全球“汉语热”持续升温，外国人争相学中文，在美英日韩等国，汉语更走进了中小学课堂。

Bursting into the classroom from recess, 15 children take their seats and face the woman they know as Teacher Yang.
 “What day is this?” she asks, in Mandarin Chinese.
 “Confucius’ birthday!” the fifth- graders shout in Mandarin.
 “Why do we celebrate Confucius’ birthday?”
 “Because he’s the greatest teacher in the history of China!” exclaims a brown- haired girl. She too is speaking Mandarin.
 English is rarely heard in Lisa Yang’s class at the Chinese American International School (CAIS), despite the fact that few students are native speakers of Mandarin.
 The United States is actively trying to increase the group of students in “critical languages” such as Mandarin. The students at CAIS are way ahead of such a trend.
Mandarin explosion in
America
 Founded 25 years ago, this small private school in San Francisco, USA does what few other American schools do: It produces fully fluent speakers of Mandarin Chinese, by far the most commonly spoken language in the world.
 Mandarin Chinese is suddenly hot in American schools. As China becomes the world’s leading economy sometime this century, schools in the U.S. are scrambling to add Mandarin to their roster of foreign languages or expand Chinese programs already in place. By some estimates, as many as 50,000 children nationwide are taking Mandarin in school. “
It really is almost unprecedented ... People are looking at China as a force to be reckoned with ... And to ensure that the U.S. has the ability to conduct trade, and to work with the Chinese, certainly having an understanding of Chinese language and culture is an advantage,” said Marty Abbott of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)(美国外语教学协会).
Cultural differences in teaching styles   

    To develop Chinese-language programs has not been smooth. A shortage of trained teachers has made it difficult for some schools to join the race. When schools do get teachers, they often hire them straight from China, and the teachers usually suffer culture shock when they come to the U.S.
     Robert Liu remembers his first two years in an American classroom. It was not an easy adjustment, he said. In China, “students respect their teachers,” he said. Liu found that American students, however, expect an active teaching style. He had to use games to engage them rather than lectures.
To avoid many of the problems with foreign teaching styles, the CAIS has been working with the Chinese government to improve training of teachers who are sent to the U.S.           (word count: 390)

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adjustment 调整    way远远地，非常
Confucius /c=n'fjU:5=s/ 孔子  critical 重要的  

fluent 流利的  lecture 讲授            

 recess课间休息 reckon with 重视
roster 花名册     scramble 争夺，竞相
unprecedented  /;2n'presId=ntId/ 空前的