Chinese Day at Corpus Christi Primary School

On 10 June 2010, Confucius Language Academy successfully ran a ‘Chinese Day’ as a part of the ‘International Week’ at Corpus Christi Catholic Primary School, Leeds.

The Chinese day gave students an insight into Chinese culture as well as language. A series of activities were designed to purposely raise the attention levels of the children as well as aid their learning of the language. Activities ranged from learning some basic Kong Fu and practising using chopsticks to learning how to pronounce Chinese words and how to write the characters. The day was enjoyed by both the children and the teachers as the desire and willingness to learn about a different culture and language shone through.

Below are a few pictures to illustrate how the day went!

Students raise questions about China after the introduction.	Learning some basic Kong Fu.
Question time – A blossom is passed around while the drum is played. Once the drum stops, the person holding the blossom must answer the question.	Students learn how to use chopsticks by playing a game in which they must use their chopsticks to pick up beads.
Introducing Chinese art and culture.	Learning how to write Chinese characters.

Confucius Language Academy (CLA) is here to facilitate the learning of the Chinese language and promote the understanding of the people who live on the amazing land of China. If you would be interested in learning more about China and the language of over 1.4 billion people, please feel free to contact our friendly staff.

Bite-size Intensive Mandarin Chinese for you!

CLA now offers ‘Bite-size intensive Mandarin Chinese Course’ for business people and tourists right before they go to China. The time and duration of the course can be flexible depending on the needs of the individual participants. This course will equipped business people and tourists with the skills and confidence to communicate with local Chinese people on basic social topics .

While the process of language learning is usually time-consuming, the aim of this Bite-size intensive Course is to deliver the most practical skills in a short period of time, which is not only effective but efficient. Interest in this course is being fuelled by China’s emergence as a new market, a popular tourist destination, and the host of World Expo 2010.

For more details, please contact us on 0113 241 6883 or info@confucius-academy.com

CLA has just started a new evening Mandarin Chinese Beginners class on every Wednesday evening (17:30 - 19:30 pm) for those who can only afford the time in the evening (at Unit 20, Unity Business Centre, 26 Roundhay Road, Leeds). There are still some places left, suitable applicants are most welcome to join in.

Contact us on 0113 2416883 / info@confucius-academy.com for more details.

Confucius, the great educator, politician, thinker, founder of Ru School of thought, and one of the most famous men of letter in the world was born on 28th of September 551 BC.

September 2009 CLA

CLA runs a new Mandarin Chinese class for kids on every Sunday at 26 Roundhay Road, Leeds. The kids are keenly interested and learn Mandarin Chinese enthusiastically and fast. The teacher is very pleased with their progress (See pics below):

September 2009 CLA

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CLA's first intensive English Course has completed successfully, both the teachers and the students are satisfied with the excellent results (See pics below):

August 2009 CLA

Yorkshire Evening Post featured Tony Xu, CLA's principal, click here to read the feature article!

July 2009 CLA

CLA's new site at Units 19-20, Unitiy Business Centre, 26 Roundhay Road, Leeds (opposite Thomas Danby College) runs a range of English courses in addition to Mandarin Chinese courses. Click on the button of "Courses" above to learn more.

CLA's new site is up and running!

Confucius Language Academy (CLA) has got a new site up and running. The new site located at Unit 19-20, Unity Business Centre, Leeds, 26 Roundhay Road, LS7 1AB is now fully operational and taking bookings for all its Mandarin Chinese and English courses.

CLA runs the courses at this new site 7 days a week to meet the increasing demand:

• Weekday mornings from 9:30 to 12:30;
• Weekday afternoons: from 1:30 to 4:30;
• Weekday evenings: from 6:30 to 8:30


• Saturday & Sunday mornings: from 10:00 to 11:50;
• Saturday & Sunday afternoons: from 2:30 to 4:30

For course details, please click "Courses" on the menu bar above. When you are ready to book, just clickhere, or contact us free on 0800 9177587 / 0113 2416883, our friendly staff will be more than happy to place you in a most suitable course and classes for you. Our team of well qualified and suitably experienced professional Mandarin Chinese teachers guarantees your success and satisfaction with our courses.

July 2009 CLA

Chinese Is NOT a Difficult Language to Learn! (By Tony Xu)

With China playing an increasingly important global role, economically in particular, more and more people realize that Mandarin Chinese is becoming a major pursuit in language acquisitions. Today teaching and learning Chinese is part of the world-class education all over the Western world: school pupils are preparing themselves as global citizens equipped with the skills of Mandarin Chinese; university students would like to improve their job prospects both at home and abroad by acquiring Chinese language capability; business people want to join the ranks of business elite with the ability to speak Mandarin Chinese; members of the general public would like to know more about China and Chinese culture through learning Chinese or to be equipped with Chinese language skills for a better tomorrow in today's challenging economic situation. Of course, there are many other contributing factors to the heating up of Chinese language learning.
Having said the above, there are also some misconceptions that are hindering some Westerners from venturing into it. One of them is the misconception that Mandarin Chinese is too difficult a language for Westerners to learn. To correct or clear it up, let’s compare English with Chinese in all the four components of the languages: speaking, listening, reading and writing:

1. Speaking is easier in Chinese than in English. Chinese characters are all monosyllabic with no consonant endings while English adopts multi-syllabic word-forming system with consonant endings; apart from a few consonants (initials) unique to Chinese, the majority of the Chinese speech sounds are the same as its English counterparts;
2. As with speaking, listening is not difficult in Chinese, either. Admittedly, Chinese has got four basic tones signifying the meaning of the pronounced character while in English there are only 3 tones – flat, rising and falling. Since there is only one more tone in Chinese than in English, can just one more tone put you off? Certainly NOT! It is only a matter of practice to get used to the tones,
3. Reading Chinese is easier than reading English, too. Chinese characters are ideogram-based, just by looking at its symbolic components, you will be most likely able to guess the meanings of the characters in the context. For example, anything to do with water or liquid, such as river, lake, sea, ocean, juice, wine, etc., the characters will invariably start with a component of three dots aligned vertically;
4. As with reading, writing is also easy with Chinese. English uses alphabet to form words while Chinese uses components to form characters. As you can see, there is only difference, but no difficulty to speak of once one learns and remembers the components. The added value to writing in Chinese is the great fun in it as the written characters can be a piece of art – Chinese calligraphy!

And Chinese grammar is simpler than many other languages including English. Naturally, there are some peculiarities with Chinese as with any other languages, but they are no barriers for Westerners to learn Chinese language well. I can cite numerous Westerners who can speak perfect Chinese: a Canadian guy well known to the Chinese people as “Da Shan” can even perform “Cross Talks” in Chinese on numerous Chinese festival occasions; the Chinese variety shows by two British girls on the eve of the Chinese Spring Festival absolutely thrilled and amazed me that Westerners could outperform many native speakers of Chinese on the shows, their proficiency level of Chinese put me to shame! I have to confess that they are part of the inspiration that pushed me into my action of setting up a Chinese language academy in Leeds – Confucius Language Academy, to facilitate and support the learning of Chinese by speakers of other languages. It is my life-long ambition and mission to inspire and nurture those interested in the Chinese language and culture into good speakers of Chinese.

July 2009 CLA