Forgive me if I get straight to the point, but I know time is sparse for teachers and this message is important. There are five key reasons that every child should learn Mandarin Chinese. And they are as follows:

1. China is one of the world’s oldest and richest cultures, with more than 5,000 years of history and the world’s longest continuous writing system. Learning Mandarin Chinese will open the door to a wealth of literature, poetry and art and gives students a unique insight into a fascinating culture.

2. China is also the most populous nation in the world and Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more than one billion people. In many countries, Mandarin Chinese is becoming the most popular foreign language and it is likely to become Asia’s future lingua franca. Speaking Mandarin will create opportunities for work and travel throughout Asia - and beyond.

3. Almost a quarter of internet usage is conducted in Chinese, while China’s economy is the second largest in the world. Proficiency in Mandarin Chinese is hugely beneficial for a career in business or the diplomatic service, and it is now one of the priority languages for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

4. Learning Mandarin Chinese is mentally stimulating and challenging; research has shown that while English speakers only use the left temporal lobe, speakers of Mandarin use both left and right. One advantage of this increased brain activity is that Mandarin speakers are more likely to have perfect pitch. In addition, learning to write characters can help with motor skills and visual recognition.

5. The unique challenges of learning Chinese engage and motivate learners who might not be your “typical linguists”: mathematicians enjoy the logicality of the language; artistic children may enjoy “drawing” characters; musical children can distinguish and recall the tones more easily; children who struggle with dyslexia find relief in not having to learn another set of spelling and phonology rules.

That’s all very well, you might claim, but the school timetable is crowded and integrating a new subject area would take up that time we don’t have.

To counter this line of argument, I offer you a traffic light of options to ensure every child in your school can learn Mandarin.

Red: Offer Mandarin as an extra-curricular activity

The richness of Chinese culture makes learning Mandarin an ideal extra-curricular or enrichment activity. This could be through one-off Chinese taster days, where children are offered a carousel of activities such as Chinese calligraphy, paper cutting, tai chi or Chinese drumming alongside language lessons, or weekly language and culture clubs. In our experience, one-off taster days work best when the activities revolve around a theme - Chinese numbers, for example. Enrichment activities could also be used to help develop cross-curricula links; for example, we run an annual Chinese New Year week for Year 7 students, where a topic related to Chinese language or culture is taught in each subject.

You could consider hosting a British Council Chinese language assistant (see bit.ly/BritCCLA) or contacting your local UCL IOE Confucius Classroom (bit.ly/ConfClass) to ask for the support of a Hanban Teacher.

Amber: Offer Mandarin as an additional language option

At the Anglo European School, where I work, all sixth-form students are required to study a language. We run a beginner’s course over two terms, which develops basic reading and listening skills to enable students to deal with everyday situations in Mandarin. Students learn 150 words and, at the end of the course, they sit the HSK Level 1 examination (bit.ly/HSKL1). The HSK is an internationally recognised qualification used to demonstrate proficiency in the Chinese language. Having a recognised qualification to work towards increases students’ motivation and commitment to learning the language.

Green: Offer Mandarin as an integral part of the curriculum

Where possible, offering regular Mandarin classes as part of the curriculum is by far the most successful way of really enabling students to make progress in the language and engage more fully with the culture; there is plenty of support on offer for schools embarking on Mandarin from the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) (bit.ly/Cifors).

Teaching Mandarin to Year 7 students as part of the DfE’s Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP) has been the highlight of my teaching career so far (bit.ly/ManExc). The programme is open to all secondary schools, and funding is available to support state-funded secondary schools.

Children study Mandarin for eight hours a week (four hours of teacher-taught classroom lessons and four hours of after-school teaching, self-study, enrichment days and intensive language courses in the UK, as well as China). Schools are also supported throughout the programme by the UCL IOE and the British Council.

The intensive learning has really motivated and challenged students: they are much more resilient learners and have much more confidence to experiment with the language.

Whichever option you choose, here are some tips to set you on your way.

Make friends with Chinese characters

It is the characters that make Chinese such a unique and appealing language, and they are frequently the element that students find most captivating.

While only about 4 per cent of characters are derived directly from individual pictograms, students enjoy being creative and finding ways of creating pictures, cartoon strips or body shapes to help remember different characters.

Learning to write characters takes a long time. By varying activities and making it fun, you can keep students engaged; for example, by copying the character onto mini-whiteboards, by writing it on their partner’s back, with rainbow writing (writing each stroke in a different colour), making the characters using pipe cleaners or drawing them in sand.

Review vocabulary frequently and get students speaking

Starter activities are a great way of reviewing language that has been learned in the previous lesson.

Some ideas include: a mini-whiteboard challenge (differentiated translation tasks both into and from the target language); using tail-less sentences (write up the beginnings of sentences and ask pupils to see how many endings they can create, or see who can make the longest sentence); and word searches, gap fills or “odd one out” worksheets.

Lots of these activities work particularly well when you turn them into a competition in teams for your learners.

For example, in verbal tennis, students take turns in pairs to say a relevant word on a given theme, and the winner is the person who can keep going longest without repeating him or herself.

The game is a really popular speaking activity with my classes.

Make the language real

Wherever possible, draw on culture to enrich your lessons and captivate students. If your school has partner schools in China or runs exchange trips, make the most of these opportunities by encouraging students to write to their Chinese pen-friends, send videos of school or home life and arrange Skype lessons. Students will be much more motivated when they see the purpose behind learning Mandarin.

Miriam Williams is lead practitioner: Chinese and manager of the UCL IOE Essex Confucius Classroom at the Anglo European School, Ingatestone. The Anglo European School was one of the first wave of schools to start running the Mandarin Excellence Programme. Schools interested in joining the programme can visit bit.ly/ioemaep