Our 23rd Annual Chinese Teaching Conference ‘Expanding Horizons through Chinese: Connecting Language, Culture, and Careers’ is coming up on Saturday 10th October 2026.
In this year’s programme you’ll find plenaries, speeches, performances as well as workshops covering a wide range of topics. Ahead of the conference, we’re speaking with some of our workshop presenters to explore the themes, ideas and classroom practice they will be sharing with delegates.
Rebecca Lin is Head of Chinese at Brentwood School, where she is now in her third year, having previously spent three years as Head of Chinese at Becket Keys Church of England Free School. She has a particular interest in curriculum and resource development. Throughout her teaching career in the UK, she has sought to make students increasingly accountable for their own learning and, in her words, “busier” than the teacher in lessons. In recent years, her focus has increasingly turned to using AI to develop high-quality resources that would otherwise require significant teacher “heavy lifting”.
Thank you to Rebecca for sharing some details about her upcoming workshop.
Can you tell us a bit about your workshop content?
My workshop explores how Question Level Analysis (QLA) can be used to make feedback more precise, personalised and actionable. I will share a system I use with GCSE Chinese students, where assessment results are broken down question by question to identify specific gaps in knowledge and understanding. I will then demonstrate how AI can help turn this analysis into targeted follow-up activities, key vocabulary for recognition, cultural enrichment and opportunities for independent practice.
What style of workshop are you planning to deliver?
It will be a practical, hands-on workshop rather than a presentation-heavy session. I will first demonstrate the process using a real listening question, showing how I move from a student’s incorrect answer to identifying the underlying learning gap and generating useful follow-up. Participants will then have an opportunity to try the approach themselves and consider how it could be adapted to their own teaching context. Attendees are therefore encouraged to bring a laptop or other device so that they can take part in the practical activities during the session.
What made you choose this subject for this year’s conference?
In recent years, I have been trying to shift my feedback lessons towards a more student-focused model: I want the students to be “busier” than the teacher. Rather than spending a lesson going through answers while students listen, I want students to actively identify what went wrong, recognise the language that caused difficulty and take responsibility for what they need to practise next.
I also wanted feedback to lead somewhere beyond simply correcting an exam question. AI gives us an opportunity to create targeted follow-up practice relatively quickly, while also introducing students to traditional and contemporary Chinese cultural content that the AQA curriculum does not always have the scope to explore in depth. This allows a feedback lesson to become an opportunity for both language development and wider cultural learning.
What will attendees take away from your workshop?
Attendees will leave with a practical workflow that they can adapt to their own classrooms, as well as a template of the QLA sheet based on the 2026 AQA GCSE Chinese Higher Tier papers. They will see how assessment data can be brought together with themes, correct answers, key language and targeted next steps, and how AI can be used to create additional practice and cultural enrichment based on identified gaps. The aim is to make assessment feedback more useful to students while encouraging greater independence and accountability for their own learning.
We look forward to welcoming Rebecca and many other inspiring speakers to this year’s conference. Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of the conversation. Book your place today.
See you at the conference.
UCL IOE CCLE team