British Council - Speaking Mandarin

01 June 2018 by Christina Barker

British Council - Speaking Mandarin

 

https://www.britishcouncil.org/organisation/press/speaking-mandarin-will-give-school-leavers-career-advantage-say-77-cent-business-leaders

Within the article above are some truly outstanding facts and ones that I feel are very important to our future. It’s fantastic to hear that so many people want to learn Mandarin and I agree with Mark Herbert in that it builds a greater understanding and trust between the UK and China.

Snowflake Books write and publish books in both English and Mandarin. We also host various events and workshops to teach people about Chinese culture and help them learn how to read, write and speak Mandarin. Our books are based on tales and legends accompanied by illustrations full of authentic historical details which will ignite children's interest to learn the language and explore China as a new territory of adventure for their future. We believe that children at their young age won't be able to absorb the ideas of learning a new language for business opportunities. With exotic stories rooted deeply from traditional Chinese culture in both English and Mandarin as the gateway, we hope children will be able to keep their passion for the language and culture and turn it into a life-long learning habit. To acquire a foreign language and to make it a useful tool will need continuous effort (as this is how millions of Chinese people learn English). We have heard many stories about how children and teenagers give up due to the extreme difficulties and due to lack of interesting learning materials and environment. 

Our goal is to bridge the gap between both cultures to understand each other’s languages and with Mandarin being the most important non-European language for the UK post-Brexit this should be easy to achieve. Another of Snowflake books overall goals is to drive to build trust and opportunity globally. This can be accomplished once people start to understand the two cultures and with our books, we feel this can be attained. Our books are quite different compared to the British Council's usual language learning programs and therefore will only enhance their natural learning abilities.

We love to support Mandarin language learning as much as possible, through the use of Snowflake Books - proven to help students remember words and phrases through association with their truly beautiful illustrations.

British Council aim to have "over 5,000 young people on track towards fluency in Mandarin by 2020". We are hopeful that this goal would be reached even sooner. Our books boast colourful illustrations with easy to learn reading. The books include pinyin, focused words (a word in English and Mandarin highlighted) and an audio CD in which people can learn how to pronounce the words.

We would love to supply our books to these 5,000 plus young people but would need funding in which to do so. Our books are well loved by many children and families who met us at our events.

I have included some links below to a few video testimonials from them which we think our readers would like to watch. Enjoy!

https://snowflakebooks.co.uk/blogs/reviews/testimonials-from-parents-at-the-new-year-celebration-at-the-oxfordshire-museum-2018

https://snowflakebooks.co.uk/blogs/reviews/testimonials-from-young-children-in-london-2018

https://snowflakebooks.co.uk/blogs/reviews/testimonials-from-botley-school-2018