YCIS takes pride in the fact that it is an international school with a bilingual focus. Being a student at YCIS benefits my studies in Chinese in many different ways. For one, I am immersed in Chinese culture since I am living in Shanghai, and a lot of the students at YCIS speak fluent Chinese. Course programmes are set up as CAL (Chinese as an Additional Language) and CFL (Chinese as a First Language). In my CAL class, our teachers give us frequent dictations as well as daily writing. While this is a challenge, it actually keeps all the characters that we are learning in our heads!

At the start of the last school year, all Secondary students were given iPads to help us learn in class. This has been a big help because we have all of our books and work available on the device. In Chinese, we are able to easily access our textbooks to read during lessons, and our teachers are able to send us our assignments online through an app.  

The final reason why being at YCIS has benefitted me is that all students here learn Chinese, with daily lessons. Students are able to discuss school work and homework with each other and can help each other out.

I believe that being a student at YCIS has an advantage over other schools when it comes to learning Chinese. I’m immersed in Chinese culture, I learn almost daily, I am assigned regular dictations, and everything is available digitally on my iPad.

By Bryce, Year 8, YCIS Pudong Secondary.