You and I both know that when we learn in a fun and interactive way we’re more likely to retain information and enjoy learning. This means we achieve more and want to keep learning for longer.
One of the key Pistachio Mandarin Language Centre philosophies in our teaching approach is the 3R’s: Repetition, Revision and Rewards for both our children and adult students.
For our kids who attend their mandarin lessons we hand out fun stickers and small gifts on a points basis and their eyes just light up when they feel a wonderful sense of achievement.
During the classes we ensure there is a lot of praise and encouragement from our teachers so our students are motivated to achieve those key milestones.
Let’s take a look at what else makes our mandarin lessons fun and enjoyable:
- Our teachers are young, creative native speakers of the mandarin language. They are full of enthusiasm and really take a lot of pride in teaching their students Mandarin in a modern and fun environment. The traditional teaching method of Chinese lessons are not known to be fun or enjoyable so we make sure through our resources, our structure of the class, and the activities we do, that our students enjoy learning Chinese.
Take a look at a recent Case Study here that showcases how one of our young students is enjoying her mandarin classes.
2. Learning through songs is a wonderful way for young students to engage with the Chinese language. It’s really important we choose music that the children like and we all know the best learning takes place when it’s fun. We also find our adult students also like to learn Chinese through song as it engages them too.
3. As we said earlier we’re very focused on rewarding the small and big wins. Every single step is recognised; sometimes that’s through small gifts and stickers for the children and our teachers are constantly using words of affirmation to praise and encourage.
4. Another philosophy to achieve better results is to maximise the target Chinese language so we’re taking every single opportunity to incorporate classroom expressions which are part of everyday mandarin within our lessons. Here’s some examples:
- When Johnny does well, instead of saying, you did a great job. The teacher will say Nǐ hěn bàng
- Johnny, are you ready= Jūn bèi hǎole ma
- Goodbye= Zàijiàn
- See you next week = Xià zhōu jiàn
We also explain to the students the meaning of each word and once they understand the meaning they can apply those words in different contexts. Here’s some examples:
- ni hao, ni = you, hao = good.
- Good morning = zao shang hao ,
- zoa = early,
- shang = up,
- hao = good.
5. Games are another effective fun way for our students to learn and even something as simple as paper, scissors, rock speaking in Mandarin allows the students to learn whilst playing. Most of the time it doesn’t feel like they’re learning because we’re using such a simple but highly effective approach.
6. For our adult students we also go on field trips for example to a local Chinese supermarket where we can put this theory into practice. We can practice speaking mandarin in this way using it for everything from metrics to different food and product items as well as cost and paying.
7. We believe learning through really appreciating such a rich and vibrant culture our students will have a deeper level of understanding and connection to the language.
We infuse this into our innovative and creative approach to our Chinese lessons as we share with our students the stories and the significance of festivals such as the Dragon Boat Festival.
In this instance we innovated by giving each student a food boat tray, a pair of chopsticks to use as paddles and an activity sheet to follow so they could create their own personalised dragon boat.
We invited 2 judges including the school principal to pick the winners and invited the parents to join us for the last 10 minutes of the lesson to look at the children’s artwork, video on the history was shown and our teachers shared with everyone the origin of the history
It was all about celebrating culture, innovation, diversity and inclusion and everyone really enjoyed it.
Conclusion:
At Pistachio Mandarin, our aim is to make the mandarin classes fun, enjoyable and interactive. We know this is the best way to learn and to continue learning. Our teachers are young and creative and engage students of all ages to get the best results. If you’re interested in joining our mandarin classes or online Chinese lessons get in touch to find out more. We’d love to hear from you.
