Beijing & Shanghai: Teaching Chinese as a Second Language Workshop

Morning - arrival in Beijing
Met with a name sign and transferred to your hotel in the city centre. Chinese is the working language of the school day in this city, and the point of the week is to watch the language being taught rather than only taught about. Guides and drivers on the programme speak English; the classrooms you sit in will not.

Afternoon - Opening seminar: what makes the language hard to teach
A teacher educator opens with the four collisions every teacher of Chinese meets. Pinyin gives learners a working sound system within weeks, but the tone system, including tone sandhi and the neutral tone, has to be drilled for years. Characters are not a sound system at all; the roughly 2,500 most frequent characters cover close to 99 per cent of running text, which is why frequency lists govern teaching order far more than grammatical sequence does. Stroke order and radicals are the teaching technology, not decoration. And since 2021 the Chinese Proficiency Test has moved from six bands to nine, restructured against a new syllabus of levels, so the tests your learners may eventually sit no longer match the materials you were trained on.

Cultural Insight - how Chinese schools teach characters
Chinese primary teachers teach characters to native-speaking children with a system of graded word lists, daily dictation, radical analysis and handwriting practice, and foreign teachers have borrowed much of it. The debate you will hear in the schools here is not whether characters should be taught by rote but how much meaning, etymology and component analysis should run alongside it - and how much class time a mixed-ability class can honestly give to handwriting.

Evening - Welcome dinner
Dinner with the group and a briefing on the school and institution visits, including the protocol for foreign visitors in Chinese schools and the materials participants should bring for the lesson-planning session.

Meals
Dinner

Accommodation
In Beijing.

Morning - the host school
An international school or the international division of a local school receives you, matched to the age range you teach. The head of Chinese gives a briefing on how the programme is built: which learners start with pinyin and which start with characters, how classes are streamed, how much time is spent on speaking against writing, how the syllabus feeds the external exams learners sit at 16 and 18, and how Chinese native speakers studying the same language as a first language are accommodated alongside beginners in one department.

Late morning - classroom observation
Observe a Chinese language lesson. Watch for the mechanics: the warm-up drill and how it is corrected, how tones are modelled and echoed, whether the class writes by hand or on a device, how the teacher manages a room in which a few learners already speak the language at home, and how much of the lesson is conducted in Chinese. Participants are asked to note three techniques worth stealing and one that would not travel.

Lunch
At the school with host teachers where the timetable allows, or nearby.

Afternoon - co-planning and a micro-lesson
The department works with you on a unit: objectives, the character list, the grammar point, the speaking task and the assessment. Participants then teach a 20-minute micro-lesson to each other or to a volunteer class, followed by structured feedback from the host teachers on clarity of instruction, modelling of tone, and the amount of Chinese used. The session closes with a comparison of the two systems you have now seen - a Chinese-medium school and an international one - and what each assumes about the learner.

Important
School visits depend on the host school's agreement, its calendar and the approval of the local education authority, and are confirmed in writing before the programme is finalised. Schools are generally closed to visitors during vacations and examination weeks; if a visit cannot be approved we substitute a university school of international Chinese education or a private teaching institution.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch

Accommodation
In Beijing.

Morning — Lama Temple
Dedicate the morning to the Lama Temple (Yonghegong), the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist temple outside Tibet. Built as a prince's residence and converted into a lamasery in 1744, it is famed for its 18-meter sandalwood Buddha in the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses and its blend of Han, Manchu, and Tibetan styles.

Afternoon — Confucius Temple & Guozijian
Visit the Confucius Temple, dedicated to the great philosopher, and the adjacent Guozijian, the highest educational institution of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Ancient ginkgo trees and stone tablets inscribed with imperial examination names line the calm grounds.

Evening — At your leisure
The evening is free to relax or explore the surrounding hutong area on your own.

Morning - the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line
The train leaves Beijing South and reaches Shanghai Hongqiao in roughly four and a half hours on the fastest services, over the 1,318-kilometre line that opened in 2011 and is the busiest high-speed railway in the world. It is worth paying attention to the journey itself: the route runs through the North China Plain, across the Yellow River and the Yangtze delta, and passes the kind of second- and third-tier cities that supply most of China's students. Tickets are bought against passport details and your guide handles collection and seat allocation.

Lunch
On board, from the trolley, or at the station before departure.

Afternoon - exchange with a Chinese-language teaching institution
A university school of international Chinese education, or a well-established private Mandarin teaching institution, hosts the afternoon. Expect a candid session on how short courses are actually built: how a four-week learner is placed, what is cut when time is short, how classes of mixed nationality and mixed script background are managed, how teachers are recruited and certified, and what the institution does about the learners who arrive expecting to speak fluently in a fortnight. There is usually a materials table - textbooks, graded readers, character workbooks - which participants find more useful than any lecture.

Evening - hotel, then the riverfront
Check in to the hotel and, if the group is willing after a travel day, walk the Bund at dusk where the colonial-era banking facades face the towers of Pudong across the Huangpu - the fastest lesson in the twentieth century that Shanghai can offer.

Meals
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
In Shanghai.

Morning — Shanghai Museum
The Shanghai Museum, founded in 1952 and relocated to People's Square in 1996, is one of China's premier museums of ancient art, housing over one million artifacts. Its distinctive circular-domed building symbolizes the traditional concept of a round sky above a square earth. Highlights include bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, Song-Ming ceramics, calligraphy, and national treasures such as the Da Ke Ding bronze tripod.

Afternoon — Yu Garden
Yu Garden is a 400-plus-year-old Ming Dynasty classical garden, celebrated for its exquisite rockeries — including the famous Grand Rockery — serene ponds, and pavilions. Designed to harmonize with nature, it reflects the refined landscaping traditions of Jiangnan and houses the prized Exquisite Jade Rock. Adjacent to the City God Temple and the lively Yuyuan Bazaar, it is a cultural treasure of old Shanghai.

Evening — The Bund
As the sun sets, walk the Bund promenade to admire colonial-era landmarks such as the Peace Hotel, then stroll the illuminated waterfront. Across the Huangpu River, Pudong's glowing skyline offers a striking contrast — an optional Huangpu River cruise lets you view both shores from the water.