Break through the screen, open a new world

As a master's student in industrial design at KTH, I am used to taking language teaching apart with a designer's eye.

I focus on online teaching for children abroad who do not have Chinese as a first language, and I know well that the greatest challenge online is holding a child's attention. Using my design background, I work to break through the barrier of the screen and turn the Chinese classroom into a visual, game-like space for interaction.

Let Chinese live in the real world. I refuse dry rote learning and prefer to work with everyday life as a mirror. I send children round the room with an iPad to find colours, to the window to see what the weather is doing, tying abstract characters directly to the real objects around them. In my lessons, every corner of the home is teaching material.

Story carries the lesson. Drawing on my experience in creative work, I like to string a lesson together with the logic of a picture book and the shape of role-play. Every new word is the key to the next level, every utterance a spell that pushes the story along. I want children to forget they are "in class" and feel instead that they are on an interesting online expedition with me.

The screen should not be a cold barrier but a window onto a new world. Enjoyment is the most advanced form of learning — let us play our way through Chinese in stories.