介绍:
In his recent trip to China, UK&`&s Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne announced that the UK government will invest a further 10 million pounds to boost Mandarin classes in English schools. It was seen as the government&`&s latest effort in promoting the Chinese language learning in order to forge better ties with China. CRI&`&s London Correspondent Duan Xuelian has been sitting in at a Mandarin class given by Thomas Godber, an English native who teaches Mandarin at one of the UK&`&s outstanding independent schools.
At Brighton College, about one hour&`&s train ride from London, Mandarin teacher Thomas Godber is leading his pupils in a song which was written and played on guitar by himself.
Thomas was a fervent believer of fun-based learning. He even created a set of Taichi moves to go with the four tones of Mandarin.
"For the first tone you are kind of a monk on the top of a mountain, uniting with the clouds, so it&`&s Mā--, the second tone we take the energy of the wind out the side of the mountain, Má--, the third tone we gather the force of the earth, Mǎ--, and the fourth tone, we strike down with the force of the lightening, Mà! "
He explains that to efficiently run a class, you have to understand your pupils and what makes them tick. And he&`&s willing to go out of his way to look for new types of teaching that might stimulate the group of teenagers who are in his charge every two or three times in a week.
"I&`&m beginning to use what is called &`&the Flipped Classroom&`& which is a style of teaching developed in America, so different from saying learning in the classroom, using in homework, you do it the opposite. You learn at home and then come into the classroom and use it with the other pupils. The pupils enjoy the lesson much more then than if I&`&m just standing there talking."
Thomas has been learning Mandarin since he was 19 years old. He even gave up a prosperous financer&`&s career in the City of London to teaching Mandarin. As far as Thomas is concerned, learning Mandarin is not at all intimidating as some English speakers choose to believe.
"I don&`&t think it&`&s intellectually demanding as some people think, you just need to be motivated. I remember I used to sit in cafes reading magazines about Chinese celebrities, and because it was really fun content, I was more motivated to look up all the different characters that I couldn&`&t read. So I think it&`&s developing a curiosity that is very important."
Thomas was one of the few young undergraduates in Edinburgh University to have chosen Mandarin as their full time major for four years. Now looking back, he is quite gratified that he had followed the right path.
"Well, at the time, that was the first group in Edinburgh where we had ten pupils. In the past, it was only like one, two or three pupils learning Mandarin full time. And my year was the very first time when Mandarin was becoming a bit more popular and a bigger subject at university. And it was a time when people didn&`&t quite know if China was going to develop as much as it has, but there was a possibility. So it was a very exciting time, I thought I was involved with something really big that most people didn&`&t really know about. And ever since then, I&`&ve been able to watch China&`&s role expand and everybody becoming more and more interested in China and so I feel Wow, I made the right choice!"
In the past few years, there has been increasing emphasis on Mandarin learning from the UK government. In his latest trip to China, UK&`&s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that the UK government will invest a further 10 million pounds into Mandarin teaching in English schools, and 5000 more pupils will learn the Chinese language by 2020.
Brighton College where Thomas teaches was one of the first English schools to make Mandarin an elective subject in 2006. And over the past ten years or so, the school has seen a steady increase in pupils taking up Mandarin.
"We have more and more pupils interested in Mandarin at the sixth form, that&`&s Year 12 and 13. In the past, A Level was so difficult, because it was traditionally designed for the native Chinese speakers who grew up in the UK, and today most of the pupils taking Mandarin in A Levels are still native Chinese speakers, which makes it very very difficult for western pupils to do well."
According to this year&`&s official GCSE statistics, only about 3,710 pupils took Mandarin as an exam subject, in comparison to over 150,000 pupils who took French and 90,000 who took Spanish. Also, a research by the British Council indicates that as of 2013, only 1% of UK&`&s adult population speaks Mandarin to a level that allows them to conduct a basic conversation.
Speaking from his experience learning and teaching the Chinese language, Thomas Godber equates it with studying any other foreign languages, to be able to use Mandarin as a second language you need both motivation and perseverance.
"Many schools in the UK only have clubs and after school sessions on Mandarin once a week where pupils maybe just learn how to say their names and how old they are in Mandarin. But one of my strong beliefs now is that once a week is never enough for a western person to try and learn Mandarin because you can&`&t get very far. So in our school we have two or three lessons for the younger years, they make much more progress this way and it&`&s all the more important because they will be more motivated and more interested in learning Mandarin."
However, with demand for Mandarin learning on a moderate rise and more people seeing it as a tangible tool for doing business with China, the UK government and schools are facing pressure on supply of qualified Mandarin teachers. That is why the 10 million pounds investment in Mandarin education as announced by George Osborne is gladly appreciated by teachers like Thomas.
"We all know that China is here to stay as a very important partner for many countries in terms of economy but also I think politically, even socially, because so many Chinese speakers now live in all parts of the world. Because of that, I think learning Chinese will definitely continue to be a very important feature in UK&`&s education system."
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