Winter Language & Music Camp in China

International Musical Winter Course at Badaling Manor (Great Wall of China)
from December 23 2007 to January 05 2008. Music is your passport, languages are your visas.

After 10 years of Summer Courses in the UK, Language and Music for Life (LMFL) have chosen to hold our first Winter Music and Languages Course in China at Badaling Manor on the great China Wall, a very inspiring place with spectacular views, near Beijing. This course is meant for accompanied minors and adults. As it is held during the Christmas period we will welcome all families coming along with children.

As a rule all minors have to be accompanied. We take only unaccompanied minors who are known to us. It is not meant for highflier skiers but it is a healthy, happy but different musical vacation course. On 25th December we will celebrate Christmas with a Ceremony of Carols.  We will also have several Beijing Youth Orchestras joining us from time to time.


Course Provider: Language and Music for Life was founded in spring 1997 and is committed to providing training in both music and foreign languages to students of all ages. Our music and language project functions in a context, which is rich in individual ability, motivation, language, culture and generations. Our linguistic premise: a language is learned not just for its own sake but also for a purpose.

Location: Badaling is a centrally heated 4 star hotel resort that is also a ski resort, and offers all modern amenities, single or shared rooms/ indoor swimming pool, billiard rooms, table tennis room, tennis courts. This resort was completed in 2006, in Yanqing County, 70 kilometres north of downtown Beijing. Covering an area of 150 hectares, Badaling Ski Resort offers a wide range of activities including skiing, water-skiing, a lake for ice skating, sledging and gliding.

Meals are buffet style with an array of excellent traditional Chinese and international fayre, English breakfast, vegetarian options etc. The bedrooms are of international standards single or shared with ensuite bathrooms.

Courses: Classical Music, Classical Music, Composition, Conducting, Voice tuition, Jazz music, violin, piano, cello, saxophone, flute, oboe, recorder, lute, brass, Orchestra Choir and Chamber Music, English, Chinese Mandarin and French language tuition in small groups or private one to one classes.

It is the students' choice whether the same time is allocated to both the music learning and language learning parts of the program. The parents that accompany the children can have up to 50 hours of English or Mandarin lessons.

Levels: Music for keen amateurs - participants are required to have a minimum of Grade 7 in one instrument, while the second or third instrument can be of a lower grade.

Music for future professionals: we prepare young instrumentalists for entrance auditions for the Higher Music Schools (Royal College of Music, Royal Academy, Guildhall, where an acceptable level of spoken English is a must, or Conservatoires Supérieurs de Musique where the same goes for French).

We provide this sort of coaching during the course. Specialist teachers, all of whom are native speakers, conduct classes. We offer quality tuition in intensive English by native speaking specialist teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). For English-speaking students we offer opportunities to learn or improve French (FFL) as well as Mandarin (MFL) as Foreign Languages.

The language classes can be taken in small groups or one to one, according to the student's precise needs. Group classes consist of 4 to 6 students.

The basic course, consisting of one, two, three or five one hour sessions a day, aims to help develop competency in oral communication, to develop a more in-depth knowledge of grammar, and to enrich the student’s vocabulary by using appropriate teaching material suited to individual needs.

The music tutors are all experienced teachers and internationally known performers. During the course they expect their students to work between each tutorial. There are masterclasses for professional students.

The Jazz Programme: The jazz programme allows students to develop techniques of jazz improvisation and to apply these skills within the context and disciplines of small jazz groups. All students are given tuition in their own instruments and the opportunity to play a variety of styles of music in small groups directed by the tutors.

At the end of the course, students and teachers will give several public concerts.