Learning Chinese

The debate about whether it is worthwhile to teach Chinese in schools has been brought about by the sheer difficulty involved in learning the language. However, it is possible that it is our approach to language learning which needs to be changed, in order to encourage new and exotic languages to be taught in schools.

Traditionally, language teaching in the UK has been focussed around the written aspect of language, and less around the speaking and listening aspect. Languages like Chinese, which are difficult to write, but not as difficult to speak, might flourish if there was more emphasis on speaking and listening rather than reading and writing. As recent reports show, UK businesses are suffering as a result of their lack of languages. What these reports have shown is that it is the inability to be able to converse about day-to-day matters with clientele abroad that is the crucial problem, which suggests that it is actually the spoken aspect of a language that is more important to business success than the written aspect.

Business experts say that in the next few years, Mandarin will become far more important than languages such as French and German. This would suggest that now is the time to change the culture of UK language learning, as well as the examination system, so that it accommodates languages like Chinese, which are structurally different to European languages, and hence require different teaching methods.

There are already about 100 schools in the UK teaching Mandarin Chinese, and the number is set to increase. In the U.S.A, a recent new initiative by China's education minister means that hundreds of U.S teachers will be trained in the language to cater for the need to teach Chinese in schools. As the world economy is increasingly driven by new superpowers such as China and India, educationalists seek to find ways in which schools can alter their traditional methods of language learning to keep up with the current business environment.

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