On Monday 23 June 2014, the Confucius Institute for Business London (CIBL) and ‘Routes into Language’ successfully held a further Mandarin taster session on the LSE campus. The event introduced over thirty year-10 students, selected from various London secondary schools, to Chinese language and culture. Moreover, a series of talks and activities highlighted the importance of language and promoted language learning.
Nick Byrne, CIBL UK director welcomed the students and delivered a brief talk on multilingualism, illustrating how language skills could become an advantage in the modern world. This was followed by a talk from Prof. Danny Quah on understanding China and its role in the global economy. The speech aroused great interest in the students and ended in vigorous discussion. Then two student representatives from China Development Society (CDS) and Anthony Jarvis, a data analyst held a round table discussion chaired by Nick Bryne. They shared their personal experience in studying language with the students, and explained how language was combined into their professional development. After the three intensive but informative talks, Ms. LI Chunli (CIBL Chinese teacher) gave the students a taster class in which they learned about numbers in Chinese. Students were amazed to see the rich cultural implications behind these numbers. In the afternoon, students were divided into two groups with one participating in an interactive Chinese game and the other learning how to write Chinese calligraphy. The whole session was brought to a close by a farewell from Nick Byrne. Students greatly enjoyed the one-day experience with some of them expressing a wish to explore Chinese further.
CIBL has successfully held several taster sessions in the Routes into Languages project and received positive comments from both the students and the teachers. The project greatly encourages language learning and through this platform, CIBL effectively invites introduces students to Chinese language and culture.