Mark and Barbara Knowles celebrate Mark's gold medal success at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.With her son competing in the Beijing Olympics in just over a month, Rockhampton real estate agent Barbara Knowles thought it timely to familiarise herself with the Chinese language.

She enrolled herself in the CQUniversity course Getting Started in Chinese Language, offered through the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Education.

Barbara will be spending a month in China attending the Olympic Games and touring the country.

Barbara has done a lot of overseas travel, especially since her son Mark reached the highest level of international hockey. Mark Knowles is a member of the Australian men's hockey team (the Kookaburras) who won gold in Athens in 2004 and now hopes to regain their standing at Beijing.

Mark initially thought it wasn't necessary for his mother to go to the trouble of learning Mandarin as English is often spoken in the Chinese tourism industry, but Barbara was convinced on making the effort.

"Although English is spoken quite widely throughout the world now, I still think it is a polite and respectful way of letting people know that you have a genuine interest in their country and culture by making a token effort to communicate with them."

"I feel that I now have a basic knowledge of their sounds and pronunciations, and enough sentence structure to get by while in the country."

The CQUniversity course is a 12-week conversational language course where students learn through phonics and computer-integrated learning.

Anyone interested in taking the course can contact Judith Wright on 4930 9379.