Chinese classes in the UK need more teachers

Students reluctant to learn Mandarin because they fear it will be too difficult

A perception that Mandarin is difficult to learn and a shortage of skilled Mandarin teachers in the United Kingdom has led to the language being taught at very few British schools, education experts in the country say.

The issue came into the public spotlight on Monday when a survey commissioned by the British Council and HSBC Holdings PLC showed that only 3 percent of primary school teachers and 9 percent of secondary school teachers say that their schools offer Mandarin lessons. The poll questioned more than 800 teachers in the UK.

Chao Qiuling, deputy director of Liverpool University's Confucius Institute, said she has witnessed a great demand for Mandarin learning among British students, but many students are worried that Mandarin is difficult to learn.

Confucius Institutes are nonprofit organizations affiliated with Western academic institutions, including secondary schools and universities.

"There is a common perception among UK students that Mandarin is difficult to learn, and this is partly due to the way lessons are structured in the textbooks," Chao said.

She said that currently most of the Mandarin curricula designed for UK classrooms are divided into different lessons based on scenarios - for example, eating out, numbers or going to school.

"This structure helps to make students interested in the lessons, but there is no natural progression from easy lessons to difficult lessons. For example, the word for 'like' appears fairly early in the textbook, but it is a very hard word to write. So maybe the curriculum should not ask students to write this word so early in their learning," she said.

She believes it is important to first teach students pinyin, the transliteration system for writing Mandarin with the Roman alphabet, and then learn the basic strokes and simple components that make up Chinese characters.

Chao says that the Liverpool Confucius Institute works with about 30 primary and secondary schools on Mandarin learning. Apart from Chao, the institute has four other Mandarin language teachers sent by the Confucius Institute headquarters, Hanban, from China to the UK. They will either go to the affiliated schools to teach, or invite students to classes on the university's campus.

But Chao says only about two or three of these schools actually have Mandarin as a curriculum class, with class sizes varying from about four students to more than 10.

Despite a general interest in learning Mandarin, British students are still reluctant to commit to learning it in curriculum classes, where their grades affect their chances of gaining a university placement.

Last year, 2,541 British students took General Certificate of Secondary Education Mandarin Chinese, which is the examination for 16-year-old secondary school students. In comparison, 72,606 students took GCSE Spanish last year, up from 66,021 the year before.

Chao says that British secondary schools are sometimes reluctant to set up Mandarin curriculum classes due to an inconsistent supply of Mandarin teachers.

Because there are very few local Mandarin teachers, many UK Mandarin classrooms are taught by teachers sent from China by Hanban.

As some of Hanban's teachers are volunteers, their visas allows them to stay in the UK for only one year. Secondary schools are reluctant to assign them to curriculum classes, as there is a fear that a class may go without a teacher when the volunteer returns to China. "In any case, frequently changing teachers is not good for the consistency of students' learning," Chao said.

However, it is encouraging to observe that opportunities for Mandarin teachers to receive training in the UK has been increasing in recent years, said Tang Yunyun, a Mandarin teacher at Wellington College, a UK secondary school.

A permanent resident in the UK, Tang received her Mandarin teacher qualification from Goldsmith College, University of London, and subsequently became a Mandarin teacher at Wellington College six years ago.

More recently, Sheffield University and the Institute of Education in London have both started offering Mandarin teaching training courses, Tang said.

With Tang's help, Wellington College started offering Mandarin for curriculum classes, including GCSE, A-level and International Baccalaureate. She was later joined by another local Mandarin teacher and a temporary Mandarin teacher from Hanban.

There are 104 students taking Mandarin at Wellington College, or about 10 percent of the school's entire student population.

As a sign of dedication to Mandarin learning, Wellington College last year became the first British school to open a Mandarin center. Consisting of two classrooms in a pagoda-inspired building with an external water garden enclosed by Chinese wooden fences, the center cost 500,000 pounds ($782,950).

"It's not just the language. It's about understanding the Chinese way of approaching life," Anthony Seldon, headmaster of the college, told China Daily in an interview last June. To set an example to his pupils, Seldon also started learning Mandarin. Unfortunately, there are few schools in the UK dedicated teaching Mandarin in the same way Wellington College does.

Colin Pyle, of Mandarin House Chinese Schools, an international organization focusing on teaching Mandarin to professionals, says learning Mandarin should be made a priority by the UK government in order to grow the link between China and UK.

"In China the majority of schools across the country teach English, this will cause an imbalance for future generations" Pyle said.

"The primary school students are too young to realize the opportunities offered by learning Mandarin, so their parents should drive them to choose Mandarin and realize the opportunities. At the same time, organizations like the British Council should also do more to make the parents understand these opportunities," he said.

cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/08/2013 page10)