Writing Schemes of Work – Key Stage 3 Chinese

I have not long come back from an absolutely fantastic three week trip to Taiwan, whereby the first two weeks was spent on a training course in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) at the National Taipei University of Education (國立臺北教育大學) very generously arranged by the Taiwan Ministry of Education (it is free to attend if you have a British or American passport!).

After being used to attending training seminars domestically and in Mainland China, on a professional level, it was so refreshing to experience and observe TCFL in a culture that has been teaching it longer than in Mainland China, whereby the quality of such was striking to say the least.

What struck me most is that almost the same methods employed for TEFL (or ESL) are employed in TCFL but with a Chinese flavour that appeals to the idiosyncrasies of Chinese as a foreign language and how to ensure that the language is taught effectively. If you want to know what this involves, simply look up any topic based activities on Google followed by “esl” e.g. “greetings esl”, “family members esl” – there you will find a whole range of excellent activities and resources used to teach English as a second language, much of which has already been translated into TCFL in Taiwan.

An ongoing headache for many teachers I hear across the UK circuit, is the effective teaching of writing Chinese characters. Given the time constraints imposed on us, my original beliefs have always been to drip-feed the basics of writing from the beginning while simultaneously focusing on a much wider level of vocabulary and grammar across the skills of reading, listening and speaking. Let us also not forget that the teaching of culture is absolutely essential if our students are going to become “culturally competent” in the language, or shall we say “Socioculturally Competent” – that is to be able to converse in the appropriate register and frame of reference with a native Chinese speaker, particularly if that person has little knowledge or experience of western culture. This, from my own experience, is a highly practical skill, and time and again proves instrumental in forging stronger relationships with Chinese people, and to some extent often compensates for linguistic deficiencies during interaction. This is because the Chinese person being spoken to is able to see that the non-native Chinese speaker does understand how social interactions work within Chinese cultural contexts thus is able to sustain a conversation on topics beyond the scope of their own culture and further diminish any stereotypes that have been formed through education. This metaphorically speaking is how we are able to “bridge the gap” between cultures. (For more on sociocultural approaches to second language acquisition, see “Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquistion” (Atkinson, D. 2011) – many thanks to 林文韵 of NTUE for her introduction to this).

Returning to the notion of “drip-feeding” writing skills in Chinese, it was refreshing to discover that the teaching methods employed in Taiwan do in fact follow the basis of my initial pedagogical beliefs, which is:

认字 – 写字 – 用字

(Recognise Characters – Write Characters – Use Characters)

Bizarrely, the main focus I have observed in UK schools has largely been on the second step, and almost completely ignoring a number of essential details of the first step. How do I know this? Because pupils all over the country still have the ongoing inclination to mindlessly copy characters over and over purely out of fear that they will fail the next vocabulary test (or simply because they can’t be bothered to use another method!), with little thought to them realising that if they actually understood how Chinese characters are structured, that they would remember them far more easily.

These three steps consist of the following essential components:

认字 (Recognise)

1. Character spacing (汉字的构造）
2. Radicals – the differences between 部首 (radicals) and 部件 (parts)
3. Types of characters (六书）
4. Concept behind the evolution of Chinese characters (汉字的演化过程 – from oracle bone inscriptions (甲骨文) to regular script (楷书))

写字(Writing characters)

1. Basic strokes (笔画）
2. Stroke order (笔顺）
3. Punctuation (标点符号)

用字(Using characters)

1. Stand alone characters （字）
2. Compound characters （词）
3. Four character combinations （e.g. 成语）
4. Characters used for foreign loanwords (外来词）
5. Grammatical particles （小品词）
6. Word order （句法）

The key point to take away from the above is deciding when to teach these essential aspects of the basics of Chinese writing. If you simply just show your students everything all in one go, you can kiss goodbye to any hope of these essential features of Chinese writing actually sinking in and being remembered in the long term.

Attached here for your reference SOW KS3 is a draft KS3 SOW for my first term at Desborough College where these essential Chinese character writing skills are to be drip-fed throughout the term in addition to covering the required vocabulary for students to be prepared to take the YCT Level 1 by the end of Year 7 (note that the YCT only tests reading and listening so students will inevitably be extra motivated to learn the extra vocabulary they need to know for these two particular skills).

This SOW covers much of the essential basics above, balancing culture with language, and not bombarding students with in-absorbable amounts of content that they are likely never to remember. An example of this can be seen in the lesson where the students are to be taught numbers, whereby they are also introduced to Chinese calligraphy in the same lesson but only practice the writing of 横 and 竖 for writing the numbers 一、二、三 and 十 along with the stroke order. The rest of the numbers are merely there to be “recognised” （认识）and not for them to learn how to write. If you look later throughout the term, other strokes are taught in future lessons and built up slowly.

The other rationale for this is that if you use the popular Jinbu series of textbooks, there are “key characters” highlighted in yellow boxes throughout the textbook in almost every unit. These are supposed to be the focus of writing as you go through each unit – not the whole entire set of characters taught in that chapter. I know this because I have even asked one of the authors myself and she said this is how the book is designed!

If you have a tight schedule such as mine, that is only one hour per week with your Year 7 students, where the success of Chinese at the school hinges on students’ motivation to continue studying it beyond either Year 7 or Year 8 to GCSE, I am hard pressed to think of a more suitable SOW for students who will be taught Chinese in a non-selective state school environment. Certainly bombarding students with vocabulary to memorise how to write practically never works unless you are in a unique situation and have hours of classroom time at your disposal.

I would love to see anyone else’s SOWs – seeing that I’ve shared mine, let’s exchange views and feedback!

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Making the Most of Exercise Books

As we are about to setup Chinese in our latest hub school – Desborough College, Maidenhead – it came to mind to produce a self-made exercise book which can avoid endless printing of handouts to be stuck on the inside covers of the books for pupils’ reference, which become messy and as a result less likely students will even bother looking at.

Time for a solution!

Please download the draft Year 7 exercise book I’ve designed by clicking the link below:

Chinese Writing Book – Sample for Secondary

Now to explain the rationale behind its design…

Classroom Language (Teacher & Student)

Any of you that know me will know I’m a big fan of teaching in the Target Language, I even wrote a blog post on it: Optimal Use of the Target Language and Why It is Definitely Worth it and did a workshop on encouraging spontaneity at this year’s UCL IOE Annual Chinese Teaching Conference.

For this to be of any use, any time you vocalise words in these lists such as “read after me”, “what’s the meaning?”, or any student who vocalises “how do you say…in Chinese/English?” etc that the absolute expectation for both yourself and the student is to say it in the TL. If you do not have this expectation, then kiss goodbye to any development of spontaneity among your students. To quote Krashen – for there to be output, there must be input – but this input needs to get to the point where it becomes very familiar for it to then translate into actual output. What better way to do this then to ensure any routine phrases that are said every single lesson to become part of your pupils’ active (and not just passive) lexicon?

Banternese!

From my own experience, these phrases go down an absolute storm with the students and is excellent for managing behaviour and building rapport. Students find phrases such as 干嘛！ and 我的天呐！absolutely hilarious and love saying them to each other. When you say 干嘛! to a student who is misbehaving, it also takes the sting out of you telling them off as it’s in the TL and not in English. Students also do not know how to respond as they do not have the language at their disposal to make a quick-witted reaction. So even though the word banter has negative connotations…it can also be extremely handy for dealing with behaviour in the classroom.

Character Practice (田字格)

There is only one page in the book so it is much easier for you to navigate. All it takes is to copy and paste this very page 60 or so times and then you have your book ready!

You can also see that I’ve noted at the bottom of the page a reminder to write in proportion and to keep separate characters in individual boxes. As you all know, students tend to get into an awful habit of not writing characters inside the squares, and equally with writing each radical out of proportion with each other…now hopefully with this – no more!

I feel that it is best to explain students what these boxes are for and how they are supposed to keep characters looking neat and in order for them to actual realise why they are designed the way that they are.

New Words (生词表)

The point of this section, again another section that can be copied and pasted until you think there is enough, is to enable students to note down words that they want to look up in a dictionary during or outside lessons. This enables students to gain ownership of the language and say what they want to say (as advocated in the famed book on TL called “Something to Say”). For example, maybe a student wants to be able to say “Dr. Strange” 奇异博士 (qíyì bóshì) because for some reason he/she loves the film or Marvel Comics – then why not allow them to have this become part of their active vocabulary? This appeals to students own personal interests and encourages them to want to know how to say even more words. If you don’t know how to say this word in Chinese, then do not be afraid to admit it! Just say to them, “I don’t know actually as the film came out while I am living here, how about you look it up and tell me next lesson?” – well, yes this example is a true story…I had a student who did just that – then we went into a discussion about how 博士 refers to someone who has a PhD, and then I asked him 你想读博士吗？- with him understanding perfectly what the question meant, with great enthusiasm – 想！！我很想！我喜欢…呃…呃…物理！我想(读)物理博士 – and there you are!

Of course, you can also use this new words section to serve as the students “vocab book”, to avoid them carrying two books around, which quite a few students as you know end up losing!

Year 7 Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing Step by Step Targets

Every student likes to be guided in their learning and many teachers today understand that the biggest motivator for students is achievement rather than just token rewards. These targets therefore are to make students know what your expectations are and what they can realistically achieve in one year. I took these from http://www.rachelhawkes.com and edited them for Chinese. It would be good to know what your thoughts are in terms of the expectations I have set for them. I firmly believe that expectations for writing should be much lower for Year 7 to ensure that they get into good habits and not move onto characters too soon, before bad habits become fossilised.

Chinese Character Spacing

It is absolutely essential for students to know how radicals are put together to make new characters for them to actually understand how they are structured, otherwise they will just think mindless copying is the only way to remember them. This only kills motivation in the long run and causes them to resent/disengage from the subject. The rule of thumb to understand here is that if Chinese people had to learn such basic concepts when they (or you) first started learning, then non-Chinese students most certainly do as well.

Basic Strokes

This again is absolutely essential for students to know how to be able to write properly and neatly. I would even expect them to know how to say what they are in Chinese to serve as “labels” for what they actually are. This is especially relevant considering their English description is rather vague and long-winded (you only have to look at the basic strokes reference sheet to know what I mean!).

Note that the pinyin for 提 should be tí and 折 should be zhé.

Stroke Order

Also essential, but as we all know, students pretty much never follow it, despite us telling them that it makes Chinese characters easier to memorise in the long run! This is why I have included the box “if in doubt: top to bottom & left to right” to ensure that at least most of the time they are following the correct stroke order (or I hope!).

Marking Code

This may look complicated but it has saved me lots of time and I can swear that every code put in the list is revisited countless times over, particularly WM? (What’s Missing?) as students always miss out a stroke or radical. The positive praise in the TL is also helpful for adding that extra bit of TL where you can.

Tones + Pinyin Pronunciation Cheat Sheet

I have found these to be hugely helpful in ensuring students pronounce pinyin and tones correctly, to the point where when you teach vocabulary, you can literally just flip the learning and pupils can teach themselves how to pronounce the words you want them to learn without you telling them. As effective as drilling can be, you can only really go so far with it, as students will not be perfect given the fact that they are studying Chinese in a controlled environment with not enough exposure to it outside of the classroom. The only option you have therefore is to teach them pinyin properly and then to have this as a scaffold in the event that students pronounce syllables such as “zi” incorrectly (“zee” being the most common error).

Well that’s my exercise book design for you – I really hope you can give me some feedback to let me know how I can improve it. I am a bit concerned that there’s a bit of information overload…but without a fixed classroom for teaching to put up displays, and the fact that students need to have some kind of reference material to look at when doing homework etc, I am yet to think of a better option. Any feedback you can give would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

 

Using Schoology for Sharing Resources

I have just arrived home from the Swire Chinese Language Day – a highly productive day of pedagogical and strategic discussion among our Swire Chinese Language Centres to push forward the development of the teaching and learning of Chinese here in the UK.

After volunteering to present, I was offered the opportunity to discuss with colleagues the issue of sharing resources, which has over many years been an issue that has long yet to be resolved. After today, I am more hopeful than ever that this might well soon be an issue of the past!

A wholehearted thanks is of the highest order to Maggie Sproule, the Head of Chinese at the Edinburgh Swire Chinese Language Centre, who created a resource sharing platform using an established Learning Management Software (LMS) called “Schoology” (www.schoology.com).

This is a fantastic website whereby students and educators alike can share teaching and learning materials with one another in addition to communication through messaging, blogs and forums.

We would like this resource platform to be open to anyone and everyone who is a teacher of Chinese. Please contact me directly to request access to our rich body of resources: crw.webster@radley.org.uk 

 

 

You will then go to this page, click on School Groups

 

 

“太古中文教育_Knowledge Exchange” – The Main Page

This is the main page of our group. As you can see, there has been discussion amongst our members in the initial stages. After today’s conference, this forum will become much more active through our collective management.

Now if you look closely at the above homepage you will see “update”. Where you can post a comment and upload a file, add a link, share a resource already uploaded on the system or conduct a poll as in the four icons situated below the comment box below.

You can also post notifications of events – these include events such as “share resources for speaking activities”, where members upload resources by a certain deadline.

You can also post a personal blog to invoke discussion regarding a certain area of your practice or general pedagogy.

As a member of Schoology, you can also join other groups to get inspiration and share practice among other educational experts.

Now for the moment you have all been waiting for – sharing resources.

As you can see below there is an explicit tab for resources as can be seen below.

Once you click on this, go to apps.

Once you click on apps, you will be redirected to this page, where you can install apps for resource sharing.

The most fantastic aspect of this particular function is that you can install apps such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox – all of which are extremely popular for storing important files in schools all over the world.

Now let me demonstrate how to put files from these drives onto Schoology for you and your colleagues to use and share.

First of all, click on “Google Drive” after you’ve installed it and synchronised it with your Schoology account. Once you do this, all of your folders from your Google Drive will appear as below (I have much more than what is there, this is just a screenshot!).

Once your Google Drive appears, you can then click the checkbox as below to choose the resource you would like to upload to our group.

Once you have clicked the tickbox as above, move the cursor up to import as below and click import file.

After you do this the following window will pop up. If the file is not too large, it should upload very quickly.

You will then be redirected to the following page:

Go to Copy to Resources and select our group name: 太古中文教育_Knowledge Exchange

Once you have done this, select Folder to choose which folder your resource is most suitable for. You can ask me if you are not sure which folder is best for putting a resource into. For my resource “List of Simplified Radicals” above, I decided that this is best put in the subfolder “Useful Resources” under “Learning and Teaching” as this is a resource that addresses one of the most basic foundations of Chinese.

After selecting this folder, the page then appears as follows with both our group or the “collection” known as “太古中文教育_Knowledge Exchange” and the folder within it titled Useful resources.

Once you have done this, click on Copy Item

Now when you go back to our group homepage, you can then find the resource you successfully uploaded.

Go to Learning and Teaching as seen below in our group:

And then Useful resources contained within this folder:

After you will enter this folder and then find the resource at the bottom as the most recently uploaded resource. Feel free to move it to the top if you wish!

Voila! That is how you share resources on Schoology!

As you are very well aware, sharing resources is absolutely vital for improving our own practice. This is expertly demonstrated from the following diagrams (Source: http://edfutures.net/images/c/cb/What_is_practitioner_research.pdf):

Reflective practice is by no means a bad thing, in fact it is absolutely essential – however given the convenience of today’s technology, it is clear that we are completely capable of taking this one step further.

As can be seen from the diagrams above, a practitioner who shares resources is clearly one who becomes vital as their professional knowledge base far exceeds their solitary personal knowledge base – and if recognition is personally a key professional desire of yours, then there is no better way for you to raise your profile than by sharing resources!! How do you think the likes of Rachel Hawkes, Gianfranco Conti, Joe Dale and the like have become so well known in the MFL world??? (and to be honest…they are very likely to be making a verrry tidy sum from all of the conferences that they are invited to present at…not just in the UK…but across the world!).

If by this point you are still not convinced by the value of sharing resources, whether your aim is to save time and effort or want to gain recognition or to make a bundle of resources just to earn extra money, then I would highly recommend enrolling on the following Open University course to give you a clear guide of how it works and to maximise your potential: www.open.edu/openlearn/education/teachers-sharing-resources-online/content-section-2.1

To be honest, sharing resources requires only 5 minutes of your time every so often throughout the year (as said in the videos in the OU course at the link above), think how much time your contribution could save a colleague in a place far, far away….likewise they could share something in return that could transform a dull activity into something glorious!

Sharing is caring folks! 分享即是关爱！

 

 

 

The Silk Road Initiative and Why Your Students Must Know About It

As fortune has it, the Chinese Government National Tourism Office based in London have given me a regular public speaking gig in promoting the scenic sights of the ancient Silk Road to audiences in London, Copenhagen and Stockholm (see images below). As I have more talks lined up in the next month, this makes an ideal theme for this week’s article as a topic of immediate interest to your pupils.

If you are a person who watches CCTV news daily, as a way to keep up your Chinese, or as a native Chinese who likes to keep abreast of your country’s current affairs, you will notice that every single programme centres around 􀀁􀀃􀀁􀀂 (the “One Belt, One Road” strategy, otherwise known as the “Silk Road Initiative”).

For those of you who are not aware (it is actually quite astonishing the amount of people that don’t know!), the goal of this colossal Chinese government-led project is to recreate the ancient Silk Road in order to connect all major cities that are situated along almost two thirds of the world’s land mass (!!).

Now as you can see from the figures above, this is absolutely astounding, and not only covers land, but also water, as one can see from the projected route below:

The scale of this project is simply massive and is bound to be of relevance to your pupils in the future. Why? Well, where will these countries look to hire people to run the projects along this route effectively? Who will they most want to seek to run them?

Yes, they may consider just hiring locally, but as is widely known, following the rise of globalisation, local companies tend to look far and wide to find the right candidate. Take the UK Crossrail project worth £15bn for example – who is the project manager and where are they from? Linda Miller from the US. Which architect designed the Shard? Renzo Piano from Italy. Now look at the graphs below just to see how much Chinese investment there is in the UK and the stakes they have in our companies:

Quite significant huh?

If that isn’t enough then read these articles in the links below published only in the last few months about the UK and our involvement in this world-changing initiative, and please do share them with your students, as this initiative is without doubt going to have an impact on them. This is especially if they have knowledge of Chinese language and they have knowledge of Chinese language and culture, and know how to interact with Chinese people. They may not realise it now, but as Chinese is still a growing subject in schools, which will grow rapidly thanks to the combined efforts of the MEP and Swire Chinese Language Programme in the next few years, these students will be in pole position to make a niche for themselves in the hot job market that will be borne from the colossus that is the Silk Road Initiative.

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/29/britainwill-pay-key-role-building-chinas-new-silk-road/
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/12/british-role-sought-chinas-new-silk-road/
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/13/britaincan-key-partner-chinas-new-silk-road/

Chinese and Parity With Other Languages in Schools

It is has been made clear in a whole range of documentation (most notably the Alcantara Report: https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/alcantara_full_report_jun15.pdf) that for Chinese to be a sustainable mainstream subject in schools, that one key factor is for it to have parity with other languages.

From different conversations I have had with colleagues, it appears that the former “National Curriculum Levels” have caused a great deal of confusion in the world of UK secondary education in what this “parity” should mean and involve.

Let’s get one thing straight, it is without doubt that Chinese is different (!) to European languages, and therefore does not share the so many similar traits with them, as they do among themselves.

One key difference that sets Chinese apart from European Languages, is that they all share one common trait – cognates. While there are “cognates” in Chinese e.g. 咖啡，沙发，巧克力 and so on, there are far less of them in Chinese than there are in the Germanic and Romance languages.

A conversation I have had with some colleagues concerning the design of an SoW, was that the school bizarrely expected students to “tick box” certain skills within a designated time frame, not taking into account that different students acquire skills at a different pace. Take the following for example:

Now if you look at this closely, you can see that this is designed in mind of European languages not Chinese (!), most notably in the expectations for writing.

For a start, Chinese does not have accents and it takes longer for students to gain the basic skills needed to learn to write Chinese before they can even begin to start writing phrases, let alone sentences. To learn how to write Chinese correctly, one needs to have a robust knowledge of:

• Character composition (spacing)
• Radicals
• Basic Strokes
• Stroke Order
• Punctuation

It would also be worth adding pinyin to this as students often struggle to learn how to pinyin as the spelling of words in pinyin are not consistent with English. Pinyin is undoubtedly a key part of Modern Chinese as it is used to type characters on computers and mobile devices, thus one must learn how to write pinyin correctly in order to input the correct characters.

So even before one can even think of reaching Level 1c in writing in the diagram above, one has to master all the above bullet points first, otherwise it is like learning to run before one can walk.

As much people dislike Mr. Gove for his educational reforms, one does have to say he has done a great job of the new Modern Languages Programme of Study, in addition to making languages compulsory from Key Stage 2 – which we should have done years ago (!).

After the issues and misunderstandings caused by the former national curriculum levels, a complete reboot was exactly what was needed, so that Chinese at last can have its place within school politics that enables it to have parity with other languages, but not tied to the same box ticking stream.

Parity for Chinese among European languages is required, as it certainly should not be considered superior, but what this means is as follows:

• Parity in timetabling
• Parity in pupils’ options choices
• Parity in extra-curricular activities
• Parity in opportunities
• Parity in staffing
• etc, etc

To put simply, parity in everything but academic expectations.

Students should not be forced or put under pressure to master Chinese to the level of European languages in an equal timeframe. Expectations should be managed and adjusted accordingly. If one is worried about how other stakeholders might react to this seemingly slow process of acquisition (e.g. parents), then it is your duty to educate them as to why and how these expectations are different. If you do not, these people will be forever in the ignorance that you are a magician and can make students reach the same heights as in European Languages in a very short space of time.

To wrap up, think about the reasons why:

• Chinese is an unpopular subject
• Students lose interest
• Students resent the subject
• Students do not take it as an option
• Chinese as a subject dies a slow death and has to be taken off curriculum due to lack of numbers
• Any other negative attitudes!

This is all because expectations, on all sides, have not been managed effectively.

Everyone prefers to learn something properly, and in the right way, so make sure that it gets done.

Chinese and European languages can easily have parity, but they are essentially different in nature. Once people accept this, then we will all be onto a winner 🙂

 

Pearson Edexcel GCSE Chinese Training – Key Points

Last Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the training “Preparing to Teach the New GCSE Chinese Spec” by Pearson.

I thought it would be best this week to give you a short summary of the key points of the workshop, just incase you are unable to attend, or as a quick reference/recap.

New Grading Structure

In the summer of 2017, all 4 papers (speaking, listening, reading and writing) will be taken according to the new GCSE spec.

Papers are marking according to the following linear grading structure:

According to the presenter, this new grading system is to give breadth to students who achieve As and A*s at GCSE so that employers know how good their language skills actually are. The presenter also said that it will be expected for some students to achieve levels 7-9, but most to achieve levels 4-6. This could be a real shakeup for schools who expect an A and A* for almost every student!

Key Changes from 2017

• 100% External Assessment – all exam papers will be set and marked by the Awarding Organisation
• 25% assessment weightings per skill, each skill is assessed separately
• Tiered papers but no mixed tier entry – a candidate must enter HT for all 4 skills, or FT in all 4 skills
• Short translations from and into the target language
• Authentic stimuli in the reading, including literary texts
• Focus on the culture of Chinese-speaking countries and communities

GCSE vs iGCSE

The international GCSE will continue to be offered for independent schools, but will not count in tables or attract funding. State schools may also do the iGCSE but again not attract funding.

The fundamental differences between these two exams are:

GCSE – All 4 skills tested separately on different days as closed exams

iGCSE – Speaking and Listening are tested on different days, Reading and Writing tested on the same day (i.e. students do the Reading first, shortly followed by the Writing).

Essentially then, the iGCSE will be a tad easier, as once the students do the Reading paper, they will then have characters “fresh in their mind” for when they do the Writing paper.

Trickiest Themes and Sub-Topics

I am only listing here the trickiest themes highlighted by the group:

• Social media and technology – use of, advantages and disadvantages
• Dealing with problems (local area, holiday and travel)
• Rules and pressures (what school is like)
• Events and exchanges (school activities) – this can be tricky if your school doesn’t really do them!
• Volunteering
• International and global dimension: particularly campaigns and good causes & Environmental issues (being ‘green’; access to natural resources)

Topics Removed From Specification

The following topics have been removed from the specification to avoid too much “baby talk” and to cater topics more to students’ immediate interest:

• Describing one’s room
• Body parts
• Pets

While the GCSE Edexcel Chinese textbook will adapt to the current themes, there are currently no plans to adapt the Jinbu textbook series accordingly. I assume that the above topics which have been omitted to be best taught at primary level if possible, as they are more suited. Students tend to love talking about their pets!

A publisher present at the training said that there will be revision guide produced with a whole range of practice assessment materials.

Speaking Exam – Most Salient Points

• 12 minutes’ preparation time, immediately prior to the oral
• Students may make notes which they refer to during tasks 1 and 2 but not task 3
• Teachers will be required to ask questions verbatim – that is you will not be allowed to change the content of the question to help the student. This means more onus on them to be more creative and spontaneous.
• The teacher can only repeat the question twice
• No additional questions are allowed other than the ones provided (还有吗？etc）
• No dictionary allowed during preparation time

Task 1 Role Play (RP)

• FT 1-1.5 min; HT 2-2.5 mins
• 5 bullet points to be covered altogether – make sure you spend most time on the first two bullet points
• You are required to “Give an appropriate brief response” for bullet points 4 and 5 – but do not say anything more than a single sentence as this gives students less speaking time, which means less marks
• The RP scenarios are based on any of the topics rom themes 1 to 4 (listed on page 9 of the specification) but not based on the theme “International and Global Dimension” as this theme lends itself better to the picture-based task and the conversation
• There are symbols to indicate to students what they need to include in their conversation – ? – means they need to ask a question – ! – means they need to respond to something they have not prepared
• We looked at an example in the SAMs pack on page 45 (FT) and page 292 (HT)

Task 2 Picture Based Task (PT)

• FT 2.5-3 mins; HT 3-3.5 mins
• The teacher asks 5 compulsory questions set by the exam board – students need to plan the answers to these very carefully!
• Students are required to refer to past, present and future events in this assessment using a range of timeframes
• We looked at an example in the SAMs pack on page 105 (FT) and page 351 (HT)
• For the HT paper, they will be required to answer an unexpected question
• Key fixed phrases that are in this exam which the teacher needs to ask the student are as follows:

描述这张照片。

还有呢？

为什么（不）呢？

So it would be worth getting students to know these really well from day one!

Task 3 Conversation 

• FT 3.5 – 4.5 mins; HT 5-6 mins
• Two 3-minute conversations on two different themes
• For the first part of the conversation, the students can choose one theme no later than two weeks in advance of the exam – the choice of the topic must be agreed between the student and the teacher
• The second part of the conversation must be on a different theme. This will be prescribed by Pearson through instructions on a sequencing grid – I must say sequencing grid is rather confusing so really do spend the time getting your head around it! – it’s on pages 287-289 of the SAMs pack
• Students are required to refer to past, present and future events in this assessment using a range of timeframes
• There is a clear emphasis on genuine and spontaneous interaction throughout the conversations

Listening Exam – Most Salient Points

• Overview is on page 10 of the specification
• Most questions on the paper include putting a cross in each one of the three correct boxes among A-G (that is seven boxes to choose from)
• We looked at the listening transcript on page 11 of the Sample Assessment Materials (SAMs) and cross referenced it with the question in the sample exam paper on page 18
• There are examples of questions adapted from authentic recordings such as the appearance of a Weather Forecast question on page 22 of the SAMs
• There is a lot of content in the questions on the exam paper, which require students to be trained so they are able to manage to read the questions and options carefully while also listening to the recording
• A website which will be providing authentic listening materials for Chinese with exercises and games is http://www.thisislanguage.com – however it is currently in development, be sure to keep on the lookout within the next year!

Reading Exam – Most Salient Points

• We looked at the example question paper on page 198 of the SAMs pack
• The consensus among us was that this paper is manageable and not overly difficult for the pupils

Writing Exam – Most Salient Points

• Overview is on page 40 of the specification
• FT – 1 hour and 15 minutes in length; HT – 1 hour and 25 minutes
• Students must answer all questions
• The presenter made explicit that students do not need to know how to write every word, just enough to be able to produce something of enough quality in the exam
• We looked at the SAMs FT question paper on page 219 – students are required to write between 140-190 characters in this paper
• It is most necessary to do what the question asks of the student, not translate words from the description of the task
• A key app coming on the market next year are FlashAcademy who will provide digital flashcards with a variety of games all in sync with textbooks used in schools – including a Skritter writing function
• Another key app is Zizzle which gives students pictures and stories as a scaffold for remembering characters in the long term – a much needed tool in the current climate

Simplified Chinese Grammar List 

• FT is on page 78 of the specification
• HT is on page 80 of the specification
• Students are required to be able to write and say the grammar points listed but need to be able to read and understand variations of these forms for when they see them appear in authentic literary texts

Simplified Chinese Vocabulary List

• The list begins with High-Frequency Language on page 108 of the specification
• Topic-specific vocabulary is listed on page 117
• A colleague present at the training said that there are approximately 1200 words in the syllabus – she counted them all bless her!
• The presenter stated that students should be able to be competent in all 4 skills for the High-Frequency Language and know how to write a sensible (and necessary) amount from the list of Topic-Specific Vocabulary but not all of it. They should be able to read, listen, and say all of the words in all sections of the vocabulary list, including topic-specific vocabulary

Support for Planning

We were informed that there will be extra support materials provided to help with planning, as follows:

• Course planner
• SoW for 2 year KS4
• Matching charts
• Getting Started guide
• Student guide
• Guide for using literary texts
• Guide for incorporating culture into the classroom

We were also given handouts about how to incorporate culture into the classroom and using literary texts. The key theme of both of these is that they were adapted from Rachel Hawkes’ resources, in particular “Translation, Literary Texts and Classroom Talk toolkit for Studio KS3 French, Stimmt KS3 German and Viva KS3 Spanish”, published by Pearson in 2015. I have since contacted Rachel Hawkes to see if there are any plans for a version for Mandarin – so watch this space!

The 67 Worst Teaching Mistakes – Guilty as Charged!

After stepping out of the classroom for what has been a few weeks now, the following article – http://oncourseworkshop.com/table-contents/67-worst-teaching-mistakes/ – has been the best wake up call I’ve had for a while and since doing so I’ve gone on one heck of a CPD mission!

Say hello to the following books!

• Talk Less Teaching

I bought this book on the back of not only seeing it in a bookstore here in Oxford and it catching my eye (I’ve felt I’ve been too teacher fronted for a while..) but point 7 in the article: “Talking too much and doing too much” really jumped at me when I read it. In this point it succinctly states, “the more responsibility the students take to present, manipulate, debate, sum up and draw conclusions about information, the more they truly learn the material”. Too much and too many times have I stood at the front and just talked at the pupils! This is at times, largely down to the great degree of content I had to get through, where teacher talk gives you more control and confidence that you are getting through the content that pupils need to know and from questioning can then also know to some degree that most students have understood it….

In recognition of this, I did attempt at times to “flip” the learning by having pupils apply techniques such as the ones mentioned here: Teaching Pupils “How to Learn” Chinese and Why it is so Important (Part 1) and Teaching Pupils “How to Learn” Chinese and Why it is so Important (Part 2). This was certainly effective, and the students clearly enjoy it, however the issue I found was that students would take far too long on just a couple of characters – there’s only so much time in the lesson that you can spend explaining and instructing to cover all bases and ensure all pupils know what they need to do, before an activity completely falls on its head!

This had then led me to buy the following books also, mainly because they all came in a bundle on Amazon, please do not blame me for being too trigger happy…!

• Engaging Learners & Backwards Teaching

The key message of this book is that if you want to be an outstanding teacher, pupil engagement should be its bedrock. The author also says that for pupils to be engaged, they must be in “flow”, that is, they have completely lost themselves in the the activity that they are engaged in. We have all been there…I was this afternoon while playing away on my guitar! But again, of the six essential ingredients for flow was, yes that’s the one…minimal teacher talk!

This book basically tells you that you need to make sure there is a specific end goal for your students starting from the very end and then working backwards from there. Once you have got this end goal in set in stone, you then tell and guide your students how they can eventually reach it, starting from right now.

The inspiration therefore to buy this book, came from a colleague who told me that in the lesson she came to observe me teaching, she could not see “where the students were going”. This refers to point 56 in the article, “failing to assess learning objectives”, whereby if you teach a lesson without some sort of end goal and just “oh today the Scheme of Work says I must teach this” or “we must get through this content because it is one of the many topics on the exam”, then that is when eventually, as the article puts it, “students may disengage, avoid participating, give you blank stares, avoid letting you know they are falling behind, or perform poorly in periodic tests or projects”. Students clearly need to have their learning oriented, and be able to orientate their learning themselves. This cannot be done without any kind of end goal in sight…and before one can say, “to get an A* at GCSE”, this end goal may not only be one, but one of several end goals, which are most meaningful to that particular learner.

• Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s 14 Points

As I continued to read the article back and forth, Dr. Deming, someone who I had heard of before when reading a famous self-improvement book titled “Awaken the Giant Within” by the legendary life coach Tony Robbins, suddenly jumped straight out of the page at me. I remember Dr. Deming and how he helped made Toyota become so successful, with the need for the company to improve at least 1% continuously in every aspect in order to become the market leader, in which it did – with “Kaizen” or “continual improvement” (精益求精）as its principal drive.

In this article, the author, Del Nelson draws us to point 59: “destroying the students’ inborn, natural desire to learn through competition and grades”.

Unfortunately for us, it is an inescapable truth that grades, when it comes down to it, mean pretty much everything to not only the pupil but also to the parent, the teacher, school and event to future employers! However, what we need to hold onto is the fact that this is only one of the long term goals that we help our students strive to achieve, and I would like to trust that Deming, through his 14 points, was to make the point that high achievement is a byproduct in the long term as a result of perfecting one’s craft.

As the author states, “Deming says…schools should teach students about the “evils” of short-term thinking and the “evils” of the merit system and ranking people” as “grades (especially forced ranking and grading curves) robs students of their intrinsic motivation to learn (and probably robs teachers of their joy in teaching)”.

The book which puts forward this argument, titled “The New Economics” (see below), was published back in 1993, and still rings true to this day.

I could not agree with Dr. Deming more – and I fervently believe that this is particularly critical in light of the new GCSE spec for pupils learning Mandarin Chinese. We are all too aware, and should not bury our heads in the sands, in light of the fact that traditional vocab testing for one set of characters, which eventually becomes disjointed as we go from topic to topic throughout the academic year, is in effect almost completely meaningless.

Make It Stick – The Science of Successful Learning

I was very much inspired by a NQT training day run by ISTip a couple of years ago at Goldolphin & Latymer School in Hammersmith, where they held a very pertinent and meaningful session on the topic of “low stakes quizzing” (aka vocab tests!). During this session, the following book was brought to my attention:

This book puts forward convincing cases that there is no such thing as a “learning style”, but in fact that learning styles are more of a preference, as the person who learns in a certain way has not explored or committed themselves to other ways of learning to know what works best for them. It also mentions how learners must embrace difficulties and avoid illusions of knowing, all things which are vitally critical for pupils who hope to master the characters they need to know to achieve a good grade in the writing paper of the new GCSE Chinese examination. As I have mentioned in previous blog posts before, and is outlined in this book, we must teach students how to learn for them to become effective learners, and to be sure that what they learn, will, in time, stick.

So these are my current CPD endeavours! After I’ve read these books from cover to cover and put them intro practice. I will be sure to be back again to tell how you I got on, particularly in regards to the teaching of Chinese to secondary school students.

Thanks for reading. Please do share your comments below.

Up and Coming Apps for Learning Chinese – App No. 1: Zizzle

It’s a been long time I know, but after a crazy few months changing jobs and moving cities – I’m back! This time on a weekly basis. I hope that what I share on here will be useful for you, please do not shy from adding a comment or sending to me a message privately (see “Contact” in the sidebar)

The app market is currently booming, and in my new role, I have been tasked with helping develop new and existing apps currently on the market specifically for primary and secondary school pupils to learn and practice Mandarin Chinese. There’s some good news too – most of these app developers are unaware that popular textbooks such as the Jinbu series even exist – hence I am advising these developers to integrate their apps with these books for our pupils to have more reason to use them as part of their homework and independent study.

As part of this series, I will begin with Zizzle (www.zizzle.io) – a brand new app that has not long been on the market, and is continually in development. Having met the founder and CEO of this app, there is a clear directive of how he wants this app to develop with investment.

Out of pure 缘分 (fate), it just so happens that the main feature of this app is designed using almost the exact same methodology outlined in my previous post concerning Teaching Pupils “How to Learn” Chinese and Why it is so Important (Part 1) and Teaching Pupils “How to Learn” Chinese and Why it is so Important (Part 2). Let’s see below of what this app features.

Step 1: Visualisation

Like Chineasy, this app breaks characters down into their separate radicals and turns them into comical pictures like follows:

Step 2: Mnemonics

A mnemonic is then created from the picture including the MEANING of the radical/character in capital letters like below.

Step 3: Link Words

The story then continues using a link word (that is a word in English that sounds like the pronunciation of the pinyin) so that the learner knows how to pronounce the word.

Step 4: Tone “Heroes”

There are five heroes (one for each tone), whereby the Dragon represents the 3rd tone as it flies “down then up”.

This may all sound as though we are overcomplicating things for a simple character like 女, however the whole point of this methodology is to help the learner memorise the character in the long term and not the short term, which is a typical result of mindlessly copying out characters over and over.

Though I have not denied that rote learning is helpful – it is in combination with the above strategy that can enable the learner to remember characters and radicals in the long term, which for the purposes of the new GCSE, is exactly what we need to be aiming for.

See again a finished product of a picture and story for 肉:

The fact that the picture incorporates the entire radical/character, makes it easy to remember. The bulldog here is the hero that represents the 4th tone as it is “aggressive”.

It is perfectly legitimate therefore to use such methodology in the classroom and encourage pupils to create their own stories and pictures. Just see some of what the pupils from my previous school made below, and they love doing this!!

Such activities are a great way to get pupils excited about learning characters and to break down barriers regarding how they feel that Chinese is “difficult” to learn.

Zizzle provides templates and inspiration as such for pupils if they struggle to think of ideas. The most important point here however is for pupils to understand that this methodology works and is empowering.

This app is certainly one to watch for in the future and with its integration with the Jinbu series, who knows whats in store?

 

 

Using Technology Productively

During my time teaching I have come across a number of online study tools which all have their pros and cons, below is an analysis of all the ones I’ve used, some more successfully than others. Feel free to share your thoughts!

In-Class

Kahoot!

MAIN PRO: GRAMMAR

Hugely popular among students of all ages with super catchy background music. It is in no doubt effective and a great reward for pupils but it has to be managed well for it to be employed effectively.

Before you start a Kahoot! session, ensure all pupils are following these ground rules, you will only need to do this once or twice so pupils are fully aware of expectations otherwise chaos will be sure to ensue…

1. All iPads flat on the desk so the teacher can see what you are doing
2. If you touch the iPad or do anything else with it you will not be allowed to play (Ensure there is a writing activity for them to do in isolation to keep them occupied)
3. Do NOT randomly guess, you’ve learnt all of this in class!
4. Do NOT shout out the answers, you want to win right?

Make sure the winner is rewarded with merits or whatever your school policy follows. Do NOT reward them with sweets or anything tangible as this will give out the wrong message – it also costs you money!

Here are the two activities I generally use with my classes:

• Identifying correct/incorrect sentences – give a long enough time limit so all pupils can actually read the questions. Keep an eye out for random guessers, this should be actively discouraged! If you hear pupils saying anything like “I don’t know anything” or “I’m just guessing”, you should endeavour to stand near to them and encourage them to choose the right answer. Also, if you know these pupils DO actually know the answer but are just being lazy then a bit of playful teasing is all that is needed to get them on board. Ensure that you elicit the answers from pupils after each question and have them note any misconceptions they had in their books otherwise doing this kind of activity is ultimately pointless – how can they expect to remember what they are learning if they are just “excited”?
• Sentence Jumble – this is perfect for having pupils practice word order especially as beyond a basic sentence, Chinese essentially has a different word order to English. Again ELICIT the reason why the order in the final answer is correct, otherwise pupils will generally not know why. After, they need to note what they’ve learned in their books.

Quizlet

MAIN PRO: VOCABULARY

Since the rise of Kahoot! being a huge hit amongst pupils and educators everywhere, the Quizlet team brought out Quizlet Live which is again a really enjoyable activity for pupils.

Quizlet Live works in very much the same way as Kahoot!, but it is different as it based on vocabulary sets that you have created. Feel free to use and edit any of the sets I have created for your pupils (username: latymer_mandarin).

For Quizlet Live, pupils are automatically divided into teams where they have to take their iPads and work together to select the correct translation for the English/Chinese word that appears.

The only downside to Quizlet is that it only really tests character recognition, reading and translation, as does the Quizlet Live function. Therefore, the only real efficacy to Quizlet Live is a quick review of previously learned vocabulary and a bit of fun for the pupils, otherwise I would not recommend using it too regularly.

NearPod

MAIN PRO: VARIETY

The only real efficacy I’ve seen of this so far is the fact that pupils can write Chinese characters on their iPads with their fingers on the “Draw It!” tool for all the class to examine and see. This raises awareness of pupils being able to identify their errors and seeing that knowledge of basic strokes is more important than they realise as it is obvious from the characters they have written whether they know them or not.

I have used this tool for a vocab test before to add some variety and reinforce that a vocab test is not the be all and end all, and that we can have fun with them sometimes as well. However, pupils get frustrated if the touchscreen mechanism does not work and some can take a really long time to write their characters in comparison to everyone else. “Hurrying up” people is an option, however this just tends to add to the air of frustration among the pupils.

I am not going to rule out the use of NearPod completely, as I do feel it does have its advantages, especially with the “Draw It!” tool. The task at the moment is for me to find out some productive activities to use it with. Feel free to share your experiences!

For Independent Study

Memrise

MAIN PRO: MEMORISATION TECHNIQUES

What is excellent about Memrise is that the Jinbu series among other textbooks have been converted onto Memrise for users to learn unit by unit. Pupils love the challenge of collecting points as though it is a “game” and there is also the reinforcement of spaced repetition and mnemonics to be among the most effective ways of learning a language, which is especially true of Chinese.

As I outlined in a previous post (moving beyond rote learning), one is able to make mnemonics, otherwise known as “mems” on Memrise, to think of ways to remember the word or character they are learning. A bunch of mems have already been made by existing users which are by and large extremely helpful. Here is an example below shared in a previous post to help pupils remember the character 听 (to listen):

If one is unable to think up a mem one can follow a tutorial to give them inspiration following the powerful memory tools of association, imagination and visualisation, as can be seen below:

It is certainly worth arranging a session in a computer room and having your students learn how to use Memrise and then encourage them to use it to supplement their learning and reinforce vocabulary that they once knew but have forgotten. You can encourage this further by rewarding pupils with merits if they are high up on the leaderboard on the website.

The only downfall with Memrise is that the focus is only on individual items of vocabulary that test reading, translation and listening. Unless pupils have the option on their keyboard to write Chinese characters with their finger then there is very little one can do in terms of writing practice and in fact can discourage pupils from actually writing anything at all. It is a known fact that if you do not actually write the characters out and practice them that it is nigh on impossible to remember them.

Skritter

MAIN PRO: TONES AND STROKE ORDER

Skritter, though requiring a monthly subscription, is by far the most effective app that exists on the market today where one can create one’s own list and test oneself on how to write the characters that have been inputted into them. There are, of course, lists that already exist on there which have been created by users and are synchronised specifically with study books and textbooks that are widely used in Chinese teaching circles.

A downfall is unfortunately, along with the expense, is that there is no comprehensive list of words from the Jinbu series, like there is on Memrise. If there was a list then Skritter would be extremely useful for pupils who have parents willing to pay the subscription.

That aside, if one is motivated to create one’s own list then the rewards, with time, are massive. The fact that Skritter is quite picky when it comes to Stroke Order reinforces the necessity to learn it properly. The same goes for tones, as students naturally tend to “skip” them and/or not pay attention to them at all when speaking, as they know they can be understood even when not pronouncing the tones correctly. However, it is without doubt that tones need to be learned and if they aren’t, pupils go to China thinking they can speak Chinese but then find that quite a number of people are unable to understand them!

GoChinese

MAIN PRO: READING AND LISTENING EXAM PRACTICE

The main plus of GoChinese is that all of the practice exercises on there are synchronised with each unit of the Jinbu series in addition to the Edexcel GCSE Chinese textbook. When an assessment is approaching, the exercises are well-designed for pupils to well and truly test their listening and reading and help them identify where their weaknesses are.

Vocab Express

Apologies to Vocab Express Co. but I really do think Vocab Express is a bit of a rip off. The only potentially useful aspect about Vocab Express is that all the vocabulary that pupils need to know for the textbook they use is listed systematically for them to utilise for revision. This is most useful when one needs to cram for a reading and listening test!

That’s all folks, please share your thoughts!