Chinese is not all Greek to Scoil Muire pupils

COLÁISTE Muire has become one of only a few schools in Munster where transition-year pupils can study Chinese. The Ennis school has this week welcomed teacher William Gaowei Zhang from the Shanxi province near Beijing to teach its 60 transition-year pupils.
According to William, he has already been very impressed with what he has seen in Ennis. “It is already going very good. The pupils are so active and all of the teachers have been very nice.
“I am working in University College Cork so I travel up to Ennis every week but it is a very worthwhile three-hour trip.”
He added, “There are many languages for transition-year pupils to learn and I think it’s great that they can speak so many. Chinese is very special and different and I believe they can learn it very quickly and master its basic usage and also traditional Chinese words.”
On his first day teaching at the school, he presented the class with a Chinese knot. He explained, “This represents union and happiness.”
He is planning to teach the pupils how to write the different characters of the language with a traditional Chinese brush.
“I will be trying my best to make Chinese easier for them and help them to learn the more classic uses. Learning this can be very useful for them, from just going into a restaurant to if they ever travel to China.”
He explained that any pupil who excels at the language would have a chance to sit the Youth Chinese Test, a test encouraging people from outside China to learn the language. If they pass, there may be an opportunity to travel to China.
“I am very hopeful that some of the pupils will be able to pass the test and if they do, they could participate in the Chinese Bridge proficiency competition, where they would be competing against pupils from all over the world. If they pass this, then I would recommend a trip to Beijing.”
Student Katie Laws from Barefield talked about her first Chinese class. “It went really well, he is a really good teacher who gives us lots of opportunities to ask questions. Chinese is a really interesting language and I’m looking forward to the rest.”
School principal Jean Pound said, “The ability to speak Chinese will be a fantastic advantage, they say that Chinese is the language of the future in terms of business and industry. Up until this year, it was mainly in Dublin that pupils had the chance to study the language and we are delighted to be able to offer this opportunity to our pupils. They are all really excited about the idea.”
The teaching of Chinese language and culture in the coláiste has been facilitated by the University College Cork Confucius Institute. The institute was established in the Irish Institute of Chinese Studies UCC in 2007 and is collaboration with Shanghai University.
The aim of the Confucius Institute is to strengthen educational co-operation between China and Ireland, support and promote the development of ­Chinese language education and increase mutual understanding between the peoples of China and Ireland.