Mandarin Teacher Training Day

Mandarin teachers in the region are invited to attend this free training day to share ideas and develop new skills under the guidance of British Mandarin teaching expert Chris Webster.

Online registration for the event has now closed. Please contact us via email at Confucius@leeds.ac.uk with any enquiries.

At this training day attendees will learn useful strategies for teaching Mandarin effectively to young people in secondary schools, covering topics such as how to develop fluency and confidence in the classroom. Teachers will also gain an understanding of the Mandarin GCSE, which is becoming more and more important as learning Chinese grows in popularity in schools.

Trainer Chris Webster worked on the recent “11-16 Mandarin Chinese Toolkit” for Pearson Education. He will be presenting and sharing the teaching materials contained within the toolkit among a whole treasure chest of teaching resources for teachers to use in their daily teaching practice.

Agenda

Morning:

• 9:25 Welcome and Introduction
• 9:30 -10:00 - Where to start? Teaching Chinese Effectively in UK Secondary Schools
• 10:00-10:20 - Q&A
• 10:20-10:30 - Tea Break
• 10:30-12:00 - Classroom Talk

Afternoon:

• 13:00 -14:30 - Translation & Literary Texts
• 14:30 -15:00 - Q&A
• 15:00 -15:05 - Conclusion and Closing

A buffet lunch will be provided.

Workshop details

Where to start? Teaching Chinese Effectively in UK Secondary Schools

This workshop will involve a presentation and follow-up discussion on the key ingredients required for teaching Chinese effectively in secondary schools in the context of the new GCSE specification.

Classroom Talk

As spontaneity is now an assessed component of the new GCSE, students are now required to be able to converse with fluency, and without additional support. In this workshop, teachers will explore and discuss strategies for incorporating a “target language culture” into their general teaching practice to enable skills in spontaneity to thrive and develop.

Translation & Literary Texts

Translation and literary texts, being an additional two key features of the new GCSE specification, will be explored in this workshop. Teachers will get access to a rich and varied body of resources to develop students’ skills in translation in addition to a range of literary texts and how to exploit them in a way that enhances learning across all four skills.

About the trainer

Chris currently works as programme director for the Swire Chinese Language Centre Oxford assisting primary and secondary schools in the establishment of Mandarin Chinese as a self-sustaining mainstream subject.

Chris lived and worked in China from 2008-2014 to then returned to the UK to complete his PGCE in Mandarin & French at UCL Institute of Education.

Chris has recently completed the “11-16 Mandarin Chinese Toolkit” for Pearson Education in collaboration with Rachel Hawkes & Katharine Carruthers. The toolkit is available through Pearson ActiveLearn.