In the previous chapter, the focus was on the ways in which parents supported their children's language and literacy development in Chinese in the context of the home. In the present chapter, attention shifts from the home to the wider community. After looking at the situation of community teaching in general in the UK, I will look in particular at provision in the Chinese community. A discussion of developments on the national level will draw on questionnaire data collected from Chinese Student and Scholar Association (CSSA) and two seminars offered by this organisation on the professional development of Chinese teachers. Further information will be offered in the form of a case study of the Reading Chinese School presented in three parts: the first part sets out an historical overview of the development of the classes based on interview and documentary evidence; the second part takes the form of a description of a typical Putonghua class; finally there follows an account of a handwriting lesson offered as part of a special intensive course based at the school. 

The development of community language teaching

A variety of terms, including 'first languages',  'mother tongues',  'home languages', have been used to describe languages in addition to English spoken by various ethnic minority groups in the UK. Dissatisfaction has often been expressed about the accuracy of these terms(c.f. Edwards &  Redfern, 1992). For instance, Moslem children who speak Punjabi in a family context may attend classes in Urdu, the language of  'high culture'. 

A language studied in a formal situation of this kind cannot be described as a  'mother tongue'. Similarly, many Cantonese-speaking children born in the UK whose parents come from Hong Kong attend classes in Putonghua. In both these situations children are clearly studying a language which is not their 'mother tongue' or 'first language'. For this reason, there has been a growing preference to refer to community language teaching in the UK and Australia, and heritage language teaching in Canada. The level of activity in community language teaching has increased considerably in recent decades. The common pattern is that the family takes main responsibility in the initial stages, but later this responsibility is shared with the wider ethnocultural community (Edwards, 1995b: 52). As community-run classes become more established, a variety of support is sometimes forthcoming from local education authorities. 

Arguments in support of community language teaching fall into three broad categories: educational, psychological and social. 

Educational arguments for community language teaching

Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed considerably in recent years. Until the 1960s it was widely believed that speaking another language placed children at an educational disadvantage (Baker, 1996).  Subsequently, however, it has been pointed out that many of the studies which suggested that bilingual students were underachieving were comparing working class bilinguals with middle class monolinguals, or were based on the performance of bilingual children in their weaker language. In earlier times the notion of the brain as a receptacle with a finite capacity was invoked to explain why bilinguals could never perform as well as their monolingual peers. This view was reflected in the advice frequently given by teachers to parents to speak only English to their children at home (Edwards, 1998). 

More recently the image of the brain as a receptacle has been replaced by the metaphor of a two-peaked iceberg (Cummins, 1996): the peaks represent the surface differences between the two languages, but below the surface is a common underlying proficiency. The current consensus is that a sound foundation in the first language is important for the acquisition of a second or subsequent languages. Cognitive skills necessary for activities such as reading and writing can be transferred from one language to another; they do not have to be relearned. Support for this position has been greatly strengthened by American research which points to the superior outcomes of children attending bilingual programs (Ramirez, 1992; Cummins, 1996; Collins & Thomas, 1997). Instead of advocating that children give up the language of the home in favour of the language of the school, there is a growing body of opinion (e.g. Alladina, 1991; Baker, 1996) that children should be encouraged to maintain the language of the home. 

Various other authors provide support for this position from a number of perspectives. Wells (1986), for instance, shows that it is very important for adults to extend and develop the topics initiated by children. He goes on to argue that it does not matter whether the interaction is English or the children's first language because the conceptual and academic skills developed in one language can be transferred across languages. Gibbons (1991) stresses that, in learning other languages, the first language should ideally continue to be developed. She goes on to say:

These children have full capacity for learning, but in an English-only class they are without the language which will allow them to do so. In this situation their cognitive and conceptual development may be slowed down or hampered while they are acquiring sufficient fluency in English (Gibbons, 1991: 61). 

Cummins and Danesi(1990) and Cummins(1996) point to the negative consequences for children's conceptual and academic development of encouraging minority parents to speak English at home: because they are not as fluent in English as in their mother tongue, they can provide only an imperfect model for their children. These writers emphasize that educators should strongly encourage minority parents to interact with their children through their home language. In a similar vein, Turner (1997 140) argues that without mother tongue support in school, bilingual children  'could be treading water rather than making progress'. 

Many recent studies emphasise that bilingualism can positively affect both intellectual and linguistic progress. Lambert(1990) states that bilingual children are more sensitive to linguistic meanings and more flexible in their thinking than are monolingual students. 

Psychological arguments for community language teaching

There is no shortage of evidence to suggest that first language learning increases children's self-esteem and confidence in their own ethnicity and validates the children's home culture (Larter & Cheng, 1986;  Cummins & Danesi, 1990;  Edwards & Redfern, 1992; Cummins, 1996;  Edwards, 1998). The Ukrainian Canadian Committee School Board suggests the following rationale for heritage language teaching in Canada:

We allow the child to develop a sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Once the child is confident in who he／she is, he／she can share his／her knowledge and experiences with children from variety of other backgrounds (cited in Cummins & Danesi, 1990: 72). 

Social arguments for community language teaching

The ability to speak other languages also has benefits for the individual and the wider society, opening greater vocational and life chances (Tansley, 1986;  Fitzpatrick, 1987;  Cummins & Danesi, 1990). 

Educationalists believe that the multilingual abilities which children acquire represent human resources that benefit the nation's economic and diplomatic endeavours. Davis(1987), for instance, points out that children's linguistic resources are helpful for Canada's economic well-being and international effectiveness. 

In a similar vein, Cummins and Danesi (1990) argue that minority cultures and languages can be seen as societal resources to be valued because they make people more adaptable, skilled and sophisticated in cultural and linguistic ways. For children, the benefits of learning heritage language are not only to be able to communicate with grandparents but also to enrich the history of the group with their own history. 

In short, the world is becoming more interdependent culturally, economically, environmentally, and scientifically. People from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds need to cooperate to resolve problems of global concern. Maintenance and development of language skills can help this process of global cooperation. 

Community language teaching in the UK

The history of Britain and of the English language has been influenced by invaders and immigrants since the earliest times(Leith, 1983; Crystal, 1987). The extent of these outside influences has been particularly marked since the Second World War, with the arrival of large numbers of people from overseas, the New Commonwealth(Alladina & Edwards, 1991). Teachers, especially in inner city schools were faced with children from many different countries speaking a wide range of languages other than English. Not only did they need to meet the challenge of linguistic diversity, but they also needed to respond to cultural differences. The assimilationist policies which marked the 1960s proved unworkable in the 1970s when there was a shift to policies of integration and the educational philosophy of multiculturalism (Edwards & Redfern, 1992; Rutter, 1994).

The extent of diversity during this period is indicated by a survey of the total school population in the UK aged 5-16 carried out in 1982 (Tansley, 1986). Approximately four percent (375,000) of children came from homes where English was not the first language. Some 92 Local Education Authorities(LEAs) reported a total of 1, 892 schools where at least ten percent of pupils had a mother tongue other than English. The population of London schools was particularly diverse:

There is a wide range of linguistic diversity, with the authority's 12 main languages (in order of numbers of speakers) -Bengali, Turkish, Gujarati, Spanish, Greek, Urdu, Panjabi, Chinese, Italian, Arabic, French and Portuguese-all being well represented among pupils (Tansley, 1986: 4). 

By the late 1980s, a language census of Inner London Schools showed that over 170 different languages were spoken (Edwards, 1998). 

In Canada, linguistic minorities have grown rapidly in recent years. This has made it possible to demand greater recognition and support from mainstream education. Heritage language classes have continued to develop:

In 1977/78, for instance, 42 school boards were providing 2,000 classes in 30 different languages to 50,000 students. By 1986/87, an additional 30 boards were offering 4,364 classes in 58 different languages to 91,110 students. There were also a further 69,000 students attending 369 heritage language schools run by community groups which received funding from the Federal Cultural Enrichment program (Canadian Ethnocultural Council, 1988, cited in Edwards & Redfern, 1992: 87). 

In the UK, however, the level of official support for community language teaching is much less. In a small proportion of cases, the LEA offers mother tongue teaching as part of the curriculum(LMP, 1985; Bourne, 1989). In a much larger proportion of cases, the LEA offers financial support for non-statutory provision(payment of community teachers, provision of free or cheap accommodation, etc.) (Tansley, 1986;  Edwards & Redfern, 1992). However, the number of classes and of pupils involved in community language teaching is enormous. According to the LMP(1985) survey of mother tongue teaching provision in 1981-82, there were 106 classes and 1,894 students in Coventry, 183 classes and 3,586 students in Bradford and 143 classes and 3,042 students in Haringey. 

While it is clear that the Canadian situation is generally more favourable, some of the problems associated with community／heritage language teaching in the UK also affect Canada, including the recruitment and status of teachers, the availability of in-service training, the suitability of teaching resources and methodologies. (Edwards & Redfern, 1992). 

The numbers of new arrivals has dramatically reduced since changes in immigration legislation in the 1960s. Most children from minority communities have now been born in the UK and there has been a marked shift in usage from the minority languages to English(Linguistic Minorities Project, 1985; Alladina & Edwards, 1991). None the less, increasing numbers of children attend communityrun classes in order to develop their oracy and literacy skills. This trends seems likely to grow rather than diminish in the future (Rutter, 1994; Edwards, 1998). 

Chinese community language teaching in the UK

Taylor (1987) describes various features of community language teaching in the UK, including the schools' aims, their financial arrangements,  length of attendance, parents'attitudes, age range of pupils, cultural content, teaching methods, teaching materials, liaison with parents, the community function of Chinese schools and LEA support. More recently, Wong(1992) discusses issues of organisation, such as administration, finance, curriculum, teacher education and supply. She also mentions the government - funded Chinese Community centres established in the early 1980s. Wong (1992: 70) indicates:

Additional financial assistance ranging from￡1.000 to￡2.000 per year has been obtained by Chinese supplementary schools in London from the Hong Kong Government Office(London) since the late 1970s. At the same time, the LEAs contribute about￡750-￡1,500 per year to help to meet the current expenditure...besides the financial assistance, some LEAs have permitted the free use of their school premises for the holding of Chinese classes. 

Previous writers on Chinese language teaching in the UK have dealt exclusively with the situation of Hong Kong Chinese children. The present study, however, is concerned with the situation of Mainland Chinese children who have a very important potential intermediary role in the development abroad of China in the twenty-first century;  consequently, their education deserves very special attention. It is widely believed among the Mainland Chinese community in the UK that children should be able to operate equally well in both languages and cultures.  The fact that their literacy skills in Chinese often compare poorly with those of children of the same age in China is very much a matter of concern and has served as a catalyst for the setting up of Chinese schools. 

As was suggested in chapter six, children have relatively few problems in understanding Chinese but very limited reading and writing skills. Since parents intend ultimately to go back to China, they make strenuous efforts to teach Chinese at home, in the hope that their children will be able to make up for the schooling they have lost. None the less, children do not necessarily share their parents' concerns. As the mother of an eight year old boy who had been in Britain for the last two years complained: 'It's very difficult to ask him to learn Chinese. We find ourselves bribing him all the time' . 

At present, two associations co-ordinate networks of Chinese Classes: one teaches through the medium of Cantonese, the other through Putonghua. The first is operated by the Hong Kong Chinese whose UK Federation of Chinese Schools is responsible for the activities of nearly a hundred member schools. In the majority of cases, the medium of instruction in these schools is Cantonese and children learn to read and write using traditional Chinese characters. With the return of Hong Kong to China, however, attention is now beginning to be paid to Putonghua, although it should be stressed that, for children from Hong Kong, Putonghua represents a foreign language. This was underlined by a recent conversation which I had with a girl who claimed that she was in third year of learning Putonghua yet was not able to respond to very simple questions in the language. The Putonghua classes provided for Hong Kong Chinese children are clearly not suitable for Mainland Chinese children who speak Putonghua either as a first or second language. 

The second Chinese teaching association was set up more recently by the Chinese Student and Scholars'Association(CSSA): the medium of instruction is Putonghua, using simplified characters; the aim is to improve children's reading and written Chinese skills. I was well-placed to research the activities of this group, since 1 was chair of the Chinese Teaching Group of the CSSA from 1996-1997. During this period the CSSA organised two seminars on the teaching of Chinese in November 1996 and April 1997. Both seminars attempted to collect information on the organisation of classes in the UK and to explore the challenges which teachers face. 

Most members of the association are based in universities and have access to electronic mail. It was therefore possible to email questionnaires to the head of schools before each seminar. The first questionnaire consisted of 20 questions which covered the setting up and organisation of the schools, the teacher's situation and any problems(see the Appredix). Responses were received from twelve schools in existence at that time. The discussion which follows below is based on two sources of information: the questionnaire responses and videorecordings of the two seminars. The second questionnaire dealt more specifically with approaches to the teaching of reading, an issue which has already been raised in chapters five and six. 

The organisation of Putonghua schools in the UK

It was possible to gather a range of background information on Putonghua Schools in the UK through the questionnaire responses. This included the location of classes, when they were established, the number of students, teachers and classes in each school and the age ranges served by the school. 

The number of schools currently run by the Mainland Chinese community is thus quite small. Given that there are more than sixty local CSSA in different universities and cities, Chinese schools have been set up in less than 20 percent of these locations. Schools are also small in scale, with student numbers between ten and fifty and teacher numbers between one and four. Schools are usually organised into between two and four classes or groups with about ten students in each class.  However, the fact that so many Mainland Chinese communities in the UK have no classes at all is clearly a matter of concern. 

Students range from four to sixteen years of age and represent many different levels of competence in Chinese. Because the schools only have small numbers of classes, each group inevitably includes a wide range of ages and experience. Comments from participants at the first seminar indicated that such arrangements often gives rise to difficulties in teaching.

Sources of funding

Earlier research on community language teaching in a range of settings shows that funding is a perennial problem. As pointed out in LMP's (1985: 257) discussion of community language teaching:

The majority of the mother tongue classes... had no support from the LEA for teachers' salaries or accommodation at the time of the survey...They were still often run by local community organisations or overseas government agencies (LMP, 1985: 257). 

Similar problems emerge in the discussion of language classes in the Chinese community. There are four main sources of funding for Putonghua teaching: almost half of the schools are subsidised by the local council in the form of classroom rental; some are funded by parents; some are attached to schools organised by the Hong Kong Chinese community, which until 1997 were funded by the Hong Kong government; some are subsidised by the local CSSA. Teacher salaries vary enormously from￡12 in Edinburgh to￡2.50 in Reading. 

*C／P: Council／parents

*AC: Attached to local Chinese school

The question of funding is thus a matter of concern for all community language teaching provision in the UK, but some classes are more seriously affected than others. Communities where classes are provided by embassies and high commissions, for instance, are clearly better placed than those which have no such institutional support. The situation of Mainland Chinese families is particularly challenging, since most are visiting research fellows or students living on very small grants and with little disposable income. 

Against this background, much of the discussion at the first seminar focused on the financial viability of classes and resulted in the development of a formula. Four elements need to be considered in setting up a Chinese school: premises, teaching staff, resources and funding. Of these, funding is perhaps the most fundamental: without money it is not possible to rent classrooms, recruit teachers or buy textbooks. At present, most Chinese schools adhere to the following model: one teacher works with ten students in one classroom for two hours per week. Rent is usually in the area of￡4 per hour, teacher's pay varies from￡3 to 12 per hour. The total expenses thus range from￡7 to ￡16 a session. In the following formula, (F) represents the tuition fee per hour and N is the number of students: F=￡(7-16) ／N

If there are ten students in one class, the tuition fee per student per hour is￡0.70 to￡1.60. If there are more than ten students in one class, the tuition fee will be even lower. This calculation of the tuition fee does not, of course, include the cost of textbooks and students' activities, but any subsidy from the local education authority towards the cost of rent will free funding for these aspects of community classes. 

The formula also points the way to another way of increasing the viability of classes: by increasing the number of students, the tuition fee can be reduced still further. This is an eminently practical course to follow for, since the return of Hong Kong to China, Putonghua is growing in importance and increasing numbers of Hong Kong Chinese children are interested in studying Putonghua rather than Cantonese. 

Another option considered in the seminar was to change the time of classes. A fee of between￡0.70 and￡1.60 per hour compares very favourably with the fees normally charged, for instance, in after school clubs which are usually in the region of ￡2.50 per child per hour. It might thus be possible to consider organising after-school classes which would reduce the overall costs for parents already paying for childcare at the same time as increasing the amount of time available for studying Chinese. There are, of course, certain practical problems. The Chinese population is often very dispersed and it might prove difficult to arrange for children to get to the school where the Chinese class was organised. 

Teaching issues

Various teaching issues were identified including the availability of suitable materials, teaching methods, testing and assessment and the qualifications of teachers. 

Teaching materials

The shortage of suitable teaching materials is common to all community schools. Edwards & Redfern(1992) draw attention to the fact that the content of books and curricula produced in the home country is not suitable for locally-born children. Consequently community school teachers have to spend much time and effort in the preparation of their own materials. In the UK, the ILEA, the EC and the Schools Council jointly sponsored the Mother Tongue Project from 1981. The aim was to produce materials in order to help primary school children develop skills in the community language alongside English(Tansley, Nowaz &  Roussou, 1985). Other initiatives include the development of a course for teaching Urdu and a curriculum and assessment system for Gujaratis (Dave, 1991). However, teaching materials remain scarce, and many communities have made relatively little progress in this area. 

Dual language books

Dual language books are a potentially useful source of learning materials for community language classes. These usually take the form of picture books for children where the text appears in two languages. There is a fairly wide range of Chinese dual texts in use in British schools, though almost all use traditional characters. 

Figure7.1 A page from dual language Chinese-English book with traditional characters. 

In response to the new interest in Putonghua following the return of Hong Kong to China, books are now beginning to appear which use both traditional and simplified characters in conjunction with an English text: the traditional characters are accompanied by a Cantonese transliteraion, while the transliteration of the simplified characters is in Putonghua. 

Feuerverger (1994) and MRC (1995) found that dual language books can be used successfully with a wide range of readers, from recently arrived children who are already literate in their first language to children who were born in the new country and have learned to read their community language, and also monolingual children. They argue that dual language books can be a bridge to literacy for children whose dominant language is now English at the same time as promoting pride in cultural identity. 

It is notable, however, that most community language teachers dislike dual texts(Multilingual Resources for Children Project, 1995). They argue that children are surrounded by English and they wish to place exclusive emphasis on the minority language; they also suspect that children will not make the effort to read the community language if they have access to the English. One child admitted, for instance, that he would choose the dual text because he  'knew English better'. Another explained that if he chose the dual language books, he would  'just read the English and not make the effort to read Bengali. ' However, most of the Chinese dual language books available in the UK are, in any case, unsuitable for Mainland Chinese children because they usually use traditional, not simplified characters. 

Textbook

Community schools attended by Mainland Chinese children attach considerable importance to the standard Chinese textbooks used in almost all Chinese primary schools. These are produced by regional units which are responsible for all school publications and textbooks are not available in ordinary book shops. In China, all children of the same age follow the same book for seven to eight hours a week. There are twelve textbooks in the series, and students in China would be expected to complete one book a term (there are two terms in the school year).  Most Chinese classes in the UK are based around books 1-6. Each lesson consists of a text and exercises. This standard Chinese textbook is accompanied by a further book of related exercises. Teachers also devise their own supplementary exercises to help prepare students for examinations. The emphasis is not on reading for enjoyment as would be the case in British schools but on completing exercises related to the text (see chapter six). UK Chinese students find it very difficult to reach the same standards as children in China since they spend only two hours per week in classes and usually need a year rather than half a year to complete each textbook. 

Another problem identified by the teachers was that the textbooks are unsuitable for use in the UK, a feeling which has also been reported in many other community language teaching situations(MRC, 1995). The experiences of children in the UK are quite different from children in China, and overseas Chinese often find it difficult to understand the cultural content of the texts. The very different language environment means that children have a limited conception of Chinese characters and words and it is sometimes necessary to spend a great deal of time explaining things which children in China take for granted. For instance, in Book1(P.65), there is a sentence:

新农村里出新人 xin nong chun li chu xin ren

 (new countryside produce new people)

To understand this sentence you need to appreciate the importance of liberation in 1949: 'new countryside' refers to China after liberation at which point people's standard of living greatly improved. Overseas Chinese children are not aware of the importance of this historical event nor of the distinction between urban and rural life, since the standard of living in town and country is similar in the UK. 

One of the key issues identified in the seminars was the need to develop materials better suited for the British situation. Several teachers described their efforts to develop their own teaching materials, such as flashcards. Some teachers also supplemented the textbooks with other materials, such as the Chinese lessons for children published in the overseas version of The People's Daily, Tang poetry, Chinese folk stories and moral tales for children. 

Curriculum and assessment

Assessment is another issue of concern. Most of the schools test children once a term, though these tests are not standardised. 

Both curriculum and methods of assessment vary a great deal from one school to another. Teachers tend to emphasise the importance of tests for motivating students and often overlook the role which assessment can play in offering feedback on whether teaching objectives have been achieved (Karavis et al., 1991). There are also problems in comparing the achievements of children in the UK relative to age levels in China.  Table 7.3 below sets out the arrangements for assessment which were in place in the twelve Putonghua schools. 

The question of standardising assessment in the UK was identified as important by participants at the second seminar. It was agreed that any assessment tools developed should reflect the expectations of Chinese education, facilitating reintegration when children return home, and possibly serving as a strong motivation for children to keep up their studies in Chinese. 

The background of the teachers

The problem of finding suitable teachers for community classes is not, of course, unique to the Mainland Chinese and has been widely reported in other community teaching situations (Edwards & Redfern, 1992). Very often, the teachers who give freely of their time may be very well qualified in other fields but have no previous experience of teaching language and literacy at primary or secondary levels. Even when teachers have the relevant experience of teaching in the home country, they may have a very imperfect understanding of the teaching methods to which children are exposed in British schools, and may therefore find it difficult to appreciate that children will find the expectations of community schools very different from those of mainstream schooling. 

A similar picture emerges for Chinese classes. All teachers have received a high level of education and most are university graduates, but only 20 percent have a formal teaching qualification and two or more years teaching experience in China. Many have a background in the social sciences and so bring a deep understanding of Chinese culture which usefully informs their teaching. However, it is unrealistic to expect high professional standards from volunteer teachers whose only qualification is the fact that they speak, read and write Chinese themselves. Very often, it proves difficult to adjust to the new situation. 

One of the main issues discussed during the course of the second seminar was the role which the CSSA could perform in the professional development of volunteer teachers. It was widely agreed that it could serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas on a national level identifying and disseminating examples of good practice. It could also offer training opportunities: options considered included organising day or two day courses where experienced teachers could cover subjects such as how to plan lessons, useful approaches to teaching, and how to motivate students. This last question is of particular relevance for teachers in the UK, since in China student motivation is taken as read. Last but by no means least, the CSSA could provide external motivation for learning by organising competitions for children in the areas or writing, handwriting and reading aloud. 

Teaching methods

Another question considered by participants was the need to adapt teaching methods to the British situation. It is clearly important that Chinese teachers should be aware of developments in education in China, but they also need to familiarise themselves with the teaching methods to which children are exposed in British schools. Ultimately, it was felt that teachers in community classes should aim for a synthesis of Chinese and British teaching methods which would speak to the experience of the children. 

There was evidence of adaptation to certain British norms in Chinese classes. For instance, the physical organisation of classes is more likely to resemble that of English primary schools with students sitting around a table than that of Chinese schools where students sit in rows facing the front. Students are usually encouraged to talk and express their ideas at any time, again a practice which differs significantly from traditional assumptions. There was also widespread reference to attempts to make the content of the classes more accessible to overseas Chinese children. A teacher in the Manchester Chinese school, for instance, explained his practice in the following terms:

When I teach about the Great Wall, I show a picture to the class. I tell the students 'Today, the Great Wall of China is coming to us'. I show them the picture and explain to the students about the Great Wall. 

Some teachers raised the question of the linguistic challenges raised by overseas Chinese students. A recurrent problem concerns the use of classifier words which is attributable in part at least to the fact that English has no comparable grammatical category. For example, one knife in Chinese should be one ba knife[一 把 刀 yi ba dao]. One teacher described her approach to teaching classfier words in this way:

The students really need to know the function of measure words in Chinese. I give my students two sentences: one is 我 给 你 一 刀 wo gei ni yi dao(I cut you with a knife), the other is 我 给 你 一 把 刀 wo gei ni yi ba dao(I give you a knife). The classifier word ba completely changes the meaning. I use this example to emphasise the importance of using classifiers correctly in Chinese. 

The heterogeneity of students in Chinese classes in the UK emerged as another point of discussion. Because of the wide range of ages and experiences of children of Chinese, the normal practice of teaching the whole class in the same way with the same materials becomes far more difficult than would be the case in China. A teacher from the Oxford Chinese school stressed the need for teachers to pay attention to individual differences between students and to supply help according to specific needs. 

There was also extensive discussion of discipline in class. In China, teachers at a particular grade level in a school usually prepare their lessons together and are often at the same place in the textbook (Sheridan, 1990). The teacher in China is very much an authority figure.  Hudson-Ross & Dong (1990) observe:

Chinese children raise their hands hoping to be called on by the teacher and stand when called on to answer a question...  In China.  a verbal comment from a teacher will make a child feel bad enough to repent for inappropriate behavior, but the teachers is never alone. Peers and parents are also considered equally responsible for 'social' or 'moral' education (P.113 & 115). 

According to traditional philosophy, the whole group is far more important than the individual. Personal feelings are thought improper for public settings such as the classroom. Chinese children are expected to be humble, modest, quiet, and respectful to teachers(Hudson-Ross & Dong, 1990). However, growing up in the western country is very different and Chinese teachers sometimes find it difficult to adjust to the different patterns of behaviour of the children. 

A final point which emerged from the discussion was the role of English in Chinese classes in the UK. There was a consensus that it was impractical to insist on the use of Chinese in all occasions. On many occasions, the most effective way of demonstrating that children understand the meaning of a word or character is by refering to the English. The development of children's spoken language is more important in an overseas setting than it would be in China and there was general agreement that oral skills should be given the same importance as reading and writing. 

The Reading Chinese school

The case study of the Chinese school in Reading which follows is intended to put flesh on to the bones of the discussion above of community classes. Although some of the details will be specific to the Reading school, many of the issues which will be considered are of more general interest. The case study is based on various sources of information, including interviews with the current deputy director and teachers at the school, participant observation and videorecording of the Putonghua class which I teach myself, written accounts of the founding of the classes provided by Gisela and Chan Man Fong and a report from the Overseas Chinese Education Centre (OCEC) commemorating twenty two years of Chinese teaching. 

The organisation and history of the classes

Reading Chinese School is typical of many other Chinese community schools. It was set up in 1978 as part of a small group of schools which form the Overseas Chinese Education Centre(OCEC), the other schools being based in west London in Euston, Hounslow, and Shepherds Bush.  All four schools have also been members of the UK Federation of Chinese Schools (UKFCS) since it was established in 1994. Gisela Chan, one of the founders of the Reading Chinese School, describes the impetus for the school in the following terms:

We prepared a questionnaire in Chinese... which mainly raised the question of setting up a school teaching Cantonese to Chinese children, whether people thought it a good idea, whether the classes should be on Saturday or Sunday, the age of children, their level of Chinese... The response to this questionnaire was overwhelming. All the handed out questionnaires were returned. People did not only return them to us by mail, they stood in front of our door and in the typical Chinese fashion of arranging interpersonal relations discussed the matter in our living room. They wanted a school... We sorted the children into classes; we got the Chinese textbooks from the High Commissioner of Hong Kong. 

In the first year, classes were help in Reading University's Student Union on Sunday mornings. At the same time, the organisers were in negotiation with Berkshire Local Education Authority with a view to moving to school premises, and E P Collier Primary School has served as a permanent base since 1979. 

In the very beginning, there were seven classes serving approximately 80 students. In addition to Chinese teaching, the school also provided English classes for parents. The Chinese school also served a very important social role. Gisela Chan describes the situation thus:

The school developed gradually into a Chinese community centre of learning. We served as a bridge in tricky social situations by providing interpreter services... In my view the purpose of the school was to give a chance to the children to meet each other and to become aware that there are other children who are brought up in almost the same way as they are. In my view, successful learning involves not only subject matter embedded in and strengthened by socio-cultural norms taught in a classroom but should be embedded in and strengthened by socio-cultural norms taught in the Chinese family and a community centre. 

By the academic year 1997／98 when I interviewed Mr. Chong, the deputy director of the school, student numbers had grown to 120 students organised into ten classes-eight for the teaching of Cantonese and two for Putonghua. The need for English classes had long ceased to be an issue. Most students come from Reading, though some travel from as far afield as Bracknell, Maindenhead, Wokingham, Slough, Windsor and Ascot. The nearest other schools in the southern region are in Oxford or London.

About 70-80％of students in the Cantonese classes come from families in the catering business and have high aspirations for their children's future; the others come from a range of professional backgrounds. The students in Putonghua classes all come from professional families. In over half the cases, at least one parent has a Ph.D. 

Cultural and social issues retain a central role in the life of the school.  Mr. Chong, headteacher in 1996／7 and deputy in 1997／8, summed up the current situation in the following way:

The Chinese school has two aims. One is to teach Chinese, the other is to organize cultural activities such as Spring Festival and the Moon Day celebration. These activities help children understand Chinese culture. Besides, parents can meet together and help each other. 

 Financial issues

The Reading Chinese School has had four main sources of financial support: the Hong Kong Government, the county council, student fees and donations from the Chinese business community. 

For many years, the Hong Kong Government gave an annual cash grant and free Chinese text books to all Chinese schools in the UK. However, with the transfer of power to China, this support gradually reduced and stopped altogether in 1992. At this point, the Hong Kong government gave￡30,000 to help to set up UKFCS and made available a set of textbooks to sell to students at cost price through the Federation. 

The Youth and Community Department of Berkshire County Council has also offered a great deal of financial support. In 1997／8, for instance, the Reading Chinese School received a grant for￡2,500, ￡2,000 of which was spent on renting classrooms, leaving only￡500 for paying teachers and other expenses. In order to resolve this problem, the school now charges a tuition fee of￡35 a year to cover the cost of teaching materials and activities. Local Chinese businesses also sometimes make small donations which have been used to purchase equipment. 

In spite of the very obvious difficulties, teachers, headteachers and parents are determined that the Chinese School should continue. In the words of Mr. Chong:

If we cannot get funding from local government, we will be in a very difficult situation. We have to find other ways to get funding. No matter what happens, we will continue to run this school.  

 

Chinese School teachers

In the very early stages, the teachers at the Reading Chinese School relied heavily on the voluntary efforts of students from the University of Reading. However, the turnover of teachers was high, especially during the examination season. More recently, parents-and especially mothers-have started to teach some of the classes, and are now responsible for the majority of the classes. This arrangement is more satisfactory than using university students who are necessarily transient and also find it more difficult to help at certain times of the year. 

At present, the school has a headteacher, a deputy and ten teachers.Although most come from professional backgrounds, only one has a formal teacher qualification from Hong Kong. The two Putonghua teachers come from the University of Reading: one is a research fellow in science, the other-myself-a Ph. D. student in education. 

Each academic year, the school holds several teachers' meeting to discuss the issues such as the organisation of classes and resources. In addition, the school sends three representatives to a two day training course for community school teachers organised by the UKFCS. 

Over the years, some skepticism has been expressed by mainstream British teachers about community language classes, in general, and the suitability of teachers in community schools, in particular. Mr Chong, for instance, was not aware of any contact between mainstream schools and the Reading Chinese School and believed that most mainstream teachers offered 'very little support and low priority' to community provision. In a similar vein, A. S. -T. Lue, remembers in an article on  'Recollections on the early days of the Centre' in the 1994 Report of OCEC, a remark once made by a representative of the Inner London Education Authority:

'What you are doing is wrong,' he said. 'You are distracting the youngsters from their normal education when they should be concentrating on their ordinary schoolwork... Your teachers are untrained and unqualified' . 

In contrast, the teachers themselves seldom share these concerns. As Ms Lue points out:

They (Chinese school teachers) are indeed untrained, but I insist that they are the best qualified available in the country. What they are teaching is well within their competence, and they do it well.  (OCEC, 1994: 66-67). 

Teaching materials and pedagogies

As previous mentioned, in 1970s and 1980s, the Reading Chinese School received free textbooks from the Hong Kong government. The teaching was progressively structured, homework was set and pupils moved upwards to the next level at the end of each year. Children were tested regularly. When the new textbooks became available in 1992, the Reading classes started using these materials. 

When the Putonghua classes were set up in 1995, standard textbooks from China were introduced. In the first year, the textbooks were photocopied by parents. From the second year, students used books brought from China, supplemented with language learning materials from the overseas version of the People's Daily. Students in these classes learn to write the simplified characters used in the People's Republic. 

With the return of Hong Kong, interest in Putonghua has grown considerably in the Cantonese community. As Mr. Chong pointed out:

Although many parents come from Hong Kong and don't know Putonghua, they would like their children to learn Putonghua. This is very difficult because they don't have access to the language in their every day life. We hope they will learn to read and write the characters and words first, and then begin to learn Putonghua. 

With the increasing interest in Putonghua, the main bone of contention between Cantonese and Putonghua teachers concerns which writing system should be used. Cantonese teachers tend to think that it is better to start with traditional characters before moving on to simplified characters. They sometimes argue that the traditional characters are more iconic and give stronger visual cues as to meaning (c.f.Leong, 1973; DeFrancis, 1984).

Putonghua speakers, however, tend to disagree. The first argument that they make is that many of the characters are the same in both simplified and traditional characters. 明 Ming is one such example. It is also the case that there is no obvious visual imagery in very many characters-traditional or simplified. This is because the visual imagery is only one of six ways of composing characters(see chapter two). Finally, Putonghua speakers would argue that it is possible to make similar visual links with meaning using simplified characters. Hudson-Ross & Dong (1990) give the example of the simplified character 妇 fu (women) on its side, where the left part means female 女, the right part is a sideward mountain 山. This is sometimes explained as women having turned the big mountains on their backs and stood up to be equal with men. They observe:

Such stories, especially when presented as dramatically as Mrs Zhou [a Chinese teacher] sometimes did helped children relate a character to its meaning and enjoy their learning experience (P.120). 

Children born in the UK find it very difficult to learn Cantonese (Wong, 1991). For them, traditional characters look like impenetrable pictures.  Cantonese speakers find themselves at a further disadvantage because most teachers do not use a romanised transcription such as the pinyin system in the early stages of teaching. It is notable, however, that children often spontaneously write an English transliteration alongside Chinese characters(Wong, 1991). In the absence of transliterations, the only indication of how a character is pronounced comes from teachers and parents which is never standard. 

The insistence on the use of traditional characters among overseas Chinese was not a problem in relation to the learning of Cantonese. It is a problem, however, when Cantonese-speaking children wish to learn Putonghua which uses simplified characters. Confusion of traditional and simplified characters is common. Not all Cantonese teachers, of course, insist on use of traditional characters. Mr.Chong, for instance, summed up his position in the following way:

In my personal opinion, I like children to learn the simplified characters. The traditional characters look more beautiful but they are difficult to write. The children don't want to learn them. It takes too much time. 

A Putonghua class at the Reading Chinese school

Detailed accounts of what actually takes place in Chinese community classes are rare. The purpose of the account which follows is therefore to build up as full as possible a picture of Mainland Chinese children's experience of learning Putonghua in the UK. It does not claim to be representative, although discussion with other teachers of Putonghua who are members of the UKCSSA suggests that the approach and materials used are widespread. I taught the class in question myself and as such was a participant observer in the process. The session was videotaped by Dafydd Morriss, a student from Nottingham Trent University who was undertaking an observational assignment as part of a research methods course. Discussion with him after the class helped me to focus on aspects of organisation which might be of significance for a British observer. 

The bell rang at 11 am and the children entered the classroom and were greeted. They sat around a table, with the teacher at the head. Two different groups of children, each with its own teacher shared the same classroom. The first group consisted of eight students between the ages of seven and ten, taught by myself. The second group consisted of three students between the ages of five and fifteen. The two younger children were Putonghua speakers from Mainland China, the oldest boy was a Cantonese-speaker who had recently begun to study Putonghua. The focus for the present discussion, however, is the first and larger group, looking first at the structure of the lesson, then at teacher strategies for control and finally at the distribution of English and Chinese in the lesson. 

Organisation of the lesson

The lesson is divided into a number of discrete stages:

●Review of character formation Using a chart (see figure 7.3 below), the teacher drew attention to the names of the 27 diferent kinds of stroke used in composing characters and then to examples of words which contain these different strokes. 

Figure 7.3: Chinese character formation (source:Zheng, 1995: 5)

●After briefly reviewing this material by asking students questions on what they remembered, the teacher turned to lesson 24 of Chinese Book 2. This is the textbook which is used with seven to eight year old children in China; many of the children in this class were thus several years behind the standard which would have been expected to have read if had they remained in China. The following is the text which they learned in class. 

A Small Goat

On the way home after school, Bater heard the crying of a goat. He looked for this voice and found a small goat in a trench.  'Who has lost this goat?' Bater took it and enquired everywhere. People said it was not theirs. It's getting dark. Bater has to take the goat to his home. The next day, as soon as Bater got up, he went to see the goat and give him milk. When Bater finished school that day, his Mum told him that the goat belonged the community farm. Bater didn't eat, he took the goat and ran to the farm.  The little goat returned to his Mum's side. 

●Reading aloud  Students were asked to read one by one the short paragraph which formed the focus for the lesson. The teacher prompted the students when they met new words or words they did not recognise. Then the students read the text together. Although the practice of asking individual children to read aloud in front of the class is no longer common in British classrooms, it is interesting to note that the group reading found in Chinese teaching has gained greatly in popularity in the UK in recent years(c.f. Edwards &  Goodwin, 1996: National Literacy Strategy, 1998). 

●Explaining the text The teacher dealt first with cultural elements which she anticipated might cause difficulties. She drew attention to Ba Te and asked if this was a popular name. She then pointed out that this is in fact an ethnic, not a Han, name, common among the Meng. When focusing on other words in the text, she first elicited if students knew what they meant, before offering an explanation herself and asking them to make sentences using the new element. Then she asked students the equivalent word in EngIish. Finally, students were given the opportunity to ask any questions they might have about the text. 

 ●Comprehension exercise  After this preliminary explanation, students were asked to answer comprehension questions on the text. For instance:

When and where did BaTe (the character's name) find the lamb? Why did BaTe take it home?

How did the lamb find his mother?

●Comparing characters  The children then moved to the next exercise. Together with the teacher, they pointed out the similarities and differences between pairs of characters, which are visually similar. For example, the left side of  放 fang (put) and 牧 mu (herd)  are different while the right side is the same. After initial discussion, the children used each character to compose a phrase which shows the meaning of the word, e.g. 放 下 来 fang xia lai (put something down). The teacher checked what children have written and asked them to correct any mistakes. 

●Extending knowledge  The teacher took the opportunity to draw children's attention to characters which were similar to the word which they were attempting. For example, when one of the students was writing 乌 wu (black), the teacher pointed out that 乌 wu has one dot less than鸟niao(bird) in the top segment of the character. The student immediately understood and remembered the word. 

●Dictation The teacher first asked the students to read for themselves the sentences which she was going to dictate. When the dictation was in progress, they were instructed to leave blank any words they did not know and to concentrate on familiar words. At the end of this exercise, students were asked to exchange their exercise books and to correct their partner's dictation. The teacher observed their corrections and praised those who had done well. 

●Handwriting practice The students were asked to pay attention to the structure of new characters and to reproduce them in the squares of their textbooks. For example, 高 gao has an upper and a lower part; 丢diu (lose) is written as a single structure. 

Teacher control strategies

As was pointed out in chapter six, far greater use would appear to be made of direct instructions in Chinese lessons than in British schools.  For example, the teacher directed: 'Qiqi, you begin to read the text.'  'Now we read the text together'  'What does it mean?' This use of language is highly comparable, for instance, to the patterns described by Heath(1983) in African American households and by Callender(1997) for African and African Caribbean teachers in British primary schools. Direct strategies of this kind also apply to the reprimanding of children.  For instance, when students arrived late causing a disturbance, the teacher told them directly,  'You are late, you shouldn't speak with others now' . 

However, the teacher also used praise strategies. For example, when students understood but were unable to explain a word clearly, their efforts were met with an affirmatory,  'Yes' . Similarly, when students finished their corrections, the teacher encouraged them with,  'All of you have done well' . 

Predictably, there are many points of similarity between the Chinese lessons in the British community setting and lessons in China. In both cases, children read aloud together and individually; individual children answer comprehension questions and do grammar exercises related to the text. However, there are also differences in how lessons are conducted as teachers accommodate to the very different experiences which the children bring with them from mainstream British schools.  Children in community schools appear to be more participative than in China. Cortazzi and Jin(1996: 176-177), for instance, in a description of a Chinese kindergarten comment that only a few children 'were involved in answering the teacher's questions. No one asked the teacher questions' . The apparent passiveness of Chinese students is not limited to younger children:it has also been noted in a higher education context (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996). In contrast, students in Chinese community schools are much more active. They readily raise their hands to get permission to answer a question. If one child offers an incorrect answer, others immediately step in to offer alternative answers. This higher level of verbal participation is clearly influenced by Western education which encourages self-confidence in students. 

The distribution of English and Chinese

In the smaller group, Putonghua was being taught as a foreign language to one of the children and English was therefore being used as a lingua franca in teacher instructions to the children. Examples such as 'Please close the door',  'OK, good. Try again',  'Have you finished?',  'Read once for me',  'Read the whole page' and 'Read quietly' were common.  The situation in the bigger group was very different, since all the children were fluent in both Putonghua and English. Although the lesson was conducted almost entirely in Chinese, English was used in two main ways. The first use was on the part of both teacher and students to clarify a teaching point. On a number of occasions, the teacher reminded children of the English equivalent of a Chinese word, or asked them to supply the English word to check that they had understood the meaning.  Sometimes children offered an explanation in English of what the teacher had meant for the benefit of another member of the group who had not understood. The second pattern of English usage was social when used occasionally in child-child interactions to assert their social position within the group. Remarks included: 'Swot!',  'Stop kicking me',  'I'm not touching you',  'Yes you are',  'Who cares?' and 'Why don't you shut up?' 

A handwriting class

The final example of the style and content of teaching in a Chinese community setting is a description of an intensive handwriting course in the Christmas holidays, 1997, organized for a group of five children between the ages of eleven and thirteen. The course lasted for one a half hours over nine days. I observed and tap recorded one of these classes which yielded much interesting data on the notions of understanding, repetition and memorization. 

The classes were delivered by an experienced Chinese teacher who had been responsible for many similar courses in China. The initial impressions of many western observers might well be that she made very heavy use of rote learning. However, it would be misleading to interpret the repetition involved in learning to write characters in this way. 

Biggs(1996) refers to the two principles which inform the learning of characters: the first is the use of the five organs-the eyes for seeing the shape, the ears for hearing the sound, the hand for writing, the mouth for speaking the sound, and the mind for thinking about the meaning; the second entails forming each character into a word, then each word into a sentence. Handwriting lessons are certainly repetitive, but when taught well the repetition is firmly embedded in meaning. 

At the start of the class, children show their work to the teacher. Characters are composed on special paper with squares further divided with horizontal and vertical lines into four equal parts. The teacher points out the characters or strokes which are imperfectly formed and shows them how they should be written. She makes extensive use of visual imagery to draw attention to the weaknesses in the children's writing and to help fix the correct characters in their minds:

Look at these two short sweeps 坐 ［坐(correct)］, they're too close together, they look cross-eyed. You know, somebody who's cross-eyed isn't very attractive. It's the same in writing. If a character isn't symmetrical, it'll look like a cripple with one long leg and one short one. 

This character ［ma: flax］ 麻 (correct), 麻 (incorrect) doesn't look very good. Is this a short sweep or a long sweep? It is a long sweep. This character needs the long sweep for balance. Otherwise, it will fall down just like a person would.  

The teacher frequently compares characters to people to help the students remember what they should look like: 'Always remember that characters are just like people-they have to be well-balanced if they are to look beautiful.' She explained that she likes to tell the children that the character 马 ma (horse) has a big bottom. Although this may not be very elegant, it helps the children to remember. She also refers to right angle [  ] as a shoulder-too high [  ] or too low [   ], doesn't look very good. 

This focus on form, reinforced with visual imagery, is followed by practice. The teacher writes the characters in the first square of each line; the children observe the structure of the character and the position of every stroke before they start writing, then copy the model until they reach the end of the line. Some children produce more writing, others less depending on their level of  interest and skill. However, the whole lesson is spent writing. At the end of the lesson, the teacher rewards progress by stamping a flower or a flag on the children's work. Hudson-Ross & Dong (1990: 121) describe this process in a Chinese context: children receive a brush calligraphy class once per week to practise strokes, the arrangements of the strokes,  'a high degree of accuracy of the minor parts of a character, and an accurate sense of space' . 

The teacher commented on a number of issues which are pertinent for any discussion of memorization. She pointed out, for instance, that eleven or twelve years of age is the optimum time for intervention of this kind because they can observe, analyze and understand what you are trying to show. Younger children lack these skills (c.f. Hudson-Ross & Dong, 1990). For this teacher, then, understanding was an essential element in improving handwriting: repetition is important, but the repetition needs to be based on understanding if the learning is to be effective. 

While the teacher was working with the other students, I took the opportunity of quizzing the boy who sat next to me:

A:       Do you like to write characters?

Xuge: It's OK

A:       How many characters are you writing every day?

Xuge: It varies. I usually do two or three pages. ［Each page has 13rows and each row has 9 squares: it is thus possible to write 117 characters on each page］. But yesterday I only wrote half a page because I finished everything that had been set. 

A:      When you write a character what do you do? Do you look carefully at the position and the structure, then check this against the example?

Xuge: Yes, if I see that what I've written isn't like the example, I rub it out and start again.  

The learning process observed in this classroom and confirmed by student and teacher comments can thus be summarised in the following terms: first understand through observation; then memorize through practice. Memorization and understanding are inextricably linked. As Hess and Azuma(1991) point out, the learning of the thousands of characters in common usage is indeed repetitive: first children learn the shape, then the meaning. However, it is important to remember that while this approach may be characterised as rote learning, it is not surface learning (C.f. Marton & saljo, 1976). 

Conclusion

Chinese language teaching shares many of the challenges faced by other community languages in the UK, both in the sources of funding for classes and in areas such as resources, pedagogy and teacher development. The problems are particularly acute, however, for relatively new minority communities. The fact that most members of the Mainland Chinese community are temporary migrants likely to return to the home country in three to four years places additional pressures on community language teaching. Children will need to reintegrate into a highly competitive education system on their return; they therefore need to develop or maintain their literacy skills in Chinese to the highest possible levels. 

As China develops more open relations with other countries, the number of overseas Chinese will inevitably increase. The question of children's education, and especially the need to maintain a high level of proficiency in Chinese, thus represents a major problem for parents, community teachers and education researchers. 

At present, most Chinese schools teach Cantonese; Putonghua provision is relatively in small scale. Since the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic, however, demand for Putonghua classes has been increasing. This trend has been reflected in the Reading Chinese School, for example, by the provision of two new classes in Putonghua since 1995.

The content and organization of Chinese community classes differs in important respects both from mainstream British education and from schooling in China. The sample lesson described in this chapter shows the importance of the interrogation of the text, the sample lesson and the handwriting class underline the importance of close attention to detail and memorization. Children in Chinese community schools, are however, considerably more participative than their counterparts in China. They also need to be motivated to learn, whereas, in China, their commitment to learning is taken for granted．

Given that the children who attend classes experience education in both mainstream and community settings, it is very important that teachers in each situation have to develop as clear an understanding as possible of the other. Teachers in Chinese schools need to understand the organization and philosophy of mainstream British schools and vice versa.