Following the success of last year’s Local Chinese Teacher Training event, the Confucius Institute at The University of Manchester teamed up with world-famous educational publisher Macmillan to host another excellent teacher training day on the Saturday 29 June 2013.

Approximately 30 local Chinese teachers from Huaxia Chinese School, The University of Leeds and numerous Scottish schools made the journey to Manchester for the event. Also in attendance were volunteer Chinese teachers from Beijing Normal University, Macmillan’s Asia Market Sales Manager Byron Russell, and Chinese Director of Confucius Institute at the University of Manchester Lifeng Sun, who opened the event with a heartfelt speech.

The training was led by language-teacher training expert Dede Wilson and Chinese teacher Yanmei Wu. Mrs Wilson is a language-teacher training expert with more than 20 years of experience. She has previously delivered teacher training lectures throughout China, Europe and North America and used all of her vast experience as she led two fantastic interactive sessions. The first covered foreign-language teaching methods and the second discussed how best to use the Discover China textbook provided to all of the attendees, and both were highly entertaining and engaging.

Ms Wu – who teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University - has developed some highly original methods for teaching Chinese phonetics. Using her academic background as a music graduate, she introduced the idea that when teaching Chinese tones, one could use the tone of a musical instrument (e.g. guitar) to illustrate the tones, using English vocabulary and phonetics as a reference point for the students. The session was certainly an eye-opener for everybody in attendance with many commenting that they hoped to incorporate something similar into their teaching.

The event was undoubtedly a great success, with all of the trainee teachers agreeing that they had enjoyed the day and learned a lot from the speakers. They also received some valuable teaching resources to take home with them, which only added to their satisfaction. Furthermore, the 2013 British Local Chinese Teacher Training Event has also undoubtedly helped to improve the teaching skills of local Chinese language teachers, whilst also increasing the visibility of the Confucius Institute at The University of Manchester throughout the UK.