At Dulles High school in Sugar Land, Texas, the roster for Advanced Chinese begins with Jason Chao and ends with Kathy Zhang. In between comes an unexpected name: Elizabeth Hoffman. Hoffman, now a 12thgrader, began learning Chinese in the eighth grade, has spent a summer studying in Nanjing and plans to perfect her Mandarin next fall. When asked by her peers---why she is learning Chinese, she responds with a question: "why aren't you?" As China rushes toward superpower status, America's schools and government officials are responding to Hoffman's opinion. Earlier this year Eush Holt of New Jersey introduced legialation calling for increased money of programs for less commonly taught languages, "For reasons of economics, culture and security, we should have much better facilities with Chinese languages and dialects," he said. The State Department has pointed out Chinese is becoming a "critical language", but the most recent data show that only 24,000 students in Grade 7 to Grade 12 study Chinese. Still, the number is growing. In Chicago public schools, enrollment in Chinese classes has skyrocked from 5000 students in 2005 to nearly 35,000 students this year. In the Santa Clara County, California, enrollment has quadrupled during the same period. In 2007, when the College Board first introduces advanced-placement language exams in Chinese and Italian, 2,400 high school plan to offer AP Chinese---10 times the number of students that plan to offer AP Italian. Much of the interest can be explained by China's increasing competiviveness. "People are always trying to judge what languages are going to be useful for the future," says Marty Abbot, the director of education at the National Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Stephanie Wong, a student At Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California, chose Chinese so that she could speak with her grandfather. Wong also predicted that Chinese will be important if she becomes a doctor. 80 percent of people in her hometown are Asians. _   arouses America's schools interest in Chinese.
The fact that Chinese is becoming a "critical language" China's increasing competitiveness in the world The beautiful Chinese traditional culture The population of people speaking Chinese