Introduction
See Chinese is a CPD language training course for teachers following the New Curriculum for Wales. It has been designed specifically for teachers with no prior knowledge of Mandarin Chinese who wish to introduce some simple topic-based language learning to their Key Stage 2 pupils. The course comes with a complete package of exciting resources that meet the cross-curricular requirements of teaching an international language.
Book a teaching demo at your school
If you would like to see the full potential of the course resources, you can book a teaching demo at your school by emailing confuciusinsitute@uwtsd.ac.uk. Our ‘See Chinese’ teacher will come to your school and deliver a sample lesson to your students – free of charge!
See Chinese teaching methodology
We’ve called the course See Chinese as the teaching methodology focuses on visual input to reinforce rapid assimilation of Chinese by young learners. The methodology uses colour-coded sentence builders that immediately relate Chinese language learning to Welsh and English sentence patterns. In this way it supports the multi-lingual approach to language learning encouraged by the New Curriculum.
Visual learning
The visual learning approach quickly establishes the basic logic patterns of Chinese grammar and syntax which allow young beginners to understand and produce Chinese sentences. The course is the result of collaboration with Hanzeasy, a website that specializes in teaching Chinese characters with the help of vivid illustrations that aid recognition.
10 themed lessons
See Chinese consists of 10 themed lessons which can easily be mastered by teachers so that they have all the knowledge and resources for taking the lessons forward with their KS2 pupils. Many of the topics such as family, animals or numbers are stand-alone units and can be taught by themselves as Chinese language tasters. These units are also the foundation for further topics and so allow teachers to build a mini-course that can be delivered over a number of weeks. Taken altogether, the 10 lessons create a solid foundation for a basic grasp of spoken Chinese.
Cross-curricular Themes
| Week No. | Theme | Further Study | Cross-curricular Skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | family | Chinese New Year | Humanities |
| 2 | animals | China’s rarest animals and their environment – Chinese-animal adaptation | Science and Technology |
| 3 | body parts | Chinese playground games | Health and wellbeing |
| 4 | food and drink | Festive and celebration food |
Humanities Health and Wellbeing |
| 5 | my school | Day in the life of a Chinese school student | Humanities |
| 6 | numbers | Tangram Puzzle | Maths and Numeracy |
| 7 | in a shop | Yong E – a Chinese poem by Luo Binwang | Language, Literacy and Communication Humanities |
| 8 | personal preferences | Making Chinese tea | Science and Technology |
| 9 | time, days, and dates | The seasons and the 24 solar terms | Science and Technology |
| 10 | hello and goodbye | Molihua: the pentatonic scale in traditional Chinese music | Expressive Arts |
Teachers' Resources
On completion of each lesson of the See Chinese course teachers are given the PowerPoint presentation slides, worksheets and links to other resources for their own use in class.
Each lesson includes:
- a set of vocabulary cards modelling the accurate pronunciation
- a colour-coded sentence builder modelling the target sentence structure
- a set of speaking tasks to consolidate the vocabulary and sentence structure
- Hanzeasy images introducing mnemonics for writing Chinese characters
- a set of Quizlet flashcards
- a Chinese song echoing the lesson focus
- teacher’s lesson plan for each of the ‘further study’ cultural topics
See Chinese is part of the ‘Learn to Teach Mandarin’ suite of CPD courses for teachers developed by the UWTSD Confucius Institute and is the sister course to ‘Learn to Teach KS3 Mandarin’.
Register Here
See Chinese can be taught through the medium of Welsh or English, depending on the dominant language of the cohort. Please indicate your preference in the form.