Chinese

The overarching Mission Statement for MFL is:

Live, Love, Learn Languages

Our mission is to:

Increase young people’s cultural awareness and linguistic competence, thereby enabling them to view the world with an open and enquiring mind and to develop the transferable skills required to compete in an ever-changing, competitive world.

Curriculum Aims

To equip learners with the skills required to live, work in a Chinese speaking community
To foster an attitude of lifelong language learning
To instill a curiosity for other languages and cultures
Develop transferrable skills and to give learners the steppingstone to other opportunities, linked to learning Chinese

Curriculum Intent

Our curriculum intent is founded on the notion of ‘languages for all’. Everybody can learn a foreign language and in an ever changing and ever polarizing world, having a knowledge of another language, especially one spoken by over a billion people, is essential.

Chinese at the Piggott School equips all learners with the basics of the language and promotes students to explore the differences and similarities with their own language. Basing our lessons on China and Chinese speaking countries, all students learn about how cultural idiosyncrasies create unique learning opportunities through the medium of food, music, sport, customs, festivals etc.

Being a new member of the Mandarin Excellence Programme, students at the Piggott School have never had a better opportunity to take their language skills further and become more and more proficient Chinese speakers.

Learning Chinese enables all students to move away from the idea of monolingualism and towards a bilingual approach to life allowing them to be able to live and work in a Chinese speaking country one day. Many of the scenarios that we teach are linked to our successful Chinese Exchange that takes place when students are in Y10 and Y11, MEP summer camp planning in the future too.

Alongside improving their language skills, learners develop their confidence in a range of other transferrable areas. They will become more confident in speaking and explaining, their memory skills will improve, they must become resilient and enhance their analytical and problems solving skills to create unique ways of looking at the world through the prism of Chinese.

How is Chinese taught at the Piggott School?

Chinese is taught to those who select it in Y7, and then later have the choice to take the subject for GCSE. Students also have the chance to study HSK instead of A-Level, which is an internationally recognised qualification for Chinese speakers.
Each student receives 3 hours per fortnight in Y7 which increases to 4 hours in years 8-10. Y11 Students receive 5 hours per fortnight. In future, as part of the MEP expectations, Y7 hours might increase to 4 hours as well.
The new Chinese curriculum is sequenced in a way that allows students to recycle and deepen the key concepts of Chinese grammar and language over the 5 years towards GCSE.
The curriculum provides a rich range of topics, all designed to give learners practical ways to apply their learning in Chinese speaking contexts.
Grammar is built into all modules and develops students’ awareness over the years with learners in Y11 able to express themselves freely with different idiomatic phrases and be creative with the Chinese language.
In Chinese in Y7 and Y8, students study the basics of Chinese, building up their confidence of grammar and use of three different tenses (past, present and future). The different topics are designed to develop and recycle language and continually offer opportunities to see cultural and linguistic differences.
Students have access to a wide range of professional resources, such as the Jinbu 1 & 2 textbooks, along with Edexcel GCSE Chinese textbooks. In addition to this, they are able to use a number of online platforms to improve their language, such as Quizlet and Memrise for vocabulary, and Thisislanguage, Language-gym, Languagesonline and Duolingo for extra grammar and skills practice.