LEWISTON — Walking into Meghan Lewis’ class is like being in China.

At least, it sounds like China.

Lewis is new to Lewiston High School this year, as is her class: Chinese I.

Her style of teaching is immersion; in other words, there’s a lot of Chinese language spoken in class and little English.

One day’s lesson last week included the Chinese words for chair, wood and desk.

Together, using the high and low tones of the language, Lewis and her students spoke Chinese as she touched chair after chair.

“Are you counting the number of chairs?” a reporter asked.

“Dui,” Lewis answered. “Dui” means correct.

Unlike English, French or Spanish, there are no ABC’s in Chinese. Letters are characters that — to the non-Chinese speaker — resemble little drawings. Phonetic translation of Chinese words is called “pinyin.”

The students continued to speak Chinese as Lewis showed pictures of chairs and desks, the words with Chinese characters and phonetic pronunciations.

This year Lewis is teaching 50 students in five classes — three language classes and two culture classes.

“Interest is pretty good,” she said. “The class got off to a late start. Enrollment isn’t what we want it to be.” She expects enrollment to increase next year.

Considering that students didn’t hear about the new Chinese language program at the high school until two weeks before school started, Principal Shawn Chabot said enrollment is better than expected.

Until this year, foreign languages at Lewiston, like at many high schools, have been French, Spanish and Latin. “The curriculum has been very Euro-central,” Lewis said. The new languages offer more choices.

Students agreed.

Freshman Nathaniel Robichaud, 14, said he enrolled in the Chinese language class after studying French at St. Dominic Academy for two years.

So far, learning Chinese has been a good choice, Robichaud said. “It’s interesting.”

He’s hoping learning Chinese will make his college application stand out.

The Chinese characters are difficult to learn, Robichaud said, but once understood, it’s not hard to write in Chinese.

Senior Olivia Bailey, 17, took Chinese “because I wanted to be more cultured, to immerse myself in a different language.”

As she spoke, a picture of her kitten was shown on the class screen, prompting Bailey to laugh and begin talking about her kitten with Lewis in Chinese.

Bailey said she hopes to someday visit China and be more than a tourist looking at scenery. She wants to be able to talk to people “and know what’s going on.”

Lewis, 27, grew up in Bath, graduated from Morse High School and then the University of Maine at Farmington.

At UMF she enrolled in Chinese language classes and studied abroad in Beijing. It was her first trip outside the United States.

“It was amazing,” she said. “It was life changing. It was very eye-opening in that it’s so vastly different.”

She fell in love with the language. As a student in China, “you have to learn to be independent and utilize the language. Studying abroad would be my biggest recommendation for anyone in college.”

After she graduated, she went back and taught English. She earned her master’s degree from a Chinese university and did her thesis in Chinese.

When asked why a Maine student should learn Chinese, Lewis said the language is important considering the United States’s high level of trade with China. Knowing the language increases job prospects “and will help kids in the future,” she added.

At the very least it will give students a new perspective, Lewis said. “It will broaden their horizons.”