#Kingoldscholar in #Shanghai

LTL language school in Shanghai has about 7 staff who run private and small group lessons for foreigners learning Mandarin. They teach a diverse demographic from many different countries. The main resource they use is a textbook named “Short Term Spoken Chinese”. I attended this school for ten hours of observation.

One technique that worked very well for beginners learning written Hanzi was telling a story based on the radicals in that character. This gave students a memory technique to associate the meaning of the word with the written character. A great resource for teachers using this method is https://www.chinasprout.com/shop/BLP360 or https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Radicals-Practice-standard-variants/dp/1540847535 books.

Lessons are divided into speaking and writing lessons and taught by two different teachers respectively. This is the first time I have seen the skills divided so completely. The outcome of some post-class interviews with students showed that while it is good to have a focus on one skill for the lesson, it is not natural to do just one productive skill to the exclusion of all others. In fact, this often leads to memory overload. When the language is used in authentic ways, more than one skill is used and the brain is stimulated.

My discussions with teachers at this school also revealed that teacher training was an area they wanted extra support in. University training often does not prepare teachers for the challenges of their daily work. Teachers are the foundation for our future and yet have so little feedback as their work occurs behind closed doors. The teachers at LTL expressed that they would benefit from further exposure to other teacher’s lessons. This would be a great way to learn other methods of reinforcing knowledge.