” Reynolds stated. Exploratory Chinese is offered by WCS in seventh grade, with Chinese classes starting in eighth grade. The high school started offering Chinese III this year and will add Chinese IV for the 2014-15 school year. After that, an Advanced Placement Chinese course could be offered. Tseng teaches the eighth-grade classes at the two middle schools and each of the classes at the high school. For every new class added to WCS’s offerings, Tseng has to develop the curriculum for it. Wednesday afternoon, her second-year students were working on sentences using key Chinese vocabulary to make a story. Students telling the story had to walk around the classroom, and as they said the key vocabulary words the students sitting at the desks with those words on them had to join the storyteller in walking around the classroom. When the story ended, the last student back to a desk became the next storyteller. “She makes (learning Chinese) enjoyable and it’s a fun class to learn in. I find it challenging, but with effort you can get it and with practice,” junior Whitney Swafford said. “It’s challenging because you have to get every tone precise,” said freshman Jared Wood. If you don’t, he said you could be telling people something wrong. “I was interested in it. It was different from what others were doing. I enjoy doing it,” freshman Shane Powers said of why he took a second year of Chinese. Those students interested in exploring Chinese culture beyond the classroom now have the club meetings. “It’s definitely an arduous language to learn,” Reynolds stated. “There are ways for people to grow in their development. They can grow in their knowledge by outside means like apps.” He said he uses apps, watches Chinese television and listens to Chinese music. “The best way to learn is to be immersed in it,” he said. “Once you immerse yourself in it for a period of time, you get used to it,” Tseng agreed. Hannah Kline is the club’s vice president. She stated that Reynolds is definitely the most impressive student in their Chinese class. Along with learning Chinese at school, Kline is learning Spanish on her own. Chinese is the more difficult language of the two, but it’s also the more interesting one. Other students around the world learn more than one language, she said, so it’s sad that U.S. students don’t. Tseng, Reynolds and Kline started Chinese Club in November. They meet once a month, but have only had three meetings so far. “We just celebrated the Chinese New Year at our last meeting,” Reynolds said. He gave Peking Restaurant a “shout out” for helping the club tremendously. “They’re great people. We just want to provide a cultural experience. We want to raise more of an awareness of their culture,” Reynolds stated. At the club’s first meeting, students played Mahjong. Reynolds described it as a Chinese game similar to dominoes with cards. Also at that meeting, Kline said they helped other students not taking a Chinese class to learn Chinese. Reynolds said the club will be working on its upcoming participation for Riley Week. He hopes they will be able to have T-shirts to promote the club. “We went to Madison Elementary and taught first- and second-graders about Chinese New Year,” Kline said. “We also did crafts with them,” Reynolds interjected. He said they just want the Chinese culture to be more recognized. Kline said they hope people will be more open to it. Reynolds said China recently opened up to the rest of the business world. Tseng said if anyone plans to do business with China, it is wise to know its culture to avoid cultural misunderstandings. So far, up to 25 students have attended each of the club’s meetings. Reynolds said they’re trying to figure out how to maintain those numbers. “We encourage people to be open to other cultures,” Tseng said. “We want people to learn, which doesn’t just happen in the classroom.”
