Editor’s note: The Gaokao has long been controversial. At the present time, a student’s scores on the Gaokao determines what Chinese university they are allowed to get into, and as a result children are forced to spend most of their school years cramming for this test. The ‘best school in China’ is labeled as such solely because it is a ‘super Gaokao factory’ and an unusually high number of its students get into Tsinghua. Despite this, not everyone is convinced by the Gaokao. An ever increasing number of students are refusing to take it in favor of private schools and other forms of examination. Provinces across China have been reviewing and reforming it, trying to create a better method for assessment that won’t just create tired, overworked children that have spent their whole entire academic careerlearning the skill of memorization.

Beijing has recently published their own Gaokao reform plan which includes a reassessment of the importance given to the subject of English versus Chinese. In a previous article, we delved into whether the importance of expat English teachers was diminishing; this translated article explores the proposed reforms from a Chinese perspective. 

Beijing recently released its college entrance examination reform plan for feedback to the public. The reforms would see scores for the English part of the exam cut from 150 to 100 points while raising those for Chinese language and literature from 150 to 180. The reforms also suggested ways to improve the content of English study in Chinese schools.

For those following the move, the central issue is whether this will pull English off its “godly platform”; in other words, critics are wondering whether learning English will no longer be the number one priority among students.

Since the reforms of the 1980s, both the government and society of China have attached a great deal of importance to the English language compared to other subjects. “Learn mathematics, physics and chemistry; take on the world” had been the popular slogan of the time. When that slogan went out of fashion it changed to “Learn your ABCs, take on the world”. Now that slogan has changed again to become, “Learn your ABCs, leave the country by plane.”

In addition to Beijing’s plan to reduce the points of English by a third, students will now be able to take the exam multiple times and then have their best score used as the valid examination score.  This move is believed to have been inspired by other countries’ experiences in teaching foreign languages and is seen as the start of the end of Gaokao’s biggest flaw: sealing a person’s fate based on the results of just one exam.

Beijing is not the only city reforming their Gaokao system; many other provinces are also reexamining it. In the future, English may not even become a requirement of the Gaokao examination.

Language and nationality

After many years, China finally has the chance to create a new standard for English teaching. However, reforming the English exams has also brought up discussions about nationality and culture.

A particular consideration in reforming the English exam is that the previous importance attached to English meant Chinese learning was underrated, a consequence that in turn led to the serious decline in many students’ Chinese language ability. A country with “over 5000 years of culture and history” should attach more importance to the mother tongue; as such, Chinese national culture ought to be more vigorously developed. 

Many students find coping with the necessary study time required for both English and Chinese extremely difficult. Reducing the required points for the English exam on the Gaokao isn’t about not studying English, but instead about trying to improve the way English is studied.

Those who are opposed to minimizing the importance of English argue that reducing the number points will weaken English education; for a country like China, closing itself off to the outside world would be detrimental to its development. If this is part of the Chinese dream, it is a blinding national hubris.

Not long before the reform proposals were made public, the official media posted an article related to the studying of English, seemingly to influence public opinion ahead of the reforms’ publication. The article quotes a Shanghai-based expert in teaching foreign languages who said that Chinese children spend 10 years studying English but only 5% can express themselves in the language. Educators blame China’s exam-oriented education system as the reason behind these results.

Language and culture

Since learning English became the educational craze of China, many Chinese children have been learning it as soon as they can speak. In this way, parents hope to raise their children bilingually and give their offspring a head start. Moreover, when these kids have reached the “finish line” (completed the Gaokao), some go on to continue their studies abroad to master the language while others will take the civil servant exams while others still will use their English language skills to stand out in a competitive job market.  Many early childhood education centers promote English learning as part of an education that also includes culture, thinking and ideas. However, the opposite is true in Chinese primary schools, high schools and universities; they learn a lot of English language but very little about the culture.

Supporters of the Gaokao reform say that English is nonetheless a kind of tool and skill. Learners can’t turn a blind eye to the cultural background of a language.

It would be difficult to imagine a Confucius Institute somewhere in the world merely teaching Chinese language and not even touching upon Chinese culture. But in China, that is what happens in English classrooms; the emphasis is on vocabulary and grammar and not on deep thinking and culture.  

During the reforms of the 1980s, accompanying the English learning craze was a so-called anti-bourgeoisie freedom movement. Intellectuals concerned with democracy, freedom, equality and human rights, ascribed to the peaceful evolution of Western (especially American) culture in China. These cultures, their ways of thinking and ideals could not be separated from the study of English.

In the subsequent years, the Chinese education department has remained cautious of attaching a cultural element to the learning of the English language. Many English teachers in China have stressed the importance of culture when studying a foreign language. Professor Wang Zuoliang was a graduate of Tsinghua University who went on to study at Oxford University and later became the first president of the China English Language Education Association. If you studied English in China in the 1980s, you would have heard of his name.

Wang once said, “Learning the language through culture will improve your ability to learn the language. The charm of the language and its style is worthy of study, mainly because behind it there is the spirit of the world: both language and culture must be artfully merged together because they both work together in promoting ideas and expression.”

The remarks of Wang Zuoliang seem outdated in today’s China, where the thirst for English seems to be driven by the prospect of studying abroad, civil service exams and the Gaokao.  Besides, the current English-learning market doesn’t use culture as its base but is still high in demand. This seems to indicate that stripping language learning of its cultural roots isn’t much of a hindrance as far as the popularity of learning the language is involved.

 

Source: bbc.co.uk

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: education reform English on gaokao gaokao reform English Language Reform To Begin in China English language requirements