[…] “Chinese isn’t the new French, it’s the new English” says Robert Davis, director of the Chinese-language program in Chicago’s public school system, which has 8,000 students studying Mandarin.

Today, there are Chinese programs in more than 550 elementary, junior high and senior high schools, a 100% increase in two years. While at the college level, enrollment in Chinese-language classes has increased 51% since 2002, according to the Modern Language Association, a language and literature education organization. Marty Abbott, the spokeswoman for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, says early figures suggest the number of students now studying Chinese has “got to be somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000.” (Information retrieved from USA Today). More.

See: CCTV America

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