Students embrace Mandarin classes

Nelson students will have the chance to learn Mandarin throughout their school years thanks to a new teaching programme.

A contract has been awarded to Nayland College by the Ministry of Education to develop learning of the most widely spoken language in the world.

The programme connects seven schools including Stoke Primary, Nayland Primary, Enner Glynn, Birchwood, Broadgreen Intermediate and Nelson Christian Academy with Nayland College being the lead provider.

Funded by Asian Language Learning in Schools (ALLIS), the contract is worth $110,000 across three years.

ALLIS coorindator Judi Boyd said the idea was to have the schools cooperating, giving students a chance to learn the same language through their school years.

‘‘Primary schools often do little bits of language and the kids go off to intermediate and they get little bits of another language and then they go to high school and it’s another language again.’’

She said the funding was enough to get teachers out into the community, set up online and get some good training.

This year was a chance get the programme structure planned ready to ’’hit the ground running’’ when classes return in 2017.

Chinese tourism to New Zealand is on the rise and China makes up 40 per cent of New Zealand’s export market, more than Europe and Australia combined.

Boyd said with Nelson a holiday destination and more Chinese tourists arriving, the students would hopefully be able to interact easier, as well as adding to their employability.

‘‘I really feel happy about it because I feel like we’re giving our students good tools.’’

The old high school language subjects of French and German don’t even get a mention in the world’s top 10 and have been slowly phased out in schools by the more widely spoken Mandarin and Spanish.

Pauline Chan is already teaching Mandarin at Birchwood School outside of the programme.

She said it was hard for the students at the beginning but with repetition they gradually picked it up. ‘‘It’s actually easy.’’

Mandarin grammar had no past, present or future tenses and no references to articles being masculine or feminine. interactive as the speakers are happy to answer questions,’’ Professor Shepherd said.

The first talk, ‘‘New Breakthroughs in Cancer Therapy’’, looks into recent research that has lead to ‘‘major advances’’ in cancer treatment.

It will be held on Saturday from 7pm at the Rutherford Hotel.

The second, ‘‘The Wondrous World of Stem Cells’’, will be delivered by Nobel Prize winner Professor John Gurdon from Cambridge University.

He is a ‘‘true pioneer’’ in the scientific area so will give an overview of the topic, this keynote speech will be held on Sunday at 6.30pm at Nelson College.

The final free talk, ‘‘The Science of Sugar and Fat’’, is aimed at schoolaged children, looking into the science behind sugar metabolism and the impact it has on our health.

This will be held on Tuesday at 6.30 pm at Nelson College for Girls.

Registration is required and there are limited spaces available. More information can be found on the Queenstown Research Week website at queenstownresarchweek.org