Chinese gains in importance in UK汉语有望代替欧洲语言成为英国最热门外语

　　ALL the UK’s 250 specialist language schools have been told by a government adviser that they should put Mandarin on the curriculum as “the language of tomorrow”, The Independent has reported. Cyril Taylor, chairman of the UK Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, said Chinese should be seen as the key language for future generations to learn -replacing European languages. The trust, which represents 90 percent of England’s 2,950 state secondary schools, has reached an agreement with the Chinese government, which will send 200 teachers a year over to the UK to teach Mandarin in schools. Pupil exchanges are also being arranged.

　　“It (Mandarin) is a strategic world language. The difficulty in the past has been getting Chinese teachers. However, exchanges between our schools and Chinese schools will help to change that,” Taylor said. Around 4,000 pupils in the UK are studying GCSE(General Certificate Secondary Education) Chinese. However, most of them are of Chinese origin. “The state of modern language teaching in this country means we need to do a lot more to promote it,” Taylor added.