Hindrances to the new teaching goals of College English in China

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Du ◽  
Hongdi Guan

College English refers to a type of English course offered to non-English majors at tertiary level in mainland China. In recent years, however, College English has been criticised as ‘deaf and dumb English’ (Wu, 2004; Zhang, 2002) because of Chinese students’ perceived weaknesses in listening and speaking. As Zhang (2002), Director of the Department of Higher Education in the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE), explains, ‘Chinese university students can neither speak English nor understand it when they hear the language spoken’ (p. 4). To improve the situation, Zhang urges that ‘[w]hile reading has to be reduced properly, listening and speaking should be increased in College English textbooks’ (ibid.: 5). In other words, it is listening and speaking rather than reading that should be emphasised.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Zeng Zhen

It’s arguable that more involvement of government with centralized policies causes less efficiency on education progresses. The article reviewed documents dedicated to or related to College English (CE), which have been released by Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China (MOE)and other institutions / organizations after 1949. Exploring CE’s goal, assessment and national impacts, it's substantially analyzed the benefits and disadvantages of centralized governance conducted on CE, and proposed an integral strategy potentially developed: conducting centralized administration while highlighting and enhancing diversity and individuality on CE for reaching the goal of CE in China higher education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (S2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Yu

Due to uneven and hierarchical global context, the United States has been the world’s number one “Educational Hub” (Knight, 2011), leading the internationalization of higher education in multiple forms, the top priority of which lies in international student recruitment and enrollment. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has thoroughly disrupted the traditional mobility experience—a situation that has broader implications for the demographic landscape of US higher education. This article explores how COVID-19 and pandemic-related Sinophobia affect Chinese students’ perspectives on their educational decision-making. Based on Zoom interviews of a sample of 21 Chinese undergraduate students, this study demonstrates that despite the leading role of the US in international education, it is gradually losing appeal to Chinese students due to disillusionment with the romanticized imaginary of the US, anxiety about uncertain policies, and safety concerns. The unidirectional student mobility from mainland China to the US may be interrupted with Singapore and Hong Kong as the emerging destinations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Hongying Liu

The College English Test Band Six (CET-6) is one of the most widely applied exam across China. As a national teaching test, CET-6 is sponsored by the Department of higher education of the Ministry of education of The People’s Republic of China and held twice a year. In this study, 77 sophomores of different majors were tested using the listening test in June 2018. It is ensured that the test method is exactly same as that of CET-6. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the content and specification of CET-6 listening comprehension test, and to evaluate this part in detail according to the real data, including score report and item analysis, trying to provide some enlightenment for the revision of the examination.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Cher Leng

Abstract This paper examines the compliments and compliment responses of Singapore Chinese university students from naturally occurring data. Both Mainland China and Taiwan have received more attention in compliments research. Unlike China and Taiwan, Singapore is in the outer circle (Kachru 1992) of the Mandarin speaking community. Although the population of Singapore comprised of three-quarters of ethnic Chinese, Mandarin is taught in school as a second language with the medium of instruction of all other subjects being English (see Lee 2012). The different language environment and cultural bearings from the Mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese are reflected in this study. This study shows that unlike Taiwan college students (Wang and Tsai 2003) whose preferred compliment topic is Appearance, Singapore Chinese students prefer to compliment on Ability/Performance. Contrary to all other studies on Chinese compliment responses which show that Chinese are more modest and therefore tend to Reject compliments, this study shows that there are overall more Accept compliment responses especially between close friends. This is due to the predominant English-speaking environment in Singapore. In addition, Appreciation Token which is known to be a western response to compliments is also used more frequently by Singapore Chinese students. The linguistic features of code-switching to English and the presence of local discourse particles (from southern Chinese dialects and Malay language) are unique features of the diasporic colloquial Mandarin spoken in Singapore.


Author(s):  
Bangchen Pang ◽  
Nicholas Appleton

The purposes of this study were to identify and describe the factors that influenced the choices made by mainland Chinese students and scholars to come to the United States, to identify and describe the factors that influenced their settlement in the United States, and to identify and describe the role that higher education played in this process. An explanatory multiple case study design was used as the basic strategy for the study. In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted to describe, from the participants perspective, the factors that influenced their successful immigration to the United States. The participants were a convenience sample of 10 Chinese immigrants from mainland China selected from several Chinese professional and social organizations in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. The participants were of different genders, professions, and ages.


Author(s):  
Erda Wati Bakar

The Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR) has become the standard used to describe and evaluate students’ command of a second or foreign language. It is an internationally acknowledged standard language proficiency framework which many countries have adopted such as China, Thailand, Japan and Taiwan. Malaysia Ministry of Education is aware and realise the need for the current English language curriculum to be validated as to reach the international standard as prescribed by the CEFR. The implementation of CEFR has begun at primary and secondary level since 2017 and now higher education institutions are urged to align their English Language Curriculum to CEFR as part of preparation in receiving students who have been taught using CEFR-aligned curriculum at schools by year 2022. This critical reflection article elucidates the meticulous processes that we have embarked on in re-aligning our English Language Curriculum to the standard and requirements of CEFR. The paper concludes with a remark that the alignment of the English curriculum at the university needs full support from the management in ensuring that all the stakeholders are fully prepared, informed and familiar with the framework.


Author(s):  
Azizov Solijon Uchmas o’g’li

The quality and content are constantly increasing their relevance in the conditions of modern education. If quality can be understood as means and educational materials which are used in the process, the content is a sign of the diversity of these materials and a factor which takes into account the age, abilities and chances of learners. Taking into account these two important factors, the theoretical and practical bases of combining modern information technologies in improving the quality and content of the system of blended learning at philological higher education institutions of specialized in teaching English are described in detail. In addition, the paths and stages of creating a specific system that runs continuously, combining the effective and reasonable functions of social networking services (SNS) and messengers in consolidating the quality and content indicators of blended learning, are gradually illustrated. Besides that, by combining online educational materials with traditional place-based classroom methods at philological higher education institutions which are specialized in teaching English based on the approach of blended learning, the system of fostering students’ linguistic skills, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking can be optimized and modernized according to the results of this research in the article.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-416
Author(s):  
Tao Xiong ◽  
Qiuna Li

Abstract The debate on the marketization of discourse in higher education has sparked and sustained interest among researchers in discourse and education studies across a diversity of contexts. While most research in this line has focused on marketized discourses such as advertisements, little attention has been paid to promotional discourse in public institutions such as the About us texts on Chinese university websites. The goal of the present study is twofold: first, to describe the generic features of the university About us texts in China; and second, to analyze how promotional discourse is interdiscursively incorporated in the discourse by referring to the broader socio-political context. Findings have indicated five main moves: giving an overview, stressing historical status, displaying strengths, pledging political and ideological allegiance, and communicating goals and visions. Move 3, displaying strengths, has the greatest amount of information and can be further divided into six sub-moves which presents information on campus facilities, faculty team, talent cultivation, disciplinary fields construction, academic research, and international exchange. The main linguistic and rhetorical strategies used in these moves are analyzed and discussed.


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