Chinese Language Exchange: A Campus and Community Partnership

An innovative Chinese-English language exchange program for local high school students and University of Minnesota international students has now entered its second year.

The Twin Cities are home to a growing number of K-12 immersion programs for several languages, including Chinese. These programs give students a great start towards developing advanced-level language proficiency and cultural competency. However, these immersion opportunities are centered around elementary and middle school, and many immersion graduates move to a high school without an appropriate language curriculum for their level. Without an opportunity for regular and structured practice, these students’ Chinese language abilities can wither during the high school years.

The University of Minnesota attracts international students from around the world, including China. These students are already bilingual in Chinese and English, but they are often looking for opportunities to practice their English outside of class. The TandemPlus program helps pair many Chinese and English learners on campus. However, there are more native speakers of Chinese looking for English-language partners than there are students learning Chinese as a second language.

In Fall 2017, the Language Center TandemPlus program and the department of Asian Languages and Literatures joined forces to help Chinese and English learners work together. They launched a program to coordinate and conduct conversation sessions for former Chinese immersion students now in a more traditional high school (informally called immersion gap students), and native speakers of Chinese at this university. This program, called Culture and Language Interaction in Chinese and English (CLIC) is now in its second year and going strong.

Zhen Zou, Education Specialist: Chinese Flagship, is the CLIC coordinator and leader. He organizes weekly sessions on campus for Chinese immersion gap students and native Chinese-speaking university students to engage in regular conversation. Following the TandemPlus model, half of the conversation is in Chinese and half is in English. To help both groups of students develop their skills, the conversations are structured and guided, designed to lead to in-depth conversation and vocabulary growth.

Attendance at the events varies based between 10 and 26 students. Zhen is always aiming for an equal number of native Chinese and English students, but forms partnerships of three when the number is unbalanced. Parental involvement is also key, and some parents of the high school students are always in attendance.

CLIC is a small program, but it provides an important service to University of Minnesota international students, and outreach to K-12 students and parents. Zhen’s dream is for these high school Chinese learners to eventually enter a university program with advanced proficiency level in Chinese, perhaps even one day joining the University of Minnesota Chinese Flagship program.