EXPERT CORNER

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with the founder of a US-based Chinese Language textbook series called Better Chinese. The company produces a range of multimedia resources from pre-school up to college level, and provides its own online learning system.

Better Chinese have developed their own pedagogy:

* Student-Centric approach
* Inquiry-based and story-centred framework
* Culturally-rich and authentic content
* Language scaffolding and review
* Complete teacher support

The meeting gave me a lot of food for thought as to what I hope to achieve during my Masters (in Digital Technologies and Language Teaching).

The founder’s advice to me pre-Masters:

– have at least Intermediate level Chinese (in order to carry out a Chinese language teaching project under the Masters program)

– firm up my digital technology language teaching project ideas (online course? supplementary materials? bespoke lesson plans?)