World Language Week: Chinese students demonstrate learning through creative performances

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Gabrielle Wheeler '23

For this year’s World Language Week, Sacred Heart Greenwich students in French, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic classes shared their work in the foreign languages that they study.

For this year’s World Language Week, Sacred Heart Greenwich students from Chinese, Spanish, French, and Arabic classes shared work from their foreign language classes.  Upper School students studying the Chinese language have a plethora of opportunities to explore Chinese culture and reinforce their knowledge through projects.  During an academic unit on the Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon Festival), students in the Chinese III Honors class crafted scripts in Chinese.  Sophomores Claire Maher, Jackie Monahan, and Kaitlin Robinson wrote and performed a skit with five characters that told the history of the festival.

Chinese III Honors

Jackie enjoyed collaborating with her classmates to produce their short film and appreciated the chance to creatively demonstrate her knowledge and growth in Chinese fluency.

“This project and other similar projects helps me to learn Chinese because in order to create a script that makes sense my group and I must apply our knowledge about many different topics we have learned about and pull them all together,” Jackie said.  “My academic experience at Sacred Heart involves the expansion of my knowledge and skills, so through illustrating my growth in Chinese because of the complex sentences, this project reflects my academic experience at Sacred Heart.”

Claire found the project to be enjoyable because of the freedom to create any type of video.  Her group chose to write and perform their own scripts.

I also enjoyed this project because it was a unique way to both learn about this important festival as well as to teach about it,” Claire said.  “This project and others like it help me learn Chinese because I am learning to apply sentence structures and vocabulary in a cohesive and culminating way.  For instance, previous to this project, we were working on specific sentence structures in class which we then applied to our script and used in a conversational manner.  These projects help me learn to utilize all of the knowledge I have about Chinese in conversation and presentations.”  

Also, take this quiz to test your knowledge of the Chinese-speaking world.  Share with friends and family to see who knows the most.

The King Street Chronicle thanks the Chinese III Honors class and Mrs. Xian Zheng, Upper School Chinese Teacher, for their contributions.

Featured Image by Gabrielle Wheeler ’23