The Language Centre launches its first Teaching Mandarin Traineeship Programme in partnership with Xi’an KeDaGaoXin University, China. The trainees are the fourth cohort of undergraduate students who are taking the Degree of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of other Languages.
Language Centre Director, Dr Wissia Fiorucci says, “Due to the suspension of mobility caused by Covid-19, as the Director of the Language Centre, together with our language tutors we strive to explore new ways to provide students at the University of Kent with new and different opportunities to continue “meeting” peers around the world, and especially native speakers of the languages they’re learning.
Therefore, we have decided to launch online programmes. We have a long-standing experience with Teachers’ Traineeship programmes but, so far, we had been able to focus solely on French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The adoption of the online solution will allow us to forget about geographical distance and to expand our portfolio.
To strengthen and expand our collaborations with our existing partner University in China, working with our Mandarin tutor, Ru Su, we got in touch with the Xi’an KeDaGaoXin University in China and established the Mandarin Traineeship programme. We are confident that this programme will help our Mandarin learners to practice the language with aspiring Mandarin Teachers outside their classes, as well as to experience Chinese culture through their peers’ eyes.
This programme will also help the trainee teachers to gain invaluable first-hand Mandarin language teaching experiences. We believe this to be only beginning of an invaluable collaboration between our Universities.”