Mandarin Excellence Programme

The Mandarin Excellence Programme is an intensive language learning programme fully funded by The Department of Education and delivered by IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society in partnership with the British Council. Since the programme launch in 2016, it has successfully helped more than 8,000 students in England get on track to fluency in Mandarin Chinese. In addition, more than 1,300 students took intensive Chinese language learning courses in China during the programme.

The main aim of the Mandarin Excellence Programme is to ensure that students with potential to learn Mandarin have the opportunity to receive high-quality lessons for Mandarin. This innovative language programme provides students studying in England with the opportunity to learn Mandarin and understand Chinese culture, which ultimately benefits the students and England as a whole.

The Urswick School is honored to be approved to join the Mandarin Excellence Programme in 2022. At our school, selected Year 7 students spend an average of eight hours a week learning Mandarin from January to help them reach a high level of language ability. It includes four hours of timetabled lessons at school and four hours of home learning sessions based on the themed project and homework. In our first introductory lesson, the students not only learned what the Mandarin Excellence Programme is and its importance, but also received souvenirs full of Chinese cultural significance. This set an amazing tone for the students and resulted in the following lessons going extremely well.

In addition to the rich and interesting lessons, we also invited parents to join our Chinese New Year celebrations during this Chinese New Year (Year of Rabbit). The students and their parents not only tasted Chinese food, but also enjoyed the dragon dance and handkerchief rolling performances from the students, which was very lively and extremely well received.

中文培优项目（Mandarin Excellence Programme）是由英国教育部资助、伦敦大学学院教育学院（IOE）与英国文化教育协会（British Council) 联合主办的语言强化学习项目。该项目自2016年启动以来，已成功帮助了8000多名学生掌握流利的普通话。除此以外，1300多名学生在参与项目期间在中国参加了中文强化学习课程。

中文培优项目的主要目标是确保有中文学习潜力的学生有机会接受高质量的汉语普通话强化教育。该创新项目为在英格兰学习的学生提供了学习普通话和了解中国文化的机会，并最终使学生们和整个英格兰受益。

The Urswick School于2022年荣幸地被批准加入了中文培优项目。在我校，被选中的七年级学生每周花费八小时学习中文，其中包括四小时在学校的课程，以及四小时在家独立学习的时间。在我们的第一节先导课上，学生们不仅了解了中文培优项目是什么以及它的重要性，还拿到了富有中国文化意义的纪念品，为我们后续的课程做了一个良好的开端。

除了丰富有趣的课程以外，我们在今年中国新年时还邀请家长一起举办了中国新年的庆祝活动。学生和家长们不仅品尝到了中国美食，还欣赏了来自学生们的舞龙和转手绢表演，十分热闹。