The United States isn’t the only place grappling with the best way to teach students another language.

Eight graduate students from the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College traveled to China earlier this summer with their instructors and others to learn more about Chinese culture and how schools there teach English as a second language.

The group of 12 visited five cities and three education sites during their two-week trip and spoke with educators there about how they incorporate a second language in their instruction while maintaining their student’s first language.

They saw that schools in China too have their challenges in teaching students English, which is the primary second language taught in the world’s most populous country.

Cynthia Galvan, a teacher with the Mercedes school district and a student at UTB/TSC, said she was surprised to learn that Chinese schools also struggle with teaching students English as a second language.

“They’re teaching them to read and write English but they’re not exposed to the oral language,” she said.

One thing she and other teachers on the trip noticed was that Chinese schools teach children a second language at a much younger age than in American schools.

“They start in pre-kinder(garten). English is their second language. All the signs are in Chinese (with English below it),” Galvan said. “They’re very committed to learning English.”

The schools also teach students culture. During one visit she noticed a class did a lesson on coffee and how coffee is consumed more often in the United States rather than China.

“Part of it is understanding the culture,” she said. “Culture has to be part of the program.”

Weslaco High School Assistant Principal William “Trey” Roach said seeing how the Chinese schools used everyday situations to teach students English made him think how schools in the Rio Grande Valley can use community’s bilingual culture to teach students English.

“I think we need to understand the culture of the students we’re receiving,” he said.

Teachers should also be mindful of the level of education their students received in the countries from which they emigrated, he said.

“Just because a child can speak to us doesn’t mean (that child) can read and write,” Roach said. “We have to make sure they are able to read and write in their native language.”

UTB/TSC professors Bobette Morgan and Graciela Rosenberg developed the program to give their students the opportunity to experience another culture and understand better the frustrations some of their students learning English may face.

Usually, students at UTB/TSC are familiar with Mexican culture, which makes teaching foreign students coming to Rio Grande Valley schools — who mostly come from Mexico — a bit easier. But if those educators were to move to other parts of the state or to another state, they would encounter students from all other parts of the world who speak different languages, Rosenberg said.

“You have to be aware of other languages, you have to understand the (students’) cultural background,” she said.

Students received firsthand experience in what it was like to be in a country where they don’t know the main language. Though the group had interpreters during their tours, there were times where they had to rely on the kindness of strangers to translate for them, Morgan said.

“It was a good experience for (our) students to feel that level of frustration,” she said.

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