A couple of weeks into term, our Year 9 & 10 Mandarin students participated in an engaging Chinese drama workshop, delivered by Yellow Earth Theatre workshop facilitator Mr Liong (a professionally trained and bilingual actor). He delivered an engaging learning programme that was original, entertaining, and interactive. It was great to see the girls’ confidence grow as they listened and had to quickly respond to Mandarin instructions in the games and interactions. They thoroughly enjoyed this format of learning – engaging with new words and challenges, whilst having lots of fun. 

We received some lovely feedback from the student group:

The Chinese drama workshop was a really useful experience that helped me to grow confidence in my Mandarin skills and more generally helped me make more connections within the class. It was really fun to learn some more words in Mandarin that wouldn't necessarily come up this year in the textbook, for example, stand up and that sort of thing. Overall, it was a great opportunity to learn more languages and have fun!

By Katherine, Year 9 

On Wednesday, instead of our typical lesson in Mandarin, we had a special drama workshop in the dance studio. We started with a very simple 'ice-breaker' game where we used some of our Mandarin skills to introduce ourselves to the coordinator and then we proceeded to play more fun games whilst learning some new phrases and words. I enjoyed this activity as we used more conversational vocabulary whilst interacting with another Chinese-speaking person (other than our teacher). A new word that I learned is 'pai' which means to clap.  

By Chiara, Year 9 

It was an educational and safe space that allowed just to deepen our learning of Mandarin. There was a good balance between English and Mandarin, with Mr Liong creating a space that allowed us to have fun, whilst stretching our current understanding of the language. 

By Amelie, Year 10