A Taste of Mandarin
29th January 2017
Year 5 students from Harston and Newton Primary school have been getting a taste of Mandarin thanks to our new specialist Mandarin teacher, Mr Fan. Melbourn Village College is the only school in South Cambridgeshire offering Mandarin Chinese as part of the curriculum and currently all Year 7 students are learning this language.
Mr Fan has also been working with students from two of the college’s partner primaries, Harston & Newton and Foxton. Harston sent twenty-three Year 5 students to Melbourn for two mornings. During the first they experienced Peking opera and learned colours in Mandarin with some students even memorising a selection of characters including 红，黄，绿，è“. In the second, which co-incided with Chinese New Year – the year of the Rooster has just started - they learned the Chinese Zodiac and made Chinese lanterns and bookmarks.
Mr Fan said: “They really enjoyed it. Writing Chinese characters was a challenge for them but they did well. The teachers and I were very impressed by their learning with some even able to write characters from memory. Even native speakers find it hard to write such difficult characters at the first attempt.”
The Year 1 and 2 pupils from Foxton also learned the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac and enjoyed repeating the named in Mandarin. Some of them were able to recognise four Chinese animal characters after an hour’s lesson.
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