Mandarin Chinese Classes in Mercer County, NJ

Yinghua Language School, Lawrenceville:
YingHua Language School is a non-profit organization located in Lawrenceville, Mercer County, New Jersey. Its founding principle is to build a language school that can commit to and focus on students' Chinese language education so that its graduates truly gain solid language skills. To that end, we constantly look for ways to improve the quality of Chinese education for all students. Currently it is the only school in New Jersey that has fully adopted Dr. Liping Ma's "Direct Character Recognition" methodology. We teach the "modern" or simplified Chinese characters and introduce the Chinese phonetic system (PinYin) as a tool at the appropriate stage. YingHua Language School is proud to be the FIRST community-based language school accredited by CSS-MSA.

Our target students are those who have a Chinese-speaking environment at home, i.e., "Heritage Language" learners, as well as those learning Chinese as a second language. We offer two tracks of Chinese courses.

We teach Modern or Simplified Chinese characters and introduce the phonetic system (PinYin) as a tool at the appropriate stage.

Our CHL track teaches Chinese in Chinese (Mandarine) to students 5 years old and up who have basic knowledge of simple grammar and proficiency. For instance, in the very first lesson in the first grade, we use the word "pu2 tao2 (grapes)" in the riddle for "eyes" assuming the students already know what "pu2 tao2" means. Another example is that after learning the characters "good" and "many" separately, the word "hao3-duo1" would appear in the reading material without any explanation of what the word means. We assume the students would know that it means "very many" instead of "good and many."

Our CSL track teaches Chinese in English to students 5 years old and up who can only understand classroom instructions in English.

Becoming the nation's leading Chinese language school in providing high-quality Chinese language education to children of all cultural backgrounds. We see our school as a small- to medium-sized, very focused and specialized school. Our focus and commitment are on Chinese language and culture education. We will constantly look for ways to improve the quality of Chinese education for all students. We have a very strong, committed and supportive Board that will lead us to achieve this vision.

Dr. Ma has been committed to teaching Chinese language to Chinese-American children for more than 8 years. Her teaching career has lasted over three decades. She is the founder, principal, and teacher of the Stanford Chinese School in California. Over the years she has authored and developed a new set of textbooks implementing her "Direct Character Recognition" methodology, which is now officially used by over 1000 students in four schools nationwide. The textbooks are for students in grades equivalent to our K-9. She is still developing the textbooks that would be suitable for Grades 10-12.

The methodology emphasizes the students' reading and comprehension ability. The textbooks are based on materials that students can relate to and are more likely to attract their interest. At the same time the students can learn a great deal about Chinese culture (values, literature, history, etc.). To that end it teaches and helps the students recognize 1300+ characters in the first four years through systematic repetition both in textbooks and in the form of CD-ROM homework. Pin-Yin (the phonetic system) is only taught as a tool for expanding vocabulary and word-processing in the third grade after students have learned about 700 characters.

YingHua Language School is proud to be the FIRST community-based language school accredited by CSS-MSA.

Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language Program; Mandarin Chinese as a Second Language Program; Study Abroad Programs with 4-5 week stay in Beijing; Short-term Chinese Business Language; Chinese Exam Preparation Courses; Chinese Art Workshop; Chinese Language and Culture.

Culture learning is an integral part of language learning. The second half of each session will be more focused on introducing cultural background, customs, traditions, etc. We do not, however, offer separate classes for Chinese painting, dancing, or other specific cultural activities.