LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Chinese: Language skills for Britain: dissemination of best practice

Glen Dudbridge - 11 March 2003

Over two years, from 2000 to 2002, within the framework of the FDTL 3 programme of the Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund, Oxford's Institute for Chinese Studies has developed an experimental approach to non-intensive teaching of Mandarin Chinese. It goes counter to conventional teaching strategies by isolating particular skills and focusing a teaching programme exclusively upon each one. The aim has been to learn through experience how much can be achieved with volunteer beginners in each distinct skill, and to devise materials which can contribute flexibly to teaching or learning regimes serving individual needs. The four-phase project has dealt with three basic skills – reading, speaking, listening – followed by the needs of native Cantonese speakers embarking on spoken Mandarin. In each case a pedagogical specialist from China, Taiwan or Hong Kong has spent a month in Oxford developing material, and a student-teacher from China or Taiwan has spent four months in Oxford working with a class of volunteers. Achievements and results have been monitored through systematic testing, and the whole programme kept under regular review at the national level by a seminar of professional Chinese language teachers

Spanish: Contemporary Language and Culture

Gladis Garcia-Soza - 23 September 2002

This is a specialist online language and culture course for students who have achieved an advanced level in Spanish because they are in the final year of their University degree, have spent time in a Spanish-speaking country or are false native speakers. The course has been devised to reinforce and develop the language through reading, writing and speaking. The materials in the components follow each other closely and complement vocabulary expansion with development of linguistic structures. The contents of the course cover contemporary cultural issues such as TV, cinema, family and work, and linguistic minorities in the Spanish-speaking world. The cultural-linguistic diversity of Spain and Latin America is exploited through a selection of authentic materials showing different styles, accents and media. The course is structured to develop transferable as well as language skills through hands - on experience of IT use and language activities. The materials can be easily adapted to meet the requirements of students in secondary schools, sixth form colleges or Higher Education. The website also contains pages to help teachers to adapt their own materials or to produce their own courses.