MFL choices for Year 8

[nyr]

Are there in-house Mandarin teachers at NLCS? I ask as I know that many North London schools have arrangements with native speakers, most of whom are not qualified teachers, coming in to give lessons. This is not always hugely successful and is often masked by good GCSE results from children with some sort of Chinese background.

[tiffinboys]

perhaps shootmenow could answer this query.

[mystery]

I know a teenager - no Chinese heritage - who goes to Saturday Mandarin school somewhere or other. There may be something like this? She did start young but maybe there is a class for a beginner teenager? It would make up for any lack in background you think she might have relative to those who have the benefit of a native speaker at home. And don't forget, that although the ones with the native speaker have an advantage int hat sense, they may not have the motivation. Motivation is all when it comes to learning a language in my view. And there are so many ways to do it these days that if the formula provided in the school lesson does not work there are plenty of other ways of doing so at home either during ones school days or later on.

[Decisiontime639]

I think mandarin would be a brilliant choice! It is a wonderfully good language to learn with a European language ( Spanish eg.).
Partly biased because I can speak a little mandarin, but it was great fun learning it. At mysecondary school we all had to do French and German so it’s wonderful that you have the option to choose.

[JaneEyre]

Four reasons to learn a new language
English is fast becoming the world's universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four alluring benefits of learning an unfamiliar tongue.

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorte ... s#t-589276" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;