English in Chinese higher education: past difficulties, current initiatives and future challenges

Abstract

English is the most common foreign language in the Chinese curriculum. However, even though a great deal of class time is devoted to acquiring English, the results have not been universally good. Studies to address the issue have suggested various reasons for this: large classes and the subsequent difficulty of implementing interactive teaching; traditional examinations, which favour grammar/translation pedagogy; the difficulty of recruiting fluent teachers, which makes communicative methodology hard to implement; low motivation in parts of the population where the chance of interacting with native speakers is highly unlikely. In addition, there may be other – new – reasons developing which put a brake on the spread of good foreign language skills among the Chinese population. The general problems reported in the foreign language classroom could be compounded by the growing influence of China in the world. The experience of groups whose economic and political weight were/are significant has shown that when others learn your language and it becomes a lingua franca of power, instrumental motivation for foreign language acquisition diminishes within the population. Can we expect to see the Chinese developing the same attitudes to foreign language learning, as Anglophones, for example, if/as Chinese spreads as a lingua franca?

Teacher as Nomad, Teacher as Emissary: Peripatetically Negotiating Temporality, Locality, and Culture Across Transnational Knowledge Spheres

“…Whereas India, Nigeria, the West Indies, and many of the native peoples of the Americas had English thrust upon them at gunpoint, China adopted English without (very much) violent coercion. China English is also a relatively late invention, having its origins in 1982, when Deng Xiaoping instituted economic and government reforms to engage mainland China in global markets and declared English to be the foreign language taught in Chinese secondary schools (Wright & Zheng, 2017). And the exceptional circumstances under which China English came into being have done much to shape it.…”

Motivation of Chinese Medical Students in Learning English as a Second Language: A Quantitative Study

“…The low rankings of motivations related to listening and speaking skills suggest that students may not perceive English as a means of facilitating interpersonal communication or cross-cultural communication. This can be attributed to the predominant focus on grammar, vocabulary, and translation in Chinese classrooms, where English is often treated as knowledge rather than a skill (Wright & Zheng, 2016). As a result, the development of communicative abilities, including listening and speaking, may receive inadequate attention and, therefore, impact students' integrative motivation and their ability to engage in real-world English scenarios.…”

Students as partners in China: Investigating the potentials and possibilities for growing practices across universities

“…However, the gaps of perceived involvement between teachers and students indicate potential challenges with widening student involvement. One potential reason is large class sizes reducing quality interactions between teachers and students in Chinese universities (Wright & Zheng, 2016;Zhao & Wang, 2018). There are questions of how academics can engage in classroom-based practices, as Bovill (2020) has explored in Western contexts.…”