Mandarin Chinese Clubs 中文俱乐部
Teaching Mandarin Chinese to English-speaking children and young people is a new phenonemon or indeed a new challenge. In the past, certain language colleges and universities have offered Mandarin courses to undergraduate or postgraduate students using materials designed for pupils born and brought up in China. Even tests in Chinese language in the UK are largely borrowed from tests designed for native students in China - an extremely off-putting fact for those who aspire to learn Mandarin as a secondary language.
In recent years, a few schools - mainly independent schools - have experimented with recruiting and using Mandarin teachers from China. But since these teachers have virtually no experience of operating in an English environment and above all their methods of teaching were originally designed for native Mandarin-speaking children in China, they often struggle to effectively manage and engage a class of pupils.
Few also realise that Mandarin Chinese cannot usefully be learnt in a few lessons, nor should the learning be a life-long dependence upon a teacher, who teaches Mandarin like an academic subject with "overwhelmingly detailed information".
So, we aim to teach our pupils a practical skill or rather to help them master the essentials of a language skill. Indeed, just like driving or swimming skills, once pupils have mastered the essentials, they can pick up the details and refine their skills as they go along.
Without jeopardising schools' existing curriculum but with maximal convenience for parents and pupils, we run local schools-based, after-school Mandarin Chinese clubs offering one half-a-hour session each week during term times.
Three-Year Commitment
Unless ruled by unforeseen events, we require parents to support their children to complete our three-year programme, the goals being:
1. Reading: Be able to recognise and pronounce 1,000 Chinese characters. Unlike English whose building blocks are alphbet and grammar, almost unique mini-picture-like characters are the building blocks of Chinese. Without the ability to recognise and pronounce these most commonly encountered characters, any talk of mastering Chinese is an illusion. In fact, Chinese grammar is very simple, and once pupils can recognise characters, they can begin to read and understand simple text.
2. Listening/Speaking: Be able to communicate in Mandarin in commonly encountered life situations, such as greeting people, being at home or in a classroom, playing at school or in a park, having a dinner at a restaurant, asking for directions and so on. There is no need to be able to use all of the 1,000 characters mentioned above. In fact, our goal is being able to use 500 characters fluently, which is sufficient to meet the entry-level requirements of orally communicating in Mandarin.
3. Writing: In the course of the three-year programme, pupils will have learnt how to write certain Chinese characters. But in no way will we be asking them to be able to write the above 1,000 characters. We set no quantitative objective in this respect, although most pupils can easily develop the ability to write a couple of hundred characters. So, our emphasis is on recognising and pronouncing 1,000 characters, and on everyday listening and speaking abilities.
2W Mandarin Core*
Drawing on the latest research findings in both China and the West and our Chief Instructor Dr Wang's unique insights into the characteristics of Mandarin and English languages, we have developed our own teaching system, 2W Mandarin Core, to achieve the above goals in learning.
Fun-Driven Learning Experience
To make Mandarin learning at our clubs a thoroughly enjoyable experience, we have designed a great variety of fun-based learning activities and tools with new ideas explored on a on-going basis. But whatever activities and tools, they are part and parcel of the highly integrated 2W Mandarin Core.
* 2W Mandarin Core is a service mark of 2W Education Services Ltd.