Majority in China back teaching English; debate rages over move to scrap it

[Feng Leng]

You cannot compete with and defeat the Anglosphere countries when you revere their language and culture by making it a mandatory course.

Otherwise, anytime you take one step of progress, you just pushed the Anglosphere countries one step ahead because you already placed them in a position before you. You obviously can't catch up that way LOL.

Only spies and diplomats need to learn English.

 

[S10]

You cannot compete with and defeat the Anglosphere countries when you revere their language and culture by making it a mandatory course.

Otherwise, anytime you take one step of progress, you just pushed the Anglosphere countries one step ahead because you already placed them in a position before you. You obviously can't catch up that way LOL.

Only spies and diplomats need to learn English.

It's not about worshipping the West. English has practicalities in international commerce. Like it or not it's the go-to language if you want to communicate with foreigners, so having some proficiency in it doesn't hurt. Just because I speak fluent English, doesn't mean you lose your mother tongue.

 

[Feng Leng]

It's not about worshipping the West. English has practicalities in international commerce. Like it or not it's the go-to language if you want to communicate with foreigners, so having some proficiency in it doesn't hurt. Just because I speak fluent English, doesn't mean you lose your mother tongue.

Accounting and law has practicalities in international commerce too. Do you teach accounting and law to kids?

Kids are better off doing more exercises or community work than rote learning English.

 

[Feng Leng]

English learning is basically a placebo pill. Here's how it works:

China observes, "Those Western countries and Japan are advanced. To make up for our backwardness, we can improve our education and research to acquire all of their fundamental sciences and applied technologies -- which is HARD, because you need to build an entire infrastructure of world class institutions -- or we can make all the kids learn English, some other Western language or Japanese -- which is EASY, because you just need to photocopy some textbooks and make the kids read them."

Doing it the hard way actually gets you results. Doing it the easy way gets you no results but it looks like you are doing something tangible toward the goal of improving making up for your backwardness so dumb people are satisfied by the trick that you just pulled off there by substituting the difficult effort with a placebo

 

[S10]

Accounting and law has practicalities in international commerce too. Do you teach accounting and law to kids?

Kids are better off doing more exercises or community work than rote learning English.

How are you going to communicate with foreign colleagues? Hand gestures?

Like it or not, multi-national corporations and virtual teams are the new norm. If you can't speak English, you won't be competitive on the job market.

 

[Feng Leng]

How are you going to communicate with foreign colleagues? Hand gestures?

Like it or not, multi-national corporations and virtual teams are the new norm. If you can't speak English, you won't be competitive on the job market.

Not everybody needs to communicate with foreign colleagues. Just like not everybody needs to learn accounting and law. Those subjects are helpful if you are into that kind of multinational work, sure, but it's not like the whole country needs to worship this particular kind of employer by making all students study accounting, law and English on the contingency that one day they might work for a multinational.

 

[313ghazi]

I think it's a step backwards. English has been imposed on the world as a language of commerce/international language through conquest. It is not going to be replaced soon.

As a highly export driven industry and a country which is strong in R&D you need to have English skills to collaborate and communicate with international colleagues.

Look at this forum - perfect example of multiple nationalitiee communicating in English, where for nearly all of us it's a foreign language.

 

[Feng Leng]

I think it's a step backwards. English has been imposed on the world as a language of commerce/international language through conquest. It is not going to be replaced soon.

As a highly export driven industry and a country which is strong in R&D you need to have English skills to collaborate and communicate with international colleagues.

Look at this forum - perfect example of multiple nationalitiee communicating in English, where for nearly all of us it's a foreign language.

South Asia has a different history with respect to English. Does every Pakistani use English? I bet just the rich people do. There probably aren't many poor Pakistanis on PDF. For a poor Pakistani to spend years learning English to achieve a level of proficiency to communicate on PDF is wasted time not spent rising above poverty.

 

[313ghazi]

South Asia has a different history with respect to English. Does every Pakistani use English? I bet just the rich people do. There probably aren't many poor Pakistanis on PDF. For a poor Pakistani to spend years learning English to achieve a level of proficiency to communicate on PDF is wasted time not spent rising above poverty.

Very good point. The thing is when you are a child in school, your parents might be poor, but you haven't started reaching your economic level yet surely? I assume in China children from poor or rural backgrounds can go onto University and become researchers or get jobs in businesses that deal with foreign clients?

I know in Pakistan there is a financial hurdle to this, but I assume in China your government has made some sort of arrangement, like student loans or free higher education?

Maybe there is scope for a middle ground? Maybe the basics should be taught in the early years of school and then only the brighter students with the prospects of being in higher education should continue?

What do you think about that?

I think this sort of approach should be explored more in schools. I have a cousin in the UK, he was not a very bright boy in terms of academics. By 9th grade his school decided there was no point him spending time on non-essential academic subjects like history ad geography, and instead assigned him an apprenticeship instead during those hours. Today he is a confident, well trained motor mechanic looking to start his own business soon. If school had insisted he stay studying academic subjects he would have finished school with low grades, demotivated, feeling bad about himself and without proper guidance of how to build a career next. I think we would certainly benefit from this in Pakistan.

 

[Paul2]

Most of the world soon need to learn Chinese.

The A.I will be soon powerful enough to make u understand many languages in few second.

 

[Feng Leng]

Very good point. The thing is when you are a child in school, your parents might be poor, but you haven't started reaching your economic level yet surely? I assume in China children from poor or rural backgrounds can go onto University and become researchers or get jobs in businesses that deal with foreign clients?

I know in Pakistan there is a financial hurdle to this, but I assume in China your government has made some sort of arrangement, like student loans or free higher education?

Maybe there is scope for a middle ground? Maybe the basics should be taught in the early years of school and then only the brighter students with the prospects of being in higher education should continue?

What do you think about that?

I think this sort of approach should be explored more in schools. I have a cousin in the UK, he was not a very bright boy in terms of academics. By 9th grade his school decided there was no point him spending time on non-essential academic subjects like history ad geography, and instead assigned him an apprenticeship instead during those hours. Today he is a confident, well trained motor mechanic looking to start his own business soon. If school had insisted he stay studying academic subjects he would have finished school with low grades, demotivated, feeling bad about himself and without proper guidance of how to build a career next. I think we would certainly benefit from this in Pakistan.

You are now judging the practicality of English education in a rational manner by weighing its advantages and disadvantages. The problem is that some people in China are unable to look at English education in a rational manner. There is a knee jerk reaction -- "English is associated with the powerful Anglosphere empire so we must do whatever we can to learn from the Anglosphere including learning English" that is totally devoid of rationality. You end up teaching large numbers of students English at a low proficiency level and the students never use it outside the classroom for the rest of their lives. It's done purely to scratch that itch caused by the knee jerk emotional reaction of associating English education with the powerful Anglosphere empire.

Getting rid of English education as a core subject is huge step forward.

 

[313ghazi]

You are now judging the practicality of English education in a rational manner by weighing its advantages and disadvantages. The problem is that some people in China are unable to look at English education in a rational manner. There is a knee jerk reaction -- "English is associated with the powerful Anglosphere empire so we must do whatever we can to learn from the Anglosphere including learning English" that is totally devoid of rationality. You end up teaching large numbers of students English at a low proficiency level and the students never use it outside the classroom for the rest of their lives. It's done purely to scratch that itch caused by the knee jerk emotional reaction of associating English education with the powerful Anglosphere empire.

Getting rid of English education as a core subject is huge step forward.

This is what I like about this forum. I had no idea Chinese society had this problem too.

 

[powastick]

You are now judging the practicality of English education in a rational manner by weighing its advantages and disadvantages. The problem is that some people in China are unable to look at English education in a rational manner. There is a knee jerk reaction -- "English is associated with the powerful Anglosphere empire so we must do whatever we can to learn from the Anglosphere including learning English" that is totally devoid of rationality. You end up teaching large numbers of students English at a low proficiency level and the students never use it outside the classroom for the rest of their lives. It's done purely to scratch that itch caused by the knee jerk emotional reaction of associating English education with the powerful Anglosphere empire.

Getting rid of English education as a core subject is huge step forward.

Definitely agree, China should instead focus on improving higher learning instead. Learning other language is will less important in the future due to advancement of machine learning and machine translation. Even the Japanese didn't make English as a core subject but they still have an advanced economy. Maybe India needs English as a unifying language, but China already have Mandarin. Learning English is not important unless you wish to work overseas and abandon the country.

 

[Dungeness]

It's a major waste of time and resource. Japanese are terrible in English, and there are augually less Japanese in total than Chinese who can speak English, but it did not stop Japan from being a top tech power house in the world. Indians are good in English, but so what?

 

[Place Of Space]

Like it or not, English is the International Lingua Franca and Mandarin is not exactly easy.
The issue at hand is not to ban English but whether to remove it as a compulsory core subject that every Chinese have to learn.
I believe English should be made a selective subject in secondary school so that only 20-30% will learn English.
Those weaker students can make use of the time to brush up their other studies instead of learning English which they may never use in their working life.
All will know the alphabet and simple communication in English from the compulsory English they will learn in primary school.
.

Learning English is a headache thing. I can't get my bachelor degree if I don't pass the CET4. But my major has 0 to do with English.