In Fennville, Mich., three teenagers are learning a language not many high schools offer — Mandarin Chinese.
So far, Sam Robinson, Michael Martin and Nicholas VanTil can introduce themselves and their families, and describe their bedrooms in the dialect.
Though their traditional high school is in a small city just south of Holland, they take an online course taught by professors from the MSU Confucius Institute through Michigan Virtual High School.
The course is designed to be studied five days a week, with four days of self study. Once a week, the instructor and a group of three to five students meet online using TeamSpeak — an audiovisual conferencing system that allows them to communicate with headsets.
"I think it really helps (to) get the Chinese down when you get to speak to your professor one-on-one instead of just using the computer," Martin said.
It is the 15-year-old Fennville High School sophomore's first online course at the virtual school. Martin enrolled because he wants to learn many different languages.
"Chinese seemed like a language that no matter what career I want to go into (it) could help me out," he said.
The three Fennville teenagers agreed their weekly meetings are the best part of the introductory Mandarin course, and the online structure of the class helps them learn the language.
"It's easier to learn on an online class because you can go at your own pace," said VanTil, a 15-year-old sophomore.
The program has proven effective, said Dan Schultz, senior development and policy adviser of Michigan Virtual University, which oversees the Michigan Virtual High School.
"There is a lot of interest internationally in the Chinese culture, the Chinese economy and the Chinese language," Schultz said. "This is the first opportunity that many students in Michigan schools have had to experience this."
Most high schools are not able to offer Chinese in a traditional classroom because they aren't able to find or hire a proficient teacher, said Yong Zhao, executive director of the Confucius Institute.
"(Now) we can reach students from the Upper Peninsula," he said. "Our students right now come from five states, and there is one student from Mexico."
The course has been offered for three semesters, and sections are continually added as students progress. Three levels are currently offered, with a fourth to be piloted this spring. About 50 students are enrolled in the courses, which cost $350 per semester.
Despite the accessibility of the course, learning Chinese is still a difficult task, said Chun Laian, assistant professor at the Confucius Institute and the Fennville students' instructor.
To read the language on a basic level, a person has to know around 3,000 characters, she said. In addition, characters combine to form words.
Learning the language at the word level is difficult, Lai said. Native Chinese speakers learn to speak fluently at age 5, and learn to read by the time they are 7 years old.
Aside from the online classes provided, the Confucius Institute has seemingly found every outlet to teach Mandarin Chinese.
Through its Web site — www.confucius.msu.edu — people can register to receive 3 to 5 minutes of vocabulary on their voice mail daily. The service, called "Phonecasting," will be free for a limited time. Also on the site, multimedia materials will be available for teachers to use in elementary classrooms.
The institute also is planning two on-campus Chinese language immersion camps for this summer.
Another major project is the development of an interactive online game to teach people of all ages Mandarin Chinese.
The multiplayer game is in its final stages of development, and it will not only teach the language but also Chinese culture. Eventually, Zhao would like to develop the game for other Chinese dialects, such as Cantonese and Shanghai.
"(They are) very distinctive dialects, and people actually have to know them if they want to do business in China," he said.
A Chinese design team is expected to arrive at MSU in about a month to complete negotiations and a final version of the game, Zhao said.
