2016年1月14日，两位教师应邀前往Nottingham Emmanuel School为该校近35位师生举办了一次中国文化工作坊。在近两个小时的活动中，学生们感受到了用汉语对话的新奇以及汉字和书法的魅力。

    在孩子们的欢声笑语中，汉语语言体验课开始了，学生们专心地听老师讲课，没有汉语基础的他们却能够轻易从世界文字中找到汉字，更让人称奇的是有的学生甚至会发出不太标准的“你好”。汉语老师从基础语音、汉字及简单交际对话等方面为学生带来了一堂汉语言体验课。课上学生求知若渴，积极参加课堂练习，迅速掌握了“你叫什么名字”等简单对话。

    似乎学生们并不满足于“说汉语”，他们对“写汉字”也充满了极大的期待，接下来的书法体验课上，学生们首先对文房四宝——笔墨纸砚大为感兴趣，也迫切地开始学习使用毛笔写汉字，当学生们自己写出一个完整的汉字时，他们的欣喜激动之情溢于言表，老师们也饶有兴趣地拿起毛笔和学生们一起练习书法。经过近一个小时的学习，不少学生可以写出较为工整的方块字，一笔一划都像模像样。

图一：工作坊课堂气氛活跃

    经过这次工作坊，学生们不仅喜欢上了书法，还对汉语和中国文化表现出极大的兴趣。师生们对诺丁汉孔子学院表达了诚挚的谢意，同时希望日后有机会展示更多的中华文化，让学生们更好地认识中国，了解中国文化。

NCI gives Mandarin taster lesson and culture workshop at Nottingham Emmanuel School

On 14^th January 2016, two teachers from Nottingham Confucius Institute are invited to Nottingham Emmanuel School to give a Mandarin taster lesson and calligraphy writing workshop to a group of 35 students. They experienced a lot during this shortly two hours’ activities.

The Mandarin lesson starts with recognizing Chinese characters for Hello and Thank You. And gradually moves to a short dialogue of knowing each other, such as to ask for each other’s names and nationalities. The students seem really interested in the new language and actively practise with the teachers.

Later on, the four treasures of Chinese calligraphy writing which are writing brush, ink stone, ink stick and rice paper are vividly displayed to the students. They show great interest in making ink out of the ink sticks. After practising all the basic strokes of brush writing, they are very eager to learn how to write a Chinese character. They have learnt to write number one to ten and some other characters like hello, fortune and forever.

（Aiyu Wu）