Sharon Carstens’ daughter went through the Portland, Ore. Mandarin immersion program, so she’s seen up close and personal how these programs work and where they sometimes fall short. She also is a fluent Mandarin speaker herself.

So like the professor she is, she set out to think “how would we do immersion if we could do it in a way that best serves the goal of having students learn Chinese,” rather than “how can we deal with all the requirements of a public school program and fit in Mandarin?”

Some of her conclusions are surprising.

Carstens spent two years researching and writing about it and the book she and several other teachers have written on the subject was just published.

What she proposes would be difficult to implement in most public schools because there’s not a lot of wiggle room in terms of what  must be taught, and there are…