Resources
Whether you are a specialist teacher or just starting to introduce Chinese to your pupils, the tutors at Cardiff Confucius Institute have prepared a range of online resources to help you.
Cardiff Confucius Institute resources
These online activities can be undertaken in a classroom, virtual classroom, at home with family or as independent learning.
Chinese New Year
These include activities such as lantern-making and paper-cutting, learning about local customs and the Chinese zodiac, and story-telling.
Chinese New Year 2021 and 2022
Health and Wellbeing
Health and Wellbeing including eye exercises, a song and dance routine, the Yin and Yang of Chinese food and Tai Chi. These resources were initially presented at the Wales China Schools Forum in March 2021.
The Dragon Boat Festival
Find out about the origin and traditions of this festival, make your own dragon boat to race, and learn how to prepare zongzi; traditional rice dumplings.
The Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节; Zhōngqiū Jié) is a traditional event observed in East and Southeast Asia. Cardiff Confucius Institute’s tutors have prepared some online resources for teachers to use in class, or for children to enjoy at home.
Please note that many of the videos link to YouTube, so please contact us at confucius@cardiff.ac.uk if you would like them in another format.
Other resources
Institute of Education (IOE) Confucius Institute for Schools
This is the national centre for advice on and support for the teaching and learning of Chinese and about China in secondary and primary schools in England.
Their website contains useful teaching materials and schemes of work for primary schools.
British Council
The British Council offers a wide range of resources to give your class a glimpse into other cultures and provide a base to develop international partnerships.
YCT and HSK qualifications
These websites provide schools wanting to find out more about the Youth Chinese Test (YCT) and Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) with an overview of the tests and their requirements.
Help with Chinese characters
These handy resources provide a list of the most common Chinese characters ordered by frequency, characters sorted by level first used in the new HSK and character strokes/order with the websites Hhanzi5 and Chinese-tools.
Websites
- Chineasy (Visual methods to help with reading Chinese)
Linguascope - Yellow bridge (Dictionaries, Tools, and Resources for Learning Chinese)
- Written Chinese (online dictionary/grammer/podcast)
- BBC Chinese
- Study more Chinese
- Pronunciation help
- Chinese Foreign Language Worksheets and Printables
Apps
There are a wide range of apps available to help you and your pupils get to grips with learning Mandarin. Here are some recommended ones:
- You can find Chinese Flashcards on Quizlet.
- Learn to write Chinese characters with Skritter.
- Learn Chinese through videoswith FluentU.
- Learn Chinese through podcasts with ChinesePod.
- Learn Chinese by reading the news with The Chairman’s Bao.
- Learn Chinese via flashcards with Memrise.
- The best offline Chinese-English dictionary Pleco.
- Learning Chinese through stories with Zizzle.
Find out more about what we do and how you can get involved.
