14/7/2022
Over 100 Mandarin teachers and student teachers from across the globe registered to attend NCI Local Teacher Training on Sunday 10 July, with 32 of them attending in person at the Si Yuan Building, home to NCI on the University’s Jubilee Campus.
The morning sessions consisted of two talks, The first one was delivered online by Dr. Modesto Corderi Novoa, a Mandarin teacher and researcher from Spain. Dr Corderi’s research focuses on the use of Performative Language Teaching (PLT) pedagogy in the Chinese classroom and is one of the world's leading researchers and experts in this field. Drawing upon years of research and teaching experience, Dr Corderi brought PLT to life with specific examples on how to use a wide range of performative games and strategies to help students learn Mandarin in a relaxed and fun environment as well as foster their ability to interact.
This was followed by a presentation delivered in-person by Ms Xiaoming Zhu, Deputy Director of the Confucius Institute at University College London (UCL), who is also an experienced PGCE tutor at UCL. In her lecture titled “Using interactive classroom activities to engage your learners”, Xiaoming discussed and demonstrated how to engage students with interactive tasks focusing on improving language skills in all areas, i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Both talks were very well received, with a 15-minute Q and A session included at the end of each session, where attendees asked an array of interesting questions.
Whilst the online training ended at 12:00 noon, the in-person aspect of the event continued into the afternoon at the Si Yuan Building after a lunch break. The participants were put into three groups to exchange ideas and share experience on teaching at local schools in the UK.
How to engage students and make learning Mandarin fun has always been a hot topic in language teaching. Many participants commented on how much they enjoyed the training. Several teachers (including our NCI teachers) said they couldn’t wait to try out what they had learnt in their Mandarin classes soon.
~ENDS~
Posted on Friday 15th July 2022