Mandarin Language Teaching

Through technology the word is becoming a smaller place, it is vitally important we all develop skills to communicate and collaborate in our globalised world.

In The Hub, we have recently started our Mandarin Lessons with Zuo Lao Shi. We see her as a skilful and easy-going teacher who accepts that everyone is at a different level with Mandarin (we have students who have never learned it and fluent speakers of the language). She is very enthusiastic and wants to help us as much as she can so we can gain a better understanding about Mandarin.

We have been focusing on basic greetings and a bit of the culture and differences between China and New Zealand. We are currently learning about pinyin and hanzi, understanding the concept of pinyin can make Mandarin a little easier to read and pronounce properly. Learning hanzi is a little more challenging as it is almost as if you threw some basic strokes together to create something much more complicated to read than pinyin.

As all of us are pretty much beginners, our main focus this term would be to familiarize ourselves with pinyin before entering the deep end of the pool that is hanzi.

The Hub is extremely focused as we understand learning a second language while your brain is still young and growing can create more paths and opportunities in the future. Overall we find Mandarin as a fun way to both learn a new language and better appreciate the wider world we live in.

By Chloe Court