| #2 I took 3 semesters of Mandarin under CI-sponsorship. Instructors were the most highly motivated, hardest working language instructors I ever met, and I have met about a dozen in my academic career. Mandarin instructors were rather few & far between in the USA before CI came on the scene. I am sure their supervisors kept a close eye on them - now & then the head of the institute would sit in on classes. That never happened with any other language courses I ever took. If this was indoctrination, I wasn't aware of it. There was a pipeline linking students to travel to mainland China for summer studies, and quite a few took advantage of it. I might have done the same, but I am too old to risk my health that way. A local infectious disease specialist (through the grapevine) says, "Don't go there" - and he's been to China many times on business. |