According to statistics from ethnologue, the Chinese language is one of the most spoken languages in the world with approximately 1,197,000,000 speakers. Glen Rock will help those statistics this year with the introduction of its Mandarin Chinese class, taught by Ms. Zhengyang Yu, a Chinese, English and ESL teacher.

Yu recently received her master’s degree from Rutgers University and taught English in China and student taught in West Orange High School. Yu was born in China and is a native Chinese speaker, but she learned to speak English at a young age. Her mother was an English teacher.

“I really like the atmosphere here,” Yu said about teaching in Glen Rock. “I think it’s very academic and the students are very energetic for their academic learning.”

Although there is only one Mandarin Chinese class right now, Yu believes that her students are cooperative in class and have the will to learn the Chinese language.

Students also feel that Yu is a good teacher too. Naoki Katsuyama, a sophomore, says that Ms. Yu is a, “a kind and cheerful person.”

Katsuyama is originally from Japan and speaks Japanese.  She said that she decided to take Mandarin Chinese “because I can read some of the Chinese characters, so I thought the class would be easier than other language classes.”

However, Mandarin Chinese isn’t that easy. Unlike Latin or Spanish, Chinese has a different phonetic system called Pinyin. In order for students to really learn Mandarin Chinese, they need to be able to recognize the characters.

“You need a little time to process between the phonetic system and the characters but, as long as you put your contribution to it, it will be easy,” Yu said about learning the phonetic system.

Right now, the school only has a Mandarin Chinese I class but next year there will be a Chinese II class and Ms. Yu hopes that there will be a another Chinese class in the high school and a Chinese class in the middle school in the future.

“This program is starting and I am also new to this field and I want to grow with the program and see how far it goes,” Yu said.