Our Curriculum Aims:

We aim to broaden our students’ horizons by teaching them Chinese language and promoting a deeper understanding of Chinese culture. China is the second largest economy in the world and the last twenty years has seen an explosion of interest in the teaching and learning of Mandarin Chinese across the world. Learning Chinese will enable our students not only to communicate directly with 1.45 billion people in China as well as the Chinese diaspora across the world, but also to access to one of the world’s oldest and richest cultures, with its rich heritage of novels, short stories, drama, poetry and film.

The Chinese curriculum at AGSB is challenging and inspiring. The focus throughout the curriculum is on the integrated development of reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. Compared with all the European languages, Chinese has a complete different written scripts called Hanzi, which are not simply random pictures and are now much easier to acquire with the help of digital learning techniques. Students will be taught Hanzi from day one as well as be encouraged to explore the underlying principles behind Hanzi in depth, which will provide our students with a fundamental understanding of traditional Chinese ways of viewing the world. All the topics in the Chinese curriculum are well up to date. In Year 8 and Year 9, students will learn topics including the comparison between Chinese and English education, latest technology (e.g. 5G, Artificial Intelligence, etc) in China. At GCSE level, students will learn topics like world leading solar energy in China, environmental issues, wealth and poverty.

We promote independent learning and the lifelong love of languages. There are generic study skills students will be able to transfer from learning Chinese to any other subject. Hardworking and resilience are key skills throughout the Chinese course. Students will be offered professional support at every step. Carefully selected films, songs, books and websites will be introduced to our students to assist their independent learning of Chinese language and culture. Trips to Chinese New Year Gala and Manchester China town are organised every year for Year 9 and Y10 students. We also offer a very popular trip to China every July.