Pictured above: Linda Walker

Nottingham Language Academy is expanding its courses just months after opening by launching tuition in Mandarin.

The language school based at The Ropewalk in the city is now offering lessons at intermediate level in Mandarin, which has more native speakers than any other language in the world.

The morning class is being taught by an expert native speaker and has been launched in response to demand from students.

It brings the number of modern foreign languages taught at Nottingham Language Academy to seven.

"Learning Mandarin is becoming more popular as a result of China's re-emergence on the world stage, but courses are not widely available, so I am delighted that we can now offer a course in Mandarin at Nottingham Language Academy," said Linda Walker, who is a Business Language Champion in the East Midlands and who launched the language school in September.

The school, which offers tuition to individuals and businesses, also teaches English as a foreign language, alongside the modern languages of French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and Greek.

Classes are run during the day, evenings and at weekends, and are designed for people who want to improve their job prospects, travel and see the world, live and work abroad, gain a place at university or learn something new for the fun of it.

The modern foreign languages courses are linked to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) which now forms the basis of language teaching and learning in most EU countries.

"It's estimated that more than 800 million people in the world speak Mandarin, and it's spoken by more people than any other language in the world," said Linda. "As it's spoken in mainland China and Taiwan it's understandable that there seems to be a growing demand to learn it now."

Nottingham Language Academy is based at 8 The Ropewalk, Nottingham.