Education HQ – Staff Writer
“Hughes agrees that learning Mandarin is a challenge. “If you live in a Spanish-speaking community, you’re probably reasonably half-fluent in twelve months, it would probably take you the equivalent in Chinese [of] two to two-and-a-half years living in country to get to what we’d consider about a 70 per cent proficiency,” he says. Despite this, Hughes says becoming proficient in the language has big benefits for schoolchildren in the long-run.” (more)