Local youngsters learning Chinese the natural way: through play

In the second- and third-grade class at Prairie Moon Waldorf School, students marched around the center of the room in a game of London Bridge is Falling Down.

But while the tune and the motions were the same as the familiar game, something was out of the ordinary — the words definitely were not English.

Sonia Coady, a Taiwan native, was leading the class in a Mandarin Chinese song. Twice a week during 50 minute sessions, Coady instructs the class in the foreign language. But it’s not in the call and response method many of us had in our high school foreign language classes.

It’s taught much in the way that preschoolers pick up their native language: through play. The group sits in a circle passing bean bags and sings. They play Simon Says, following Coady’s command. And there is much singing and reciting of poems that are accompanied with exaggerated hand motions.

Language and movement are intertwined.

Rarely does Coady speak to the class in English. And when she does, it is to pass along instructions, not to provide translations.

“We sing together, we play together, we create the language together,” she said. “It is kind of like movement class.”

Mandarin Chinese came to Prairie Moon at the start of the school year with the arrival of Sonia Coady’s husband, Jared Coady. The fourth- and fifth-grade teacher, Jared Coady had spent the past six years teaching English in Taiwan. He met his wife there.

Previously at Prairie Moon, students were taught German and Greek, but that language teacher had left and the school asked if Jared would teach Chinese. This semester, looking to lighten Jared’s responsibilities, the school began looking for another language teacher.

As a native speaker of the language and someone who was familiar with the Waldorf-style of teaching, Sonia, who is a yoga instructor by trade, took over some of her husband’s classes.

“Many Western people go to my country and contribute their beautiful language, and I’m pretty happy I can contribute some of my language in Western countries,” she said.

A fundamentally different language from English, Chinese can be hard to pick up at any age. Because Chinese is a tonal language, a different pitch can give the same sounding word several meanings. And Chinese doesn’t use verb tenses the way English does to convey time.

For Sonia, much of the interpretation is done through body language with the songs and poems being spoken over and over again.

As the class sings songs, she acts out counting, emotions and movement so someone who doesn’t know the language has a good idea of what is being said.

Because of the rhythmic way the language is taught, words become lodged in the children’s memory, Jared said, even if they don’t quite know what they mean.

“The parents are pleased because children go home and go on and on in Chinese,” Jared said. “They maybe half understand what is being said, but they have developed a bank of words in their head.”