Teaching and learning Mandarin Chinese are going to stay around for a while. We want it to be enjoyable and effective, and to create great experiences for both teachers and students. And we want more people to know about it. So, next stop is Frankfurt Book Fair! Situated in the heart of Europe, Frankfurt is the place to meet, to discuss and to forge long term relationships. It is all about books, or about people who make books matter.

At the fourth stage, the acculturation stage, students start to get deep into the Chinese cultural literacy. This stage opens up tremendous directions for students to pursue further learning. 

In Mandarin Express Intermediate Level B, a substantial amount of classical Chinese (wenyanwen) is included. There is no doubt that wenyanwen is difficult to learn, and many students get by without knowing any of it. So, why do I include so many wenyanwen texts?

April Zhang will deliver this paper in full length at The Third International Conference on Chinese Heritage Education: Cornerstone to US Global Collaboration 中文傳承教育: 立足全美、放眼世界, Newark, CA, USA, Aug 12-13, 2017. Come and connect if you are around.

A call for all Chinese teachers and Chinese educators: an exciting event is just around the corner now! Organized by Asia Society and College Board, the tenth annual National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC) will be held in Houston, April 6 – 8, 2017. Representing Mandarin as a Second Language Master (MSL Master), Ms April Zhang is scheduled to present to the conference on April 8, at 9:45am-10:45am. The topic is Class Activities that Benefit both Students and Teachers.

Student's post, by Adam C.

I began taking Mandarin lessons with MSL Master / April Zhang in June 2015, starting essentially from scratch. Shortly before studying with April, I had short-lived experiments with two other Mandarin tutors, but I left both of those tutors fairly quickly without picking up much of use -- it was too frustrating to be taught by someone who was unenthusiastic about teaching, and was simply reading straight from a textbook with which they were barely familiar. 

Student's post, by Keong:

It's often said that learning Chinese (Mandarin) is very difficult. When considering the truth or otherwise of that virtual cliché, the reality is that learning ANY foreign language presents all sorts of challenges – particularly when at that stage of learning (and it is a long stage) where you are relying on memory, when language ability is not yet at that level which can reasonably be described as 'fluent' and there is no practical opportunity for immersion.

I did not expect that giving a lecture can also earn me another certificate. A certificate I earned indeed at this trip to Florence Italy, for the International Conference ICT for Language Learning, November 2015.