You have been working hard to learn English. Do you know American kids are trying to learn Chinese? More than 60,000 American students now study Chinese. "Because of China's fast development, Chinese has become more useful, and more and more Americans begin to learn it, " said Scott McGinnis, a Washington language expert  . For example, in 1999, only three schools in Chicago had Chinese lessons. This year more than 30 schools there have Chinese during school days. Last year China gave them 3,000 textbooks because they had done a good job. Although Chinese is becoming more and more popular, it is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Usually, an English speaker takes about 1,320 hours to become good at Chinese. He needs only 480 hours for French, Spanish or Italian. Last year China gave  _  textbooks to those schools in Chicago.
thirty three hundred three thousand thirty thousand