On October 20, the Confucius Institute hosted a Chinese teacher training session on the subject of Chinese teaching resources. The special guests were Ms. Ma Yamin and Ms. Li Xinying from Iceland International School of Hong Kong, who are the authors of Easy Steps to Chinese, one of the resources used at in the Chinese bilingual elementary schools in Edmonton..
Ms. Ma got her masters degree in education at Queen’s University in Canada in the area of second language teaching and Ms. Li has received her Ph.D in Applied Linguistics from Qinghua University. For both, most of their careers have been spent teaching Chinese for non-Chinese background learners and writing Chinese teaching resources.
More than 35 teachers attended the session. Most of them were from elementary schools and some from junior and high schools.
After the presentation, our teachers had opportunity to engage in detailed discussions with Ms. Ma and Ms. Li about how to use this and other resources more effectively.