Senior School

Spring into Chinese at Monash University

Article by Sunny Huang – Head of Languages

Overnewton students enrolled in Senior School Chinese for 2027 enjoyed Spring into Chinese, an event organised by Monash University that brought together more than 300 students from 16 schools across Victoria. 

Students had the opportunity to learn from Monash University lecturers and current students, who shared valuable insights into Chinese language and culture, as well as future study opportunities at the university. Students participated in engaging workshops covering a range of topics, including current affairs, Chinese popular media, the Chinese writing system and VCE tips from former students. They also took part in hands-on cultural activities, including Peking Opera, Chinese calligraphy, traditional Chinese dance and conversational Chinese practice.

Today we went, as a collection of cohorts, to Monash University for a ‘Spring into Chinese at Monash’. We had one large presentation followed by three smaller breakout sessions. Today was incredibly helpful for my Chinese learning. I heard a range of tips about entering VCE Chinese. My highlight was practising calligraphy once again, as I enjoy art. - Ethan 

In the calligraphy workshop, I learnt that it is a little more difficult than it looks. It’s important that you need position the brush straight and have some arm control to make your strokes and characters nice and neat to read. At the end of this session, I had learnt to write traditional characters and had the opportunity to bring my customized bookmark with my Chinese name home, it was a really good experience that I would do again. - Tina 

During the Chinese writing system class, we learnt about the history of China and how characters were introduced into the richness of Chinese language. It was great to learn about the origin of the language and the difference between traditional and simplified Chinese characters. - Sasha 

The highlight of my day was the Advanced level conversation practice; I really enjoyed this session as I was able to learn about how Chinese is truly spoken at a high level. I really admired the lecturer I had for this session as he was highly knowledgeable and very helpful with understanding high level conversational Chinese. Him mixing in western philosophy quotes and how extensively four-character idioms was very intriguing and helped with his teachings. 

The main point I took away from his talk was that at this level you are not speaking to imitate a conversation in Chinese but really expressing yourself through the language. Overall, I not only highly appreciate the sessions I attended and the conversations that were had that are highly beneficial to me and my VCE learning journey but also the Chinese teachers that brought this experience to us Chinese learners at Overnewton. - Aaron 

Each fortnight, the College Careers Team publishes a newsletter providing students and parents with the most up-to-date career information, events and opportunities.  

Please access via the following link.