It was a shame about the rain and the wind, but this did not deter Tytherington's Year 8 Mandarin group from singing a number of Chinese songs beautifully for their windswept audience in Macclesfield's Marketplace on Saturday January 29th as part of the Chinese New Year celebrations. The students sang 5 songs, one of which is a song sung at Chinese New Year in China called 'Gongxi, Gongxi' and which translate as 'Greetings, Greetings'.
Tytherington now has over 100 students in Years 7 - 10 learning Mandarin as part of the Mandarin Excellence programme, a nationwide intensive language programme funded by the Department for Education. This programme aims to get students to be well on track to fluency in five years' time. Our students are thoroughly enjoying the experience of learning a language and culture so different from our own. Ben Thomas, our Year 8 Mandarin Class President says: 'I really enjoy learning Mandarin because of the unique opportunity it provides to learn this totally new language. Some aspects of learning a language like Mandarin are challenging, my parents can't help me with my homework and the volume of work is quite hard to juggle, but that has taught me to be very organized when it comes to completing my homework.' And Erin Vincent, in Year 8, says: "Mandarin is a challenge but, at the same time, it is so much fun and an interesting language to learn. I really enjoy the fact that it is very different from other languages, and it has allowed me to experience a different work ethic that I will hopefully benefit from in the future."
Tytherington students are making excellent progress in Mandarin as shown by their results in the most recent Hurdle Tests where their results where significantly higher than the national average. (Hurdle Tests are the name given to the exams taken by all students across the country who are on the Mandarin Excellence Programme. They involve tests in all four skills: listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing.) This Year 8 group, for example, achieved an average of 95% compared to the national average of 84%. Likewise, our current Year 9 and 10 groups achieved average scores of 78% and 85% respectively, compared to the national averages of 67% and 65%. Well done to the students and Ms Kang, our Mandarin teacher, on all their hard work.