West Valley Chinese Language School

West Valley Chinese Language School (WVCLS), was established more than 55 years ago in 1963. It was started by a group of volunteers in the Santa Clara County Silicon Valley Bay Area. Other than the traditional Cantonese schools in San Francisco Chinatown, WVCLS is the oldest Chinese Cantonese language school teaching Cantonese and Chinese culture in the Silicon Valley. Its regular school year runs from September to May. The classes are once a week on Friday nights from 7pm to 9pm, currently at Homestead High School located at 21370 Homestead Road, Cupertino, CA.

WVCLS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. All their board members are volunteers. The tuition revenue are used to pay the teachers, classroom rentals, and various school expenses. WVCLS is a member of Association of Northern California Chinese Schools (ANCCS) and participated in its annual Academic Contests in March of every year. WVCLS students earned many awards each year in the Cantonese contest categories.

WVCLS has classes starting from CK (kindergarten) all the way to CAdv (Grade 12 equivalent). It conducts its teaching primarily in Cantonese. A half hour basic Han-yu Pin-yin Mandarin teaching is included starting at C4 (4th grade). It also offers a Chinese AP class for students who plans to take the College Board Chinese AP exam. Please refer to the AP college board external link below.

The spoken Chinese language taught at WVCLS is Cantonese and the written Chinese characters are traditional Chinese characters. Chinese culture, history, and traditions are interspersed throughout the lessons at every grade level. The school encourages students to participate in Chinese culture and language competitions such as 北加州中文學校聯合會 ANCCS academic competitions. Students get "free" competition related training from the teachers in preparation for the events. The school also subsidizes the competition application fees. These competitions are great experience to raise the students' interest in learning Chinese and their awareness of Chinese community.

Registration details can be found in www.wvcls.org in the registration page. The school currently uses MeiZhou huayu text books (http://www.mzchinese.net).

Started in 2015, it is the first Chinese Cantonese School in the Silicon Valley Bay Area to give out scholarships to students who are a junior or senior in high school with the intention of applying to and attending a college, university, or higher institution. The scholarship fund is awarded to the student to cover their expenses attending the educational institution. In the 2015-2016 school year, it awarded scholarships to 5 students totaling $3500.

WVCLS is the first Chinese school in the County to have established an active student council. Students in grade 6 and above can join the council. Members of the student council work to support WVCLS's participation in local food drives, fund-raisers, and various community events. Activities, graduation videos were posted in the https://www.facebook.com/WestValleyChineseLanguageSchool/ page. https://www.facebook.com/WestValleyChineseLanguageSchool/.

Cantonese is a dialect spoken in southern China, Hong Kong and Macau. There are about 70 million people speak Cantonese worldwide. While most Chinese speakers uses Mandarin in the world, many Chinese speakers in San Francisco speak Cantonese, and well over 75% of the Chinese speakers in the San Francisco school district use Cantonese as the home language. Although Cantonese is more widely spoken in San Francisco than in the south bay, there is a small Cantonese population in the south bay. West Valley Chinese Language School's mission is to serve this population, so the tradition can continue. There are more Cantonese schools options in the San Francisco area.

Because it has 8 to 9 tones, Cantonese is more difficult to learn than Mandarin which has only 4-5 tones. Consequently, it is generally easier for a Cantonese speaker to learn Mandarin, rather than the other way around.

West Valley Chinese Language School is a member of the Association of Northern California Chinese Schools (ANCCS).

References[edit]

As of October 8, 2016, this article is derived in whole or in part from West Valley Chinese Language School. The copyright holder has licensed the content in a manner that permits reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed. The original text was at "About us".
https://wdaes-sfusd-ca.schoolloop.com/whyfirst

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West Valley Chinese Language School

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