It’s shortly after 10 a.m. at Conard High School and Duan Laoshi is ready to start class. Students mingle. Then they quiet down. And, more important, they stop speaking English in favor of a language entirely foreign. The class begins to review for a quiz and starts a series of pronunciation, character memorization and writing exercises in Chinese, the newest addition to the school’s foreign language department.

Languages such as Spanish and French give students familiar words, sounds and a similar alphabet on which to base their learning, but Chinese introduces different sounds, tones, pronunciations and an entirely different written language to begin to master. Chinese One students will learn between 200 and 300 characters, Mandarin Chinese conversation, writing and reading and will begin to master sounds based on the pinyin (or “spell sound”) Romanization system this year.

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