China ESL
An Industry Run Amuck?

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by Niu Qiang, PhD & Martin Wolff, J.D.

Training Centers

These are normally private corporations providing tailor made educational programs to business clients utilizing the client's facilities. Classes are usually held in the weekday evenings and on weekends when the employees have free time. They have also been known to assign teachers to public kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools on weekends, which generates numerous FE complaints.

These private businesses do not manage or administer any school. They are limited to the recruitment of teachers for client schools and charge a fee either to the school or the successfully recruited FE. A few agencies also act as the "Foreign Affairs Office" for their client school and thus provide some or all of the services required by the FE. Most agencies do not act as the "Foreign Affairs Office" for their school clients and do not provide any services beyond the initial contact between employer/school and teacher/recruit. This creates an opportunity for confusion and misunderstanding by the recruit who does not fully understand the nature and functions of the agency.

Some agencies are mere Internet web sites where employers or Agencies pay a fee to post their employment opportunity for potential recruits to view and potential employees can post their resumes for potential employers to review. The web cites may also provide advice but no actual services beyond the introduction opportunity.

In either case, Agencies are a major source of dissatisfaction and complaint by ESL teachers in China.

There is no national ESL curriculum emanating from the Central Government of China. Each public and private educational institution is free to develop and implement its own ESL curriculum so long as public degree granting institutions meet the total required instructional hours (private schools are not allowed to grant degrees). The ESL teaching curriculum in public institutions is broken down into separate classes teaching vocabulary, reading comprehension, listening comprehension and oral conversation. In private institutions ESL is taught as a homogeneous subject. As a result, public school students with six or more years of ESL classes are well schooled in grammatical rules but unable to produce an intelligible basic English conversation; while private school students are capable of producing advanced English conversation within three to six months and are able to advocate and debate in English after only one year of ESL training. While the latter group may not be well versed in grammatical rules, they are effective ESL communicators.

Band 4 and Band 6 are standardized ESL tests for Middle School, Senior School and University students in Public institutions. Chinese ESL teachers designed the tests. These tests purport to measure student accomplishments in vocabulary, listening comprehension and reading comprehension, a somewhat dubious claim with even more suspect results, which have come under increasing criticism of late. (There are even professional exam takers who will sit as a proxy for someone who is not capable of taking the test. This type of cheating requires the knowledge and assistance of the test monitor and further dilutes the validity of the process.)

In any event, these tests do not test oral communication or production ability. Tragically, these tests actually discourage oral English teaching throughout the various levels of public academia in China.

The goal of the Oral English or English Conversation class is to have the students utilize and practice what they have learned in the vocabulary, phonetics, comprehensive reading and comprehensive listening classes. A more apt class title would be "Speech Lab." The FE is the Lab supervisor who facilitates the Lab activity, i.e. speaking. This is not a lecture class that imparts substantive content for future reference, although interesting issues can serve this incidental function.

In China, Oral English classes in public schools have 60 to 150 students sitting in a lecture hall all facing the teaching platform in the front of the room. (Teaching and Learning Forum 2001, Zhichang Xu, "Problems and Strategies of teaching English in large classes in the People's Republic of China") There are two, forty-five minute class periods per week. Students sit in lecture hall type seating facing the front of the room. With 60 students in a class, this provides each student with less than 1.5 minutes a week to practice oral English production with the FE.

In private schools there are usually no more than 10 to 12 students sitting in a small room with the desks in a "U" configuration for easier and friendlier conversation. There are ten, forty-five minute class periods per week. This provides approximately .5 hour per student per week for actual oral English practice with a FE.

The Speech Lab should be designed and equipped to facilitate speech production. Round tables, with which the Chinese are very familiar, or "U" shaped tables that provide teacher access in the middle, are the best seating arrangement.

A close, friendly, non-threatening atmosphere should be established to induce a friendly coffee shop approach to the small group conversation. As in a coffee shop, the topics should be current events that are relevant and interesting to the speakers. The best source for such topics is the local English newspaper, just as in the western Countries.

English conversation textbooks written by native English speakers are usually old and boring, using stories outdated by at least twenty years. The language is also old and outdated, culturally out of step with current language usage. English dictionaries are updated annually but these English textbooks are not. This is primarily due to budget constraints.

Textbooks written by Chinese English speakers often use inappropriate vernacular. They are usually authored by Chinese English speakers who have had little or no exposure to English culture and must rely upon their understanding of dictionary definitions for word choice. This dictionary definition English is too formalistic, rigid or brittle, and can produce tears of uproarious ridiculing laughter in a native English speaker who hears it. When was the last time you heard a native English speaker use any of the following expressions in daily conversation? 1. I am so sorry, pal. 2. Beg pardon. I didn't quite catch your meaning. 3. I must atone for calling you so late. (Interactive Speaking, 2001) Current production, at least in America, would be closer to: 1. Sorry. 2. What? 3. Sorry for the late call. The following are some random examples of sentences from Interactive 2001 that simply do not reflect the way L1 English speakers talk:

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