From January 2015, Keats will start issuing their own publication—Keats’ Reference which is a good resource of Chinese learning and Chinese teaching, and have already published seven issues at this time. Although this publication is relatively new, it has ready had positive reviews from students and teachers.
Keats’ Reference is made by the school’s teachers and the three teachers involved in researching teaching – Margie, Joy and Jayden. Some articles include listening practice, some include reading practice, all of them are those that the teachers thought were among the best they had prepared for their students during that time.
For student and teacher convenience, each section includes vocabulary and two essays, with some of the vocabulary having pinyin and English, while some of the short essays, besides having characters, also have pinyin, for those students who can’t read characters. These articles are published from easiest to hardest, so that anyone can easily find the level that fits them.
Keats’s Reference is a great selection on top of the materials that schools already have. Many teachers use the essays in it to supplement the listening or reading their students already do, and their students think it is a very effective way to teach. Some teachers who teach short term courses will directly use the existing topic’s short essays as their main content of their course, which has also been a very effective method. Teachers have found that these materials have all been very helpful, and have reduced the time and pressure they are under to prepare for their classes.
At our own school’s library and cafeteria, we have placed this reference, and hope it will be useful to our students when they learn Chinese, of which more and more have started to use. One of our students, who was only here for a week, bought a complete set before she went home, in order to keep learning and practicing after she got home. As more students become aware of Keats’s Reference, they have started to ask if they can get all of them before they leave.
Keats will continue to publish worthy articles, be put together, and publish Keats’s Reference, and we hope it will greatly help everyone study Chinese.