Are you a qualified primary or secondary school teacher interested in learning Mandarin Chinese? Then you should consider our Mandarin Upskilling Course: the ideal opportunity for teachers who would like to support existing Mandarin provision in their school, or who would like to introduce Mandarin in their schools for the first time.
“I have found the Mandarin upskilling course really helpful in motivating me to study Chinese regularly. As I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m not always able to do the online study every week but I usually catch up the following week. I find the book and website fairly easy to navigate and the workshops in London have been brilliant – I don’t know anyone who speaks Chinese, let alone teaches it where I live and I don’t have anyone to share ideas or problems with at work so they really are very helpful to me. If I can go to China that would be fantastic.” – Primary school teacher in Kent
Launched in autumn 2018, the Upskilling Course is a free* 3-year training programme designed to enable you to teach Mandarin up to KS3 and 4. The course offers a blended learning approach, combining the self-study of an online course with face-to-face training events (although these may be online workshops for the coming academic year, depending on government and UCL policy around social distancing).
At the end of each year, participating teachers also attend intensive learning events: for Levels 1 and 3 this is in the UK, meanwhile for Level 2 this is usually in China. Teachers also have level tests each year to assess their progress, and completion certificates are provided. At the end of Level 3, teachers sit the internationally recognised HSK Level 3 Chinese language test.
A particular strength of the course is the scope participants have to practise their oral skills; each year we have the support of IOE MA TESOL students and Hanban teachers who are native speakers of Mandarin and can therefore help teachers to really improve their listening and speaking ability, especially by honing in on accurate pronunciation!
Now at the end of its second year, the course has so far been very well received by participants, who have given some fantastic feedback, such as:
“I wanted to say how enjoyable the workshop was yesterday! The time absolutely flew by. It was really good fun and the presentations were great. Lovely to have the MA students to practise with as well. I learned a lot having that concentrated time. Although my eldest daughter now thinks I’ve gone slightly mad as I was practising my pronunciation this morning and she had no idea what I was trying to do!” – Secondary school teacher in the West Midlands
We are now recruiting for our 2020-2021 cohort which is due to start studying this September. If you are interested, please read more about the course here on our website and click here to find the application form.
All completed forms should be returned to chinesenetworks@ucl.ac.uk by no later than Friday 3rd July. Please note that all applications should also include a letter of support from your Headteacher that states that they are aware that the course will require you to attend some the face-to-face training events in London throughout the year(s), and that they are happy to support this. We aim to open the online self-study course for accepted applicants at the start of August to give you a headstart, so please do get your application in early!
We look forward to hearing from you and helping you on your way to learning and teaching Mandarin!
