Queen's introduces Mandarin teaching

This week has witnessed the first, exciting lessons in Mandarin Chinese to be given at Queen's College. The Year 8 girls have enjoyed their first taster lessons in Mandarin. With teacher Marcus Reoch, the girls learned how to pronounce the four tones (nicknamed 'golf ball', 'ladder', 'Kung Fu' and 'rollercoaster') and how to exchange greetings. They played a scissors/paper/stone game with newly learned nouns, as well as learning how to interpret male and female characters in order to avoid going into the wrong loo in a Chinese restaurant! They had fun finding the equivalents of their given names in Chinese. Each pupil has been given a personalised log-in to a Mandarin-learning website for self-study and assessment. A lively discussion of Chinese culture ended the lesson with Mr Reoch introducing some key cultural information; we also watched a short clip from the film 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. The girls are all very much looking forward to their next session, and will have the option of learning Mandarin alongside French during Year 9 if they want to.

Posted: 24 April 2012