TES – Jun Yang-Williams
“This is proving an exciting year for Chinese Mandarin teachers in this country. Despite education facing budget cuts, putting thousands of teaching posts at risks and threatening the quality of teaching and learning, chancellor George Osborne announced a £10 million investment towards helping schools to teach Mandarin, with the aim of getting an additional 5,000 students speaking the language by 2020. It might be controversial to many British teachers, who teach core subjects and deliver the essential knowledge and skills, but it is certainly music to the ears of many Mandarin teachers, and to those who are about to train to teach the language in the UK. Having obtained a BSc in biology and an MSc in biochemistry from China, I enrolled on an initial teacher training course at University of Surrey and started my PGCE in secondary science in 2001. The journey of becoming a fully qualified teacher in the UK was a difficult one. Familiarising myself with the national curriculum, adapting to student-centred teaching pedagogies and managing student behaviour proved extremely challenging.”(more)