Background At the end of November I attended a talk at the AmCham China Conference Center in Beijing, examining why education has failed to keep up with the fundamental changes driven by new technologies. The speaker, Noel Thomas, Co-Principal of Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS Beijing), provided some insightful analysis on the current…
Category: Interviews in English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC0G7TRGbd0&w=560&h=315 Just when you thought it was safe to to use the terms ‘Education’ and ‘Learning’ for the things that kids do at school…Bibblio CEO Mads Holmen flips these concepts on their heads. About Bibblio Bibblio is a social platform for discovering and collecting the web’s best learning materials. According to Holmen, Bibblio “has two…
Interview Background Having just started an (MA) in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching, I thought it would be fitting to enquire about how new technologies have impacted my mother’s teaching career. Mum has worked within Adult Education, at University level and in the Further Education system, going from teaching Fitness Training to devising an Exercise…
Last month, I met up with a friend from Singolingua, a publishing house that deals exclusively with teaching and learning Chinese materials. He has collaborated with Yale University on a series of books called Encounters. These books, which have accompanying multimedia components, were trialled with a select group of beginner students this past summer at…
EXPERT CORNER Last week, I was lucky enough to spend time with a Beijing-based university professor. She has accumulated a wealth of experience in Teaching Chinese Methods or “Patterns”. In her opinion, the following US-Sino collaborations implement some of the best practices for teaching Chinese (on intensive Chinese language summer programmes) today: 1. ACC –…
EXPERT CORNER A new Teaching Chinese Online platform, Mandaring, is in soft launch. I was lucky enough to meet up with one of the Beijing-based Mandaring team a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have enjoyed being one of their guinea pigs, trailing their online lessons. 45 minutes of intensive speaking and listening left…
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 *…
Chinese Teacher 1. Interview Part 2. Teacher 1 believes that most textbooks for TCFL are not very good. However, she recommends the “Road to Success” textbook series. The topics are very practical. She uses her own supplementary teaching materials to support her TCFL classes. For example, pictures, which she uploads to her iPad to show…
Chinese Teacher 1 Interview Part 1 Teacher 1 has taught English to Chinese students for many years. She has recently started teaching Chinese, using the ideas she learnt from her Teaching English training to inform her lesson planning and material selection. T1 participated in a one month TCFL training at Beijing Foreign Languages University. The…