20 percent. That’s the percentage of people in the United States that are bilingual. According to a U.S. Census Bureau report, the number of people 5 and older who speak a language besides English at home has more than doubled in the last 30 years.

In the United States, as more and more people are learning a new language, it’s become apparent that a trend is also growing in immersion schools and programs across the country. In 2006, there were a little more than 250 immersion schools in the country. In 2011, that number grew to 448.

Massachusetts has 16 immersion programs, and two are in Mandarin Chinese. Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley is the only Chinese immersion school in New England.

But in Cambridge, a relatively new Chinese immersion program has been implemented at an elementary school and preparations are underway for when school begins next week.

Gerald Yung, the principal at the Martin Luther King, Jr. School, is looking forward to the new school year, which marks the second year of the King Chinese Immersion program, Greater Boston’s first Mandarin Chinese immersion program.

Learning Chinese takes time

The immersion program follows in the footsteps of the school’s veteran Ni Hao program, a Chinese class taught for 45 minutes, four days a week — except the immersion program offers its students four hours of Chinese learning every day.

“When we embarked on starting this program, we were really looking at Ni Hao and we were trying to figure out ways to improve upon it,” says Yung. “One of the main factors of the immersion program was taking a look at time on learning that seemed to play a critical role for students to learn Mandarin.”

That’s why the King’s school day has an extra two hours. The extra time allows the students in the program (junior kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade) to spend the morning hours in the Chinese classroom, where all instruction is in Chinese. They then move to the English classroom in the afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BAQPWRgzQQ

Incorporating the language in daily routine

Elizabeth Hill has two daughters enrolled in the King School: Irene, 7, is in the Ni Hao program and Aurora, 5, is in the immersion program. Hill says her daughters love talking in Chinese to each other and they do it as only children will.

“Often the Chinese in our house is really funny. They use it to tease each other. They’ll say they think their sister is delicious and they’re going to eat them,” says Hill. “Clearly they’re not being taught that in school, but they take it home and it’s fun to see that language development in a sense of fun with the language.”

Hill says enrolling the girls into the school was a simple decision.

“We are monolingual — we only speak English at home — and I just thought giving our kids an opportunity to be multiple language speakers and give them that exposure to other languages would be very good for their development.”

Connection to culture

For Martha Bakkan, enrolling her daughter Maggie was not only a simple decision; it was the perfect one.

Bakkan adopted Maggie from China when she was nine months old. It was so important to Bakkan that Maggie know her culture, Bakkan enrolled her into two preschools before coming to the King School.

“She was enrolled in a program in the morning, taught in English, and I took her to a different program in the afternoon, taught in Chinese because it was that critical to me that she become bilingual,” Bakkan says.

Now, as Maggie enters kindergarten at the King School, Bakkan believes this is the best educational environment.

“She’s in a high-quality English environment and a high-quality Chinese environment,” Bakkan says. “They teach content like Science and Social Studies in both languages, so it’s not just a situation where they’re learning Chinese, they’re actually learning in Chinese."

And that’s how the immersion program helps students. Learning in Chinese not only improves their overall understanding of the language, but also creates better students as a whole, Yung says.                                                                                               

“There’s been studies that show how immersion students perform on tests and how it benefits them cognitively,” Yung says. “They have more flexible, divergent thinking; students exhibit greater, non-verbal problem solving abilities, which is the whole process and challenge that is embedded in an immersion program.”

Beyond the classroom

Yung says being bilingual will take students far in life:

“When we start preparing our students, equipping them with everything they need to be successful, I think being bilingual would be something that fit those criteria.”

Hill agrees and says all kids should be exposed to a second language, as it can only be beneficial.

“It would be a great opportunity,” Hill says. “In many other countries, they’re learning more than one language and I think we should be providing that for our kids, too.”

Irene and Aurora have no objection to their mother’s idea. They enjoy learning Chinese.

Irene says the projects are fun and she’s always looking forward to learning new things. But the best part? “I think it’s being able to communicate with others,” she says thoughtfully.

And Aurora? She pauses.

“When you get to do the songs and it’s very long but it’s hard to forget,” she says and then quickly adds as an afterthought:  “But it’s good. Everything is.”

As long as everyone keeps an open mind like these two, learning another language should be a piece of cake.