Opinion: English education in China is broken

English education has been a massive aspect of the Chinese public education system for many years now. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 and the commencement of the PRC’s diplomatic relations towards the first world, the widespread teaching of English has played a huge part for many scholars, workers, and politicians alike, and for good reason. The sound usage of English has enabled a standard means of communication between the Chinese and the outside world in many technical, scholarly, and diplomatic fields. The huge boost of English awareness and use has made travel and the economy much more interconnected. Compared to South Korea or Japan, there is almost ‘too much’ bilingual signage. This is nonetheless a good thing and demonstrates the population’s willingness to reach out, even if some translations are of laughably dubious quality.

Oh, boy.

But, there are major flaws in the way English is taught in China. The system has institutionalised excessive rote learning and massive cultural misappropriations in many schools, and this renders a generation’s worth of de jure able but de facto mute English ‘speakers’. In this essay, we will look at the systematic issues that plague the current state of English pedagogy, and seek to find ways to fix them.

Disclaimer: The primary sources used in this report come from a tuition service, and do not reflect the mainstream way that English, and to some extent other second languages, are taught. However, the service still elucidates the root problem of the system, simply without some of its more nuanced and embedded components. Quote this with caution and a clear awareness of the issue. Thank you.

Introduction and a Brief History

The Chinese culture has long put the learning of its youth in high priority, both in antiquity and in modern times. The Ru (儒) philosophy (Confucianism) championed by Confucius and Mencius has this stance on the position of education, as seen Confucius’ Analects:

“Isn’t it a pleasure to study and review what you’ve learned?”

—The Analects of Confucius, Chapter 1.1

The growth of this public education blossomed into the Keju (Imperial Examination) System, where promising candidates are elected into the bureaucracy through merit. The examinations consisted of solely a written paper on the appraisal of the classics and its philosophical connotations. Of course, this gradually began to degenerate into a mindless mechanic of simple memorisation and political correctness, with the Bagu (8-paragraph analysis) effectively prohibiting creative discourse & other interpretations of Confucian thought. After the introduction of Western influence on China, this system was technically and slowly phased out, but traces of it are still obviously discernable, even today.

The PRC completely uprooted the educational system since taking power in 1949: in the socialist society, the government standardised the curriculum to an exceptional degree and provided free education until 9th grade. As said before, the government emphasised the opening-up of Western language learning since Deng Xiaoping, usually introducing lessons in the 3rd grade. Since this, the pace steadily builds up; English is considered a ‘core’ subject of Chinese primary education, along with Chinese Language & Literature and Math, and has its own paper with other second languages on the Gaokao (University Entrance Examinations). Speaking English fluently is considered a tenet of contemporary Chinese education culture.

However, Confucian thinking still pervades modern-day educationalism: achieving in first has more significance than getting full marks, able parents will scram for tuition that has a questionable effect on certain students. Excellence often blurs the boundaries with success or life pinnacle; for since when this was introduced, satirical commentaries have taken the exam and drag it through the mud to expose its constant toiling and it representing little actual progress.

The most recognisable element of the Chinese system (along with South Korea and Japan) is the rampant test culture: the success measurement for good learning is nearly always placed in a good test score rather than an accumulative track record kept by the teacher or the MOE. This has drawn quite a lot of slack from its sceptics: one of our viewers created this chart that very succinctly points out the problem with the system. This is adapted from the original.

Sorry for the intricate slang, but the main point is: getting into key universities via excellent Zhongkao (High School Entrance Examinations) and Gaokao results seem to be prioritised over learning well and consistently throughout primary through university. Employers rarely look at the report card: even an abysmal time at Peking, Tsinghua, Oxbridge or an Ivy League sways harder than a successful time at a provincial or community college. This is somewhat granted, with your job opportunities being dictated by your academic performance 10 years ago, but clear through my bias: Testing and only testing doesn’t see through what a student truly is and truly can do. There also seems to be a keen emphasis on memorising party thought—just look at this Gaokao question on art philosophy and Xi Jinping Thought:

“President Xi has said that while art can release the wings of imagination, it should still be down-to-earth. There may be hundreds of ways to create art, but the best way is to have it take root in people's daily lives, and create something based off of that. From a materialist point of view, this is because (pick two of the statements below):”

I. Art originates from people’s daily lives

II. Art depends on innovation

III. The way art reflects on society and its style are unified

IV. Art is a form of ideology that reflects people’s lives while serving the people at the same time.

(Correct answer is I and IV. Read more about Shostakovich and socialist realism here.)

I could, in fact, dedicate a whole article to the Gaokao and the system overall, and they would have the same problems. English, however, is where all of the problems are compounded and agglomerated, making the issues much more obvious & hindering learning to a massive degree. The issues that many have pointed out in the system, especially in English, can be summarised in 3 points:

1. An overuse and over-reliance of rote learning and theoretical memorisation

2. Cultural misappropriations and narrow-mindedness

3. A misplacement of emphasis and purpose of second-language learning

All three factors are tied together immensely, but we will go into all of them one-by-one in detail.

1. Overuse and over-reliance on rote learning and theoretical memorisation

For me and the other Chinese editors here at [ink.], experiencing international approaches to both language & literature and additional language learning (in the IB, AP, IGCSE, etc.) has been life-changing. When I communicate with Chinese students (that have just switched school systems) in English, I immediately notice one thing: inflexibility. For English learners in China, de facto fluency is nearly unheard of when said person has never been exposed to a native-language environment like Singapore, the US, the UK or Canada. This is also the phenomenon behind ‘Chinglish’, ‘Carefully slip’ (Be careful, the floor is slippery) and ‘F**k vegetables’ (dried vegetables): the art of translation, language nuance, and implied meaning is lost, and the process by which both ESL learners and computers go by is completely automated, fixed, and mechanical.

To understand what students are truly learning, we need to go back to school.

During the holidays, I got my hands on a (free) gift Xueersi English tuition package for entering middle school students. The bundle included 10 online lessons (none of which I’ve sat through as of yet), a textbook, workbook, and model exam paper. I am legally not allowed to disclose any of the content in the lesson, but the overall picture should be clear. Quoting the textbook’s preface:

“[This class] is suitable for intermediate English learners, and will help consolidate understanding in basic knowledge, master test strategies, improve weaknesses, raise test scores, and build beneficial learning habits when practising English.”

“[This class] revolves around [our specialist conceptual learning], with coordinated instruction in 24 Zhongkao essential units and respective knowledge points. Each unit will have 3 sessions, matching standards with the official Zhongkao guidelines, with original-edition, specialist-taught reading comprehension, oral, and writing exemplars, training our students’ oral and reading comprehension, speaking, and writing abilities.”

Well, you may ask, how do they do this?

According to the same textbook, its progression of the curriculum from year 1 to 3 is divided into 4 general goals:

1. Raise vocabulary from 800+ to 2000+;

2. Progress through ~40 sample pieces to solidify ability in comprehension;

3. Understand basic and advanced grammar rules, tenses, and sentence structures;

4. Run through common exam question structures

And in the run-up to the Zhongkao itself:

1. Find and stop virulent weaknesses

2. Practice for real-life exam scenarios

3. Sprint for full marks

As made incredibly apparent by these goals and the increasingly strong vocabulary, there is not a lot of room for creativity in such an exam-oriented society. Onto the practice papers themselves: it is divided into these sections:

1. Vocabulary

2. Grammar

3. Cloze test (Fill-in-the-blanks)

4. Reading comprehension

The textbook further identifies these areas:

1. Pronunciation

2. Writing

That’s a conclusive list of the areas tested. Note the four cornerstones that were outlined in the preface, that many educationalists and linguists agree are the foundations to second-language learning. In a model Gaokao English paper, here is the analysis of the mark credits:

• Oral comprehension: 0%

• Reading comprehension: 56%

• Speaking: 0%

• Writing: 22%

• (Basic Knowledge): 22%

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The divide is consistent with that of the 7th-grade tuition paper. From the data, it is evident that there is way too much emphasis on grammar and vocabulary, and not enough on listening and speaking. This answers one question regarding the difficulty for second language English speakers in China to have an easy conversation with others: the exam system finds oral skills inferior to reading skills, so doesn’t include them on the syllabus; teachers do not devote time to oral skills for they want their students to succeed per the syllabus; the culture doesn’t care about oral skills, as succeeding defined by the syllabus is the only way for social mobility. The HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi: Examination for Assessment in Mandarin Ability) for foreigners ironically does a better job than the Gaokao system: the paper is split in 3 (listening, reading, writing), but still no speaking. I know with such a big population and logistics nightmare like Chinese examinations, it could be extremely difficult to organise, but we should aim for something like the DELF in France, IELTS in the Anglosphere, or the Deutsches Sprachdiplom in Germany: a good balance and even credit in all 4 major aspects of learning, and decrease the necessity of conformist grammar rote memorization.

Speaking of grammar and pronunciation, I still want to go in further. Even though the class I’m investigating labels itself as an ‘intermediate-level’, even being able to subscribe to tuition services is considered a privilege, so some teaching methods are quite advanced and unorthodox. There is an uncanny perversion of IPA symbols in learning pronunciation and some review questions rely on computer listening devices to check. I wonder, if you just want to communicate in basic English hassle-free and casually, is it really necessary to memorise IPA pronunciations in standard accents and probably forget and never use them? Unless, like me, you are interested in studying linguistics, that probably won’t be of much help, even if it’s in good intentions—it seems plain silly to inculcate the minds of 10-year-olds with the ability to identify and list in IPA plosive, fricative, and nasal consonants. By the way, I tested the listening programme using a New Zealand, Scottish, Singaporean, and American Southern accent; the software marked me wrong. The standard, ‘correct’ pronunciation still results in a strange mix between the local dialect and Midwestern accents, very strange.

There’s quite a rooted culture in systematic vocabulary and grammar learning, and this extends beyond public education. The culture of American high schools and universities in Chinese is beyond strong, and part of the application process is the SSATs, SAT, IELTS, and TOEFL. I am honestly appalled by the state of ‘vocabulary memorisation’ in the American system and its repercussions elsewhere; not only does it encourage class warfare in the language aspect, the way that your dreams depend on hard-of-use, linguistically-unproven systematic rote learning of words such as ‘pulchritude’, ‘stalwart’, and ‘avarice’. The SAT merits an entire essay of its own, but we will stop here in this regard.

Before we move on, the final criticism of the exam system I have is the lack of practice opportunity. Vocabulary, grammar conventions, and oral nuances all need to be used. How useful is the cloze test when it has no equivalency in day-to-day business? How are students supposed to grapple with double entendres, metaphors, and other forms of literary device when only a template principle is available, which everyone copies off of? To truly prepare someone for English, the curriculum needs to liaison with actuality, not purely theoretical. When learning a new language, you have to teach what is most useful and to do that, you need to teach culture.

2. Cultural misappropriations and narrow-mindedness

There’s a slight stigma attached to the term ‘foreign’ in the Chinese language: the term “lao wai” (老外) could be misinterpreted as ‘alien’, harking back to the concession days. With the digital age comes the introduction of multiculturalism and its conflict with domestic culture. The Communist Party has been quite lax on its promotion of nationalism; this is not an inherent problem itself, but some ultra-conservatives have taken it too far. In some places, intolerance and misunderstanding in the general public are quite intense. Note that these are only qualitative and from the author’s observation. Some external and internal factors of discrimination include:

• Domestic minorities; their presence and rites have more been treated like a spectacle than actually studied:

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  • Muslims, especially, face discrimination: the Shahada has been removed from Halal signs, mosques, shrines, and religious headgears are, to some degrees, associated with terrorism, and the government has been accused of Sinicization, especially towards Uyghurs. Arabs and Central Asians are also viewed with suspicion.

• Festivals are treated like performances by domestic tourists, in tourist areas and in education.

• The LGBTQ+ community: Queer topics, for many, are considered taboo, and topics surrounding sexuality and gender identity are seldom discussed. Coming out (telling people your sexuality or gender identity) is a fear of many LGBTQ youths, as things outside of heterosexuality and being cisgender are associated with HIV, nonconformity, and disrespect to ancestral tradition.

• Japan: Due to the catastrophe of WWII, many children have a strong inclination to express brutal and uncivilised views of Japanese people.

• The Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, and indigenous peoples of the Americas: In a general sense, these places are considered dirty, disease-wrought, and backwards. Seemingly, BIPOC intolerance has been inherited from the colonisers.

• Caucasians: The ‘American Dream’ (the US is the default when it comes to foreigners) has been falsely labelled as Caucasian, utopian, & impartial. White people often attract attention for their foreignness, while blacks receive the same response for nearly the complete opposite reason.

There are, of course, many more, but the general picture is: the average Chinese person (as well as people in many other places) usually receives only a small portion of the global perspective and that discrepancy is present in second-language education too. Take this statement from the teacher of the tuition course:

“[Foreigners] all have a given name, optional middle name, and surname. […] This is because [East Asian] culture values the family, while [Western] societies value individualism.”

The square brackets are themselves what the statement means when taken in context. The initial comparison was between ‘Chinese’ and ‘foreign’, which is beyond incorrect, of course—remember Korean and Japanese names. The final statement is technically true, to a certain degree, but more research & proof is certainly needed; the naked & exposed generalisation is quite thin. But where this claim truly falls apart is that the statement is not specific. Even though most listeners would’ve already automatically generalised ‘foreign’ as ‘Western’, the umbrella term ‘West’ still embodies a wide range of cultures and naming customs. Icelandic names, for example, are structured “given name–patronymic” (father’s name), such as Eiður Smári Gudjohnsen (Guðjonsson) or Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the suffixes meaning ‘son’ or ‘daughter’. Slavic names are structured “given name–patronymic–surname”, for example, Антон Павлович Чехов (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov) or Михаил Сергеевич Горбачёв (Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev). While the latter examples from Russian can be and are regularly considered non-Western, some might still generalise those as European. Besides this, though, clearly, the naming traditions of “Western” cultures vary wildly, even within the Anglosphere. There is quite an obvious way to fix all these problems—just be more specific.

“Most English-speaking people in the 21st century have a given name, optional middle name, and surname. [...] This is partially because generally, East Asian cultures value the family, while Western societies value individualism.”

This could seem like overkill, but this all boils down to respect. One’s name is the most direct expression of one’s identity, values, and beliefs, and the least we can do to help is to learn about, listen, and respectfully appreciate where one’s name comes from. There are many other finicky instances of poor research & phrasing, but I’ve singled out below possibly the most frustrating.

The thing that probably angers me most on the subject of cultural misappropriation is the concepts of “England”, “America”, and “China”. First to state the obvious, ‘England’ is technically a country but not a sovereign state, and ‘America’ is a region as well as a colloquialism for the USA, but technically not a sovereign state. These terms are often jumbled up and misused, especially marginalising the other constituent countries of the UK and those who may interpret ‘America’ differently. This has lasting effects—look at this Chinese translation-footnote on J. K. Rowling’s novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:

“Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee* have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars!”

*Kent is a county in the south of England and Yorkshire is a county in the north of England. Dundee is a harbour town in the north of England.

Apologies if you, dear reader, are from Kent, Yorkshire, or Dundee, or just the whole of Scotland for that matter. There are already some blundering generalisations being made in the first 2 clauses, but it is astounding that a professional translator can let this error slip, especially post-Brexit and post-referendum. However, the footnotes proceed to then perfectly and simply explain Guy Fawkes Day using the proper demonym of ‘British’. Not only did this person distribute a gaffe to potentially 1.4 billion Chinese speakers, many teachers, tourism boards, geography education tools, and other foreign-language institutions can mess up on ‘England’, ‘Holland’, ‘America’, collectively referring to Africa and the Middle East as a whole, forgetting New Zealand, and many others.

Then, there’s China. The incorporation of ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ is almost used in a proclamatory way. Again, intrinsically, there’s no problem with this. What this actually does is that it hints at the purpose of this learning charade as a whole—the expression of ‘us’ rather than ‘your’ implies a strong identity of display & prowess rather than appreciation & expansion. Is this really what we want?

3. Misplacement of emphasis and purpose of second-language learning

It all ties together here. Although we have looked at the rigorously redundant test culture, although we have analysed the rampant cultural misinformation, there is still one final factor that changes everything: domestic attitude. For most, English is treated like a portal, an exact science of words that can serve to propel oneself up the social hierarchy. Why do people think this way? Time to divide and conquer.

First, the universities: foreign university application is considered paramount to a successful career, so many students work tirelessly to fulfill the endless application requirements and a Möbius Strip of academic bureaucracy. People routinely focus on English just to do this. But this is all talking the talk, as what a good learning experience at a university counts as does not immediately reflect upon real life. Is being able to flawlessly prove the Theory of General Relativity as important as understanding & writing irony and sarcasm? I think so.

The entire topic of universities in China is enticing. Many people have not had the opportunity to go to college overseas, so there is a high expectation for all those who make it. The US is by far the largest exporter of student spaces in the world, which is why it has the power to choke China on its academic world cycle. This is a classic facet of the 'triple appeal' of the USA in contemporary Chinese culture: the government protects, the opportunists gaze in awe, and the loyalists fight in arms. But on scholarly terms, the use of English needs to be precise, exact, and formal, thus limiting the 'need', as perceived by parents and students, for creative exploration of the inner power of English.

National interest plays an equally important role internally. Since his inauguration in 2012, General Secretary of the CCP Xi Jinping has taken it upon himself to continue to revitalise the Chinese ideal, allowing it to "rejuvenate" back into prominence. In order for communication in STEM fields, English development is a must, but what has gone awry is that many limits learning to only STEM, tying back to the university phenomenon. The political constraints of the CCP also push the learning interest into showcasing national prowess rather than uncovering exotic new experiences; through large-scale exhibitions & repeated cultural exchange in the form of flights and international travel, the government has sought to use English, a universal platform of communication, to bring the world closer to China, which of course requires hyper-formal, unimaginative language.

The final, and most important, imperative in the race for many people in the society is the omnipresent social hierarchy that drives everyone up and down the pyramid. The middle-class is, of course, the most anxious as usual: forever afraid of falling down, always yearning to rise up. To speak English is the most telltale sign of a rising individual on the ladder; to not be able to, you'd be destined to be left behind. Then, those at the bottom have too little comprehension of the language in the first place, so there are misconceptions both ways. As we've seen time and time again, the societal expectations of formality, political correctness, and in over out has won, which repeats the cycle of systematic suppression of effective learning devices and a repetitive system taking its place.

What can we do about this?

There are many simple solutions to alleviating some of the stress, over-dependence, and lack of inclusiveness of the system. First of all, we need to begin to decrease the emphasis on rote learning in one of several ways. The end goal is to try to include the expansion of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and such other rules through extended practice & real-life applications. Possible scenarios could include:

• The use of etymology-based learning: through an understanding of the relationships between word components, expanding vocabulary can be a lot more organic.

• Less testing overall—more writing should be encouraged to give students more leeway to develop solid transfer abilities in grammar.

• Stop using IPA extensively. Give it as an option for possible education on pronunciation, but try to develop a sense of word through more listening and speaking. This comes with practice.

• Practice all skills with equal focus and the same emphasis of importance. This could be a logistical challenge to assess due to the size of China, but in normal class practice, encourage group discussions in the target language.

Asides from the curriculum, we also need to give our future learners a better sense of place. Here are some strategies for developing cultural understanding:

• Hire more native-English teachers. Being raised in a predominant-English environment will make instructing less challenging, the environment more convivial, and a general rise in lesson quality.

• Tread carefully and be selective with introducing external cultures, rites, and traditions. We want to rear a positive environment where different identities are tolerated, and starting from SL is a good idea.

• Don't be afraid of venturing outside of US English—this is a world language, so sampling English from all corners of the world—say, Australia, South Africa, Canada, or India—will give students so much more variety in terms of how the language is used, and how they may adapt it to their own context.

These all lead to a final objective: the future of education in China should be brought away from the cult of the Gaokao, university, and social hierarchy, and make learning for the sake of learning itself. This is where students feel truly at home with their learning being happy & naturally coming from oneself.

I realise that many of the problems I've described for China could be applied to many additional-language situations out there. The US' cultural broadening in Spanish education, for example, is quite limited. What linguists all agree on, however, is that the outline of learning and practising a language successfully is the same. So, we shouldn't be disheartened or inactive about the current situation—seek to improve and find a better tomorrow for the world citizens represented by our offspring.\

Thank you so much for staying to the very end of this marathon of an essay at this point. Some of the topics described are quite controversial, and the techniques of successful adaptations of language over geography can be difficult and distinct. If anyone would like to express their own view of the subject, feel free to leave a comment in the comments box or to drop an email to haoyangshi.inkmagazine@gmail.com. Have a great day ahead of you, whether it be in school, communications, or in very important change for this world!