Talking the talk

Europe rises to the Chinese language challenge

Tom Pattinson, 36, started learning Chinese by accident. "When I was at school it was unheard of to study Chinese. One teacher of mine, Potter, was learning it and encouraged me to go to China on my gap year. His enthusiasm was certainly instrumental in my later decisions."

Part of the reason that Pattinson, who is from Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom, wanted to study Chinese is that he knew nobody who had been to China. He has since gone from being bereft of information and linguistic ability to setting up a business in China, including launching Time Out magazine in Beijing and Shanghai.

"For me, I don't think it would have been easy to start my own businesses, to deal with government or sponsors or partners to the same level if I didn't have Chinese. The value of being able to interview people in Chinese or communicate with artists, partners and local suppliers is immeasurable."

In recent years the UK government has encouraged the country's students to learn Mandarin. After returning from a trip to China in 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron urged students to move away from French and German and start studying Mandarin.

"By the time the children born today leave school, China is set to be the world's largest economy," he said.

"So it's time to look beyond the traditional focus on French and German and get many more children learning Mandarin."

Cameron said he hopes the number of Mandarin students would increase to 400,000 by 2016.

More recently, George Osborne, Britain's chancellor, announced a 10-million-pound ($15 million; 14 million euros) program to get 5,000 children learning Mandarin at school, a measure unveiled during a five-day trade mission to China in September.

"This investment means we can give more young people the opportunity to learn a language that will help them succeed in our increasingly global economy," Osborne said.

Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, described the relationship between the two countries as vital to the UK's growing economy, which is why, she said, the government wanted more children from all backgrounds to have the opportunity to learn Mandarin.

One important contribution to the growth of Mandarin learning in the UK is the growth of Confucius Institutes, which are Chinese government-supported Mandarin teaching organizations affiliated with Western universities. They offer a wide range of Mandarin lessons for the universities' students as well as the wider community the universities can reach out to.

In the UK, there are more than 25 Confucius Institutes and more than 100 Confucius Classrooms, the Chinese embassy in London says.

Confucius Classrooms, which are Mandarin-teaching organizations affiliated with secondary schools, receive some help and guidance from partner Confucius Institutes.

The independent Brighton College in southeastern England became the first in Britain to make Mandarin a compulsory subject. It introduced the subject in 2006, making it compulsory at some levels, and subsequently has made it a required subject for students aged 3 to 14.

Alan Bird, the college's deputy headmaster, says it was decided to establish a Confucius Classroom because the school and students recognized the growing importance of China.

"A lot of our students are outward looking, so they appreciate that Mandarin is much more useful than other languages that were perhaps popular 20-30 years ago."

The college has five full-time Mandarin teachers for about 800 students. The school has 1,500 students in total. Each of the classes lasts about an hour, and students receive lessons once a week.

Brighton College also offers Mandarin as an exam subject for the General Certificate of Secondary Education and A-level studies. About 80 GCSE students and 15-20 A-level students learn Mandarin.

Many of the students at Brighton College have visited China through school exchange trips with the high school attached to Tsinghua University.

The classrooms are fun for students, and have a mix of activities. The teacher may play the guitar and ask students to sing along in Mandarin, lead students in refreshing their vocabulary, or have them watch a video to learn new words.

Thomas Godber, one of the Mandarin teachers at Brighton College, says he typically combines a lesson with some new vocabulary learning with activities. In a lesson about Chinese food and shopping for students 13-14 years old, Godber writes the Chinese and English words on a piece of paper and asks students to repeat after him. Then he shows a lighthearted video in which he walks into a supermarket and points out the names of things in Mandarin.

Another secondary school championing the study of Mandarin is Wellington College, an elite boarding school in Berkshire, west of London, which opened a Mandarin learning center in 2012, the first of its kind in a British school.

Consisting of two classrooms in a pagoda-inspired building with an external water garden enclosed by Chinese wooden fences, it cost 500,000 pounds. In addition to language lessons, Chinese culture and calligraphy lessons will be held in the center, offering students the quintessential Chinese experience.

Teresa Tinley, who co-authored a report last year for the British Council on the teaching of Chinese in the UK, says training is the most important aspect to bringing Chinese into British classrooms.

Tinley says the staffing of Chinese classes cannot solely depend on people coming from China. "Schools are the decision makers as to what languages they teach. They are committed to teaching the languages they deliver.

"Schools need to know they have high-quality teachers who will stick with them. Learning a language needs continuity." But she also says there has to be a coordinated and long-term political strategy for language learning overall in the UK. "One language cannot be taught in a vacuum, or at the expense of other languages."

In the training field, the Confucius Institute at UCL Institute of Education has contributed greatly to standardizing the teaching of Mandarin by providing training to teachers and working on Mandarin teaching textbooks that give teachers and students a more definitive view of how to tackle the complex subject.

Katherine Carruthers, director of the Confucius Institute at UCL Institute of Education, says this has helped to standardize the teaching and learning of Mandarin.

Carruthers is the series editor of the textbooks for teaching Chinese for 11-16 year olds and is chief examiner for Cambridge Pre-U Mandarin Chinese. She now works alongside colleagues at the Institute of Education, London University, on the development of their PGCE course for teachers of Mandarin.

In the UK this year, there are 3,099 Chinese A-level students, compared to 10,328 for French and 8,694 for Spanish, and 3,710 GCSE Chinese students, compared with 157,699 for French and 90,782 for Spanish.

In addition to young students, Mandarin learning has become popular among working professionals who do business with China, and the London School of Economics' Confucius Institute leads the provision of Mandarin courses tailored toward this population.

"We have received very positive feedback from students and organizations we have worked with such as HSBC, JP Morgan, PWC and EY," says Nick Byrne, director of LSE Language Centre.

"We have provided a great platform to let business communities in London and LSE members know more about China via Chinese language study, cultural talks and cultural events. The scholarships opportunities managed by us have also allowed lots of learners supported by us to study in China."

Some European countries are following the UK's footsteps in encouraging Mandarin learning.

"In Germany we have Chinese as a real high school subject in about 80 schools," says Andreas Guder, of the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Free University of Berlin, who is also president of the Association of Chinese Teachers in German Speaking Countries.

About 5,000 German students are learning Chinese, Guder says. "We have about 20 universities where you can study Sinology or Chinese studies. That will give you a high command of Chinese."

In France, modern languages are mandatory at primary and secondary school levels. Reforms introduced between 2010 and 2012 reinforced the learning of foreign languages in all high school classes to ensure that every student leaving high school is proficient in at least two modern languages, France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.

Chinese is the fifth-most widely taught language in France; it was studied by 41,000 French secondary education students and 17,000 higher education students in 2013-14, the ministry says.

Contact the writers through cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 11/20/2015 page1)