Last week, the IOE CI successfully delivered our new professional development course ‘Getting to grips with Mandarin grammar teaching’. The two-part course was attended by teachers from schools around the UK, with one teacher coming from as far as Dundee. A vast amount of material was covered during the course and attendees strongly agreed that as a result of this course, they are now better equipped to teach Chinese grammar in their classrooms.

Professor George Zhang opened proceedings on Friday afternoon with two grammar sessions entitled The Fundamentals of Chinese Grammar and Chinese and English Grammar, Conceptual Frameworks and Contrastive Analysis. Day Two saw George’s third and final session titled What Grammar to teach and what Not to teach. Professor Zhang lived up to his reputation as a leader in the field of language and teaching, proving himself to be a very charismatic trainer with incredible knowledge on his subject. Participants in the course thoroughly enjoyed Prof. Zhang’s sessions, with one participant calling him ‘inspirational’.

The course continued into Saturday with sessions delivered by Katharine Carruthers, our director at the IOE Confucius Institute for Schools. Katharine’s sessions focused on group work and encouraged discussions between the participants on the issues they faced when teaching Mandarin grammar. Together, the continuous problems in teaching Mandarin grammar were identified and Katharine’s sessions focused on addressing these issues. Part One of the course was concluded with a session on how to reflect on your own teaching practice, which will provide the springboard into Part Two of the course in November.

Places are still available on Part Two of this free course. Please click here to find out more.