LANGUAGE SCHOOL

RECA Language Class

RECA provides Saturday morning language classes in Mandarin and Cantonese. We also provide functional English as a second language and Children’s Beginning Viet Namese. Classes are held 9:00-11:30 a.m. at our Center from September through May. Please call for current tuition rates. 

Beginning Mandarin for Children focuses on basic words, beginning elements of writing, and culture for children 5-10. It is taught by Cathy Ringstad, originally from Beijing. 

Intermediate Mandarin includes continuing children and beginning teens and adults. It focuses on functional conversation, writing and culture. It is taught by Hsiu Chuan Armstrong, originally from Taiwan. 

Advanced Mandarin is for those students of any age, usually teens and adults, who can converse in Chinese, but want to improve their conversational ability and to improve their reading and writing. Literature, poetry, jokes and composing essays and letters are explored in this class. 

Tot’s Mandarin Play Group is for tots 2-4 with at least one parent. Basic introduction to Mandarin counting, greeting, colors and simple requests are given in an atmosphere of song and games. This group meets once a month for 1 hour. It provides support and networking for parents, especially to adoptive parents of Asian children. It also gives the children a firm foundation when beginning our regular classes. This class is taught by Kitty Freed, originally from China.

Children’s Chinese Culture Camp is for children from 5 to 12. Teens and parents are welcome as assistants. Our program usually starts with Tai Chi each morning, then Mandarin lessons, cooking, hiking on the Joe Mendota Trail, art, crafts, and many other cultural activities including songs, games, dances, music, and even learning the tales of the Monkey King. Camp in 2008 will be July 14-18 for children 9-12 year olds and July 21-25 for children 8-5 year olds. Camp is supervised by Nancy Wang and Judy Cheung with Cathy Ringstad as the lead teacher. We also have many additional staff including David Chung for Tai Chi, Jean Walker for arts and crafts and Lily Kwong for Chinese brush painting.  

Please download and fill out the enrollment form from here and send it and a check for the tuition to RECA Center, 3455 Sebastopol Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95407.

Cantonese, Functional English as a second language for adults and Beginning Vietnamese for children are not being offered during the 2006-2007 school year. If you are interested please let us know. If you can teach Vietnamese to children 5-10 years old, please let us know. Currently, we have Vietnamese students but no teacher.

RECA Center, 3455 Sebastopol Road. 
From Santa Rosa's Highway 101, take Highway 12 west towards Sebastopol. Turn left on Stony Point Road then right on Sebastopol Road. Go about 0.8 of 1 mile west.  Turn right into what looks like the driveway into Santa Rosa Fire Equipment. Go slowly past the houses. Our location is the last house on the right. 

2007 Language Classes

Time:
Saturdays, start September 8, 9:00 am - 11:30 am

Tuition:

For additional members in a family pay the rate for 3 members and add $150 per person, per semester.

Tuition for Pre-school play group:
$100 per family for the year

Please fill out the enrollment form.

Students are challenged to improve their Chinese. Some students speak Chinese at home. Others started with our tot's program and progressed to our advanced class. Once, we had an adult who spoke only Fujianese. She came to learn Mandarin. (Photo provided by Judy Hardin Cheung)

This hard working class takes memorized words and puts them into sentences and functional conversation. We have parent/kid teams learning together as well as students who know basic words but are not yet ready to jump into the advanced class. (Photo provided by Judy Hardin Cheung)

Our Beginning Mandarin for Children teaches through songs, games coloring, arts and crafts and other fun activities. Here, they are playing "duck duck goose" in Chinese on the last dry day of autumn. Parents are welcome to learn with their children and assist with the class. (Photo provided by Judy Hardin Cheung)