On Friday 24 March 2023, 60 schoolchildren from Valley Gardens Middle School and Gosforth Central visited Newcastle University’s ilab to learn Chinese using the ENACT app, helped by two Chinese students. The children learnt Chinese words and tried calligraphy (painting Chinese characters) helped by the ENACT app. They also got to use the digital kitchen at ilab, to prepare and eat a Chinese snack, Beijing Ice Candy.
This activity had a number of benefits:
- it introduced some Chinese language culture to school pupils
- it demonstrated and enabled them to use an app which can be accessed anytime to learn more about other languages and cultures and to take part in cultural and making activities
- it brought them onto the university campus and made them feel welcome, which is an important introduction and may influence how they think about progressing to higher education in future
Further links and information
ENACT: Learn Language through Culture has demonstrations of cultural activities with their associated languages which you can follow and use at home or in a group or classroom setting. Visit the ENACT website here and follow us on social media: twitter @enacteuropa, instagram @enacteuropa and facebook/enacteuropa
Linguacuisine has demonstrations of cookery and cultures from across the world in different languages
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the team from Newcastle University for arranging the opportunity: Professor Paul Seedhouse, Professor of Educational and Applied Linguistics and Director, ilab:learn and Dr Alison Whelan, Research Associate at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences and the Chinese students who supported the schools in undertaking the activities.