Is English Invading Chinese Culture?

[tonado]

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Nov/78973.htm

 

Is English Invading Chinese Culture?

 

It is reported that China will spend three years to set up an English grading system in middle schools. At present, new English textbooks and English grading standard are under deliberation. A training program aimed at teachers is underway since this year's summer vacation. A student of Grade 9 at the top of the new English grading standard is required to master a vocabulary of 5,000 English words, which is more than two times of current vocabulary standard for high school graduates. High school students are required to have English of Grade 7 when they graduate. For taking part in college entrance examinations, their English must reach Grade 8.

 

Chinese children nowadays have started to learn English from the third grade in primary school, the time when they still know little about their mother language. And they'll keep learning English during the whole period of schooling and their English standard may even influence their jobs, promotion as well their lives in the future. From primary school to graduate school, English is always the must-be-tested subject. After graduation, English will also be required for employment, promotion and professional evaluations.

 

Too much time spent on English

 

Learning English needs a language environment. Without it, people have to spend a lot more time on memorizing. For many of the learners, even they have tried hard, they still achieve very little.

 

"I read nothing but English during my free time," said Xiao Zhong, a postgraduate from the Economic Department of Beijing Normal University, "but my listening comprehension and oral English remained far behind satisfaction."

 

A girl had to take the graduate school entrance examinations five times because of failure in English in the four previous years, although she had excellent records for her major subjects. "During the past five years, I had spent 80 percent of my time on studying English until finally past the examination," she complained. She said that if she had spent the time on her major subjects, she might have great progress in her studies.

 

Professor Gu Haibing from the National Economic Management Department of Remin University of China said that for most people who had finished nine-year compulsory education, it is impossible or unnecessary to be excellent in all the subjects, given the current circumstances that professions are all meticulously divided. We suppose the study cost (time) on basic subjects are the same, if a person spends more time on English and his time on other subjects will be less. The result is that the person masters neither English nor other subjects. It will inevitably reduce the efficiency of learning.

 

Measurement of talent?

 

Currently, no matter at school or in companies, English seems to have become the top priority to judge one's talent.

 

According to Professor Gu, the measurement of a talent should not be based on any man-made standard. However, at present, people who cannot speak English are considered as second-class talents; people who cannot write in English are third-class talents; and those who know nothing about English are not talents at all. People who know neither English nor computer are simply blockheads. A look at Chinese school education shows that English is the only compulsory curriculum during the 20-year-long schooling from primary school through to graduate school.

 

The English grading system has deviated from its original purpose that requires primary and middle school students "paying more attention to practical capability in English, so that they are not just learning the words but can listen to and speak English.

 

Some professionals believe that as long as one knows 1,000 to 2,000 words, basic grammars, simple dialogues and the way to check into a dictionary or relevant software, he or she would be able to use English as an important tool in their future work and studies.

 

Proper status and correct study methods

 

According to Professor Gu Haibin, for English study, especially the study of spoken English, practice is very important. Without practice, the level of oral English of some people who have studied English for many years may not match those vendors at the foot of the Great Wall who often speak English with foreigners while hawking their commodities.

 

Here is the dilemma: on the one hand English is compulsory in school, on the other hand, there is no language environment in the society.

 

Research shows that in English learning, the older the student, the higher the cost, or the lower the efficiency. The study of English, especially oral English, should be tackled during the period of middle school rather than that of graduate school or PH.D. programs.

 

Currently, the English teaching in colleges and universities is not at a higher level, but only a repetition of what the students leaned in high school. And again, the English class for postgraduates is a repetition of their college classes. The students take the course only for passing the examinations. The real meaning of English learning no longer exists.

 

An investigation shows over 95 percent of Chinese college students will not use oral English in their whole lifetime nor will they read any English materials. Most people only need to check second-handed references in their work and the number of English-Chinese experts required nationwide is after all limited.

 

(China.org.cn by Wang Qian, November 2, 2003)

[Mick]

Interesting article Tony. The university where I was teaching instituted a far reaching English language enhancement program the last two years I was there. It was very demanding and stressed the ability to communicate rather than just pass examinations. Much of the instruction in the past consisted of learning the rudimental knowledge necessary to pass national exams but placed little emphasis on spoken English. These new programs seem to be working out better than the ones in the past. Right now, learning English is key at all levels of the Chinese educational system. In a sense, it has become the international language of business and science. Maybe that is not fair, but it is reality.

[Robert S.]

With all this emphasis on English, how are they going to have time to learn Chinese writing? I have heard that the only way to master Chinese writing is to start studying it at about age 7 and then basically devote all of one's early education to it. The way they are going they will end up with Chinese people who speak Chinese and read and speak English but who cannot write Chinese. Their writing is so cool--wouldn't it be great to be able to read and understand it? I swear, I am so jealous of those like Mick and Owen who have taught English in China. I want to do this. And, luckily, Chinese people do not pick up your regional accent, though my stepdaughter can mimic an Alabama redneck accent when she wants to--so funny!!!!

[owenkrout]

Oh, but they do pick up on accents. Most Chinese who receive any instruction from a native speaker of English have British teachers. Seems it is much easier to get Brits to take the pay that they would get in China. The result is that the Chinese student learns British pronunciation and spelling. They then have problems with understanding North American English. Accents tend to bother them even more than say a European who is learning English because their native tongue is so dependent upon pronouncing the words exactly. Change a tone and the word changes completely. They tend to be poor at "guessing" the meaning of a word pronounced differently than they learned it.

 

Add to this mix that most never have a native speaker as a teacher. They typically have Chinese teachers who themselves speak very little or very poor English. To make it even worse, the people who hire teachers assume that anyone with a Canadian, American, British, Australian or South African, etc. passport is a native speaker of English. I have known of people in China teaching oral English who had strong non-native speaker accents. I know of two in Shenyang who have thick Spanish accents (Spain not Mexico). This really messes up the students. I also knew of expensive private training centers using people with only high school degrees to teach.

 

Mick is right, most students only learn to read and write a minimal level of English. Most of the teaching is from Chinese teachers and is basically teaching the test for the national written exams that they have to pass. By the way the Grade 7 and Grade 8 are refering to the Chinese national standards that are called Band 7 and Band 8 in China. These tests used to be a joke, filled with errors including instances or two or more answers all being correct but only one of them counted as correct on the grading or worse yet of there being no correct answer. They have improved a lot over the last few years however. Still, a person can not be able to speak a word of English and do fine on the test.

 

I have had many students who were proud of having what they considered a large vocabulary but who couldn't hold the simplist of conversations. (4-5000 words is really a rather minimal vocabulary for English) I was constantly asked, "How many words do you have?" Translation, "How large of a vocabulary do you have?" They are then amazed when told, "I don't know. Your vocabulary is not the most important thing. It is if you can communicate that matters."

 

The truth is that most students devote very little time to their English studies until it becomes apparent that it is about to keep them from advancing in their studies. Then they want a quick fix. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist. Also, students simply don't fail classes in the Chinese system. If you turn in a failing grade for them, they or their parents will get it changed to a passing grade. There was a scandle in Liaoning Province because a TV station actually aired secretly made tape of blatent cheating going on during a college entrance exam. The government was forced to invalidate the tests of hundreds of students and fired the local cadre from their jobs. Of course the students where just allowed to take the test over. The TV station took a lot of flak from the government and the investigative reporting stopped.

 

The same situation would exist here if colleges all required a foreign language in order to graduate. Some people are very good with languages, most struggle.

[warpedbored]

It seems that english skills are improving in China to me. While I was in Guilin there was a group of middle school children at Seven Star Park on a field trip. They all wanted to practice thier english on me and some of them were quite good. They also wanted to have their pictures taken with me even thier teacher lol. Must have been my fifteen minutes of fame.

[Robert S.]

Owen, wow, that was extremely interesting, thank you for that discussion. I will be looking forward to hearing more from you and join Mick in wishing for another installment in your planes, trains and automobiles series.

[owenkrout]

It seems that english skills are improving in China to me. While I was in Guilin there was a group of middle school children at Seven Star Park on a field trip.  They all wanted to practice thier english on me and some of them were quite good.  They also wanted to have their pictures taken with me even thier teacher lol. Must have been my fifteen minutes of fame.

Given the current emphasis placed on learning English, the really fortunate ones are the ones that happen to get a teacher who has excellent English language skills themselves. Unfortunately, most are of about the same level as the Spanish teacher that I had in America. She spoke only mimimal Spanish herself and I learned very little. What little I did learn, I actually learned years later while working with some Mexican immigrants. Now it has been so long since then that I have forgotten even that. Besides, that was to say the least, informal Spanish.

 

Many of the really good teachers are now being hired away from the public schools by the very expensive private schools. Even there though I found that most of the English teachers were only minimally competent in spoken English.

 

My wife could read and write some English when we met, but spoke almost none at all. Her daughter acted as translator at first.

[Mick]

From my experience teaching in China, I have to agree with everything Owen has said so far in this thread. Bottom line is that English skills are gradually improving, but in direct proportion to two primary factors. The first is the quality of instruction. If the teacher speaks passable English, then the students have a better chance. The second factor is how much time and energy the students themselves put into practicing the language, especially listening and speaking skills. I met many students who were excellent writers and grammarians, but could not carry on a conversation at all.

[Robert S.]

In Dalian they only have an English language instruction program on one TV channel for only one hour per day.

[Mick]

In Dalian they only have an English language instruction program on one TV channel for only one hour per day.

Most of Guangdong has access to HK television. At least two full English language stations and English instruction on some of the Chinese ones.

[tonyontherock]

With all this emphasis on English, how are they going to have time to learn Chinese writing?  I have heard that the only way to master Chinese writing is to start studying it at about age 7 and then basically devote all of one's early education to it.  The way they are going they will end up with Chinese people who speak Chinese and read and speak English but who cannot write Chinese. Their writing is so cool--wouldn't it be great to be able to read and understand it?  I swear, I am so jealous of those like Mick and Owen who have taught English in China.  I want to do this.  And, luckily, Chinese people do not pick up your regional accent, though my stepdaughter can mimic an Alabama redneck accent when she wants to--so funny!!!! 

Sad but true. I went all the way through grad school in China, but did not have a chance to write in Chinese for the last 15 years. Now I have trouble writing letters in Chinese. The same with a lot of people who lived here for a relatively long time in an environment that the language is not used often. Chinese writing is really, really hard. But, on the other hand I did skip a lot of shcool before high school.

[Robert S.]

With all this emphasis on English, how are they going to have time to learn Chinese writing?  I have heard that the only way to master Chinese writing is to start studying it at about age 7 and then basically devote all of one's early education to it.  The way they are going they will end up with Chinese people who speak Chinese and read and speak English but who cannot write Chinese.   Their writing is so cool--wouldn't it be great to be able to read and understand it?  I swear, I am so jealous of those like Mick and Owen who have taught English in China.  I want to do this.  And, luckily, Chinese people do not pick up your regional accent, though my stepdaughter can mimic an Alabama redneck accent when she wants to--so funny!!!!  

Sad but true. I went all the way through grad school in China, but did not have a chance to write in Chinese for the last 15 years. Now I have trouble writing letters in Chinese. The same with a lot of people who lived here for a relatively long time in an environment that the language is not used often. Chinese writing is really, really hard. But, on the other hand I did skip a lot of shcool before high school.

From what a Chinese postgraduate student told me, a Chinese person with a basic 9th grade education knows about 5000 characters, and this is what you need to be able to read newspapers and magazines and other average material. My friend said at her level people know about 20,000 characters!!! I wonder what it does to the way of shaping a person's mind to memorize all those characters. I saw an article about a recent study that said Chinese people use both sides of their brain when speaking and listening to their tonal language whereas Western languages require only half a brain.

[natrigon]

Add to this mix that most never have a native speaker as a teacher.  They typically have Chinese teachers who themselves speak very little or very poor English...

Just a side note of agreement with the above section of your post.

 

My MM's daughter attends "Dazhou Best" school. Pei (the daughter) is a very good student as well as level 10 at the Pi-Pa. I had the opportunity to meet her Chinese english teacher. First we waited at the gaurdpost type entrance and then were allowed accompanied access into the grounds. We looked around and then the students were let out of class. Of course many of them paused in suprise to see an American but a moment later went off.

 

Pei politely introduced me (in semi-broken english) to several of her classmates who giggled. Then we returned to the entrance area. Soon the teacher arrived. He is a small man about 40 years old. When we spoke his statements seemed canned, like he had memorized them but was not actually creating speech. Sensitive to this I used simple and polite resposes. I asked him how long he had been teaching english. His response shocked me... 10 YEARS at Dazhou's Best school! We finished the conversation and I thanked him for meeting with me and commended him. I really was not sure what to do. I figured being polite was in best order.

 

He must be the "good at written test" type. I think if I asked a question out of the context of "expected meeting with parent" section he would not have understood.

[owenkrout]

What you may have detected is also a product of the Chinese concept of knowledge and learning. I am sure the Mick can testify also that the Chinese students are constantly wanting to know what is the "correct" way to respond or the "correct" way to say something. They are taught all of their lives to "memorize the book", the literal meaning for the Chinese for "study". Hence the approach language study by memorizing phrases and when to use them. I have even heard the comment that listening in on a Chinese conversation tends to sound stilted as they tend to always use the same phrasing all the time as that is the "correct" way to speak. Having been discouraged to do so all their lives, the Chinese students tend to have a hard time of creative work.

 

It is true, however, that the majority of English teachers I met in China were poor at speaking or listening to English. Unfortunately, many of my college level students had simply been taught things that were wrong, especially in pronunciation. I always accepted either British or American pronunciation as correct, but most students were using neither.

[Mick]

Owen is correct. Most of the students I taught or knew in China always sought the "correct" way to say something. They often had difficulty understanding that there may be more than one correct way. Further, many of the texts that they use are filled with errors. This, of course, results in many problems. As Owen says, most study simply means rote memorization. When I used to give them open ended questions on examinations, they often had problems.