Bilingual Education at Huili School Nantong

English has been widely adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. And Chinese is the world’s most widely used language with over 1.5 billion speakers so the importance of being bilingual in these two languages cannot be overestimated. Children who become fully functionally bilingual often receive input in both languages from an early age. These children can show a distinctive brain organisation  for languages compared to children who acquire a second language later in  life. Early acquisition of a second language helps with learning to read, and it  has been found that Primary School-aged children who have acquired two  languages have a reading performance comparable to their monolingual counterparts. Furthermore, these children’s abilities in both languages keep growing because both typically remain important in their daily lives. 

Wellington College China is committed to being the best bilingual education provider in the world and developing a bilingual education model suitable for Chinese children. At  Huili  School  Nantong, we aim to motivate  our pupils to learn and communicate in Chinese and English with equal fluency.  Furthermore, we expect our pupils to understand both cultures.      

At Huili School Nantong,learning both languages is equally important. The importance of a mother tongue to a child cannot be  overstated. It is this  sense of identity gained from using their mother tongue that enables children to be socially successful and confident. Pupils then build upon this  confidence for their second-language learning. Huili’s enhanced Chinese  curriculum is structured to ensure that children complete the national  syllabus while expanding the depth and breadth of their reading and  writing skills.   

Huili’s English curriculum considers the age of the children and uses appropriate teaching methods, such as 'talk for writing', to help them develop their English  listening, speaking, reading and writing skills  holistically as they build a solid foundation for their future studies.  

Effective bilingual education should focus not only on Chinese and  English, but also on curriculum and teaching models in other subjects.   At Huili, we promote the model of co-planning and co-teaching. Our distinctive Theme subject is a good example of this. One Chinese and  one international teacher  work closely in preparing and delivering  lessons. The two teachers select topics of interest to the children and  integrate the learning objectives into  the  comprehensive learning topics Through pupil-centred, group-based  learning  activities,  children will not only develop their language skills in a balanced way, but also  have a solid foundation of knowledge in subjects like history,  geography and science. They gradually explore their own learning  interests, discover their own strengths and grow into independent,  life-  long learners with the ability to think independently.    

One of the main challenges for teachers in bilingualism is enabling  pupils to achieve their respective teaching objectives in the same  amount of time.  Teachers at Huili explore the Content and Language  Integrated Learning (CLIL) model, which enhances pupils' language  acquisition while teaching the subject content. CLIL lessons  integrate content, communication, culture and cognition. Well-planned CLIL lessons motivate learners with  authentic opportunities to use their  second language. Moreover, because the lesson content is age  appropriate, pupils find it much easier to  absorb and use.