Every so often Monique Ahdieh, 17, likes to play a game.

She heads into one of Beijing’s many cafes or restaurants and sits there, tuning in to the conversations unfolding around her and building stories around the people behind them.

“I’ve heard people talking — and even arguing — about phone cases, politics, bleaching lotion, soccer and soap,” said Ahdieh, from Seattle.

She has been learning Chinese since she was 12, when she started an immersion program at Beijing No 55 High School.

She had never been to China — in fact, she had never left the United States — and her grasp of foreign languages was limited to a smattering of French and Japanese.

The US has more than 180 Mandarin immersion schools that teach the language at least 50 percent of the time.

“I was in the Chinese curriculum for the first year I was there. All my teachers were Chinese and they only spoke Chinese and didn’t speak any English. I didn’t speak any Chinese. All my subjects — biology, chemistry, physics, math and history — were in Chinese. For the first year I had no English classes.”

She had four hours of Chinese-language instruction a day, in addition to the other subjects. It was her parents’ decision to send her to a Chinese high school, rather than one of the capital’s international schools.

“I cried for the first three months. I didn’t understand a word. I cried a lot. It was really stressful.”

The teaching methods also challenged her because, she said, technology and interaction play a greater role in Western classrooms than in Chinese ones, which draw on dictation and a notebook.

Ahdieh had additional Chinese instruction for six hours a week, increasing her workload, to stay on top of her subjects.

“If I had to learn Chinese in the US I think I would fail,” she said.

“I can write so much, I know about 3,000 characters, and that’s the minimum you need to be somewhat fluent. I’m not saying you can’t learn Chinese in the US, but having it here, all around you and the culture, helps it to stick. Here you can go out into the street, any street, and see the characters.”

She can go “on and on” in Chinese because it is second nature to her, to the point where she forgets how to say things in English.

Ahdieh said she has thrived from the initial shaky and tear-stained introduction to the Chinese language.

She continues to study biology in Chinese because she doesn’t understand it in English and started studying science before her friends in the US.

“I will forever be grateful to my mom for pushing me into this. I wouldn’t have had the opportunities I do now. I wouldn’t know the Chinese I do now.

“I think foreign parents are scared to put their kids into an immersion program. They’ve heard horror stories.My mother was petrified.”

Ahdieh is a Chinese tutor for a US student who attends one of Beijing’s big international schools.

“I’m doing it the Chinese way,” she said, “with dictation and a notebook. It works.”

She said that parents who can put their child into an immersion program should do so.

“Do it. Find a Chinese public school that offers it. Follow through and don’t quit halfway.”