An Analysis on the Causes and Solutions to ESL Teaching in Rural Areas of China

張遠(yuǎn)艷

Abstract：Its obvious that ESL teaching programs are very important during the course of Chinas development. English has become a required course in schools. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the factors that impact ESL education in remote and rural areas of China and the reasons for the students poor English learning by examining the aspects of cultural background, learning environment, teachers qualification, and the teaching facility.Ultimately, the aim of this study is to promote, advance, and garner support and understanding about the need for ESL teaching and learning in remote and rural areas in China.

Key words：analysis; English as a Second Language; English teaching; proficiency

CLC number：G420Ocument code：AArticle ID：1674-120X（2016）14-0048-03Received date：2016-02-26

Nowadays, there are more and more cultural exchange and cooperation between China and other countries.With the rapid increase of economic development in China after she opened her door to the outside world and with the frequency of communication between China and English speaking countries, there has been a trend that more and more people are making a point of learning English in order to catch up with the new tide. In their opinion, grasping a second language will offer them more opportunities in their career.As a result, ESL teaching in high schools, on and off campus becomes very important and popular in China.English has become a required course in all schools in China. English as a Second Language (ESL) is critical in Chinese education now.Generally speaking, English is taught from grade 3 on in Chinese elementary schools.For years, the Chinese government, local educational institutions, and schools have sought to dramatically improve ESL teaching and invest much money and energy in the task.English proficiency test centers are set up all over the country-in all provinces-in order to handle nation-wide English tests.However, what about the fruits of their efforts? Chinese students English is often called “deaf and dumb English”, which means their listening and speaking abilities are very low. It's a common phenomenon that Chinese students still have difficulty in communicating with native English speakers even though they have been studying it for several years. It is even worse in remote and rural areas of China. So ESL teaching in those areas is unsuccessful. This paper is intended to illustrate the factors that impact the development of ESL teaching and the techniques and strategies that can significantly improve ESL teaching in rural areas of China.

In the past few decades since World War II, the emerging global economy has made it possible for English to play an important role as the world standard language. In view of the situation, millions of students are learning English as the most important foreign language for international communication all over the world. People of the world unanimously consider English as the most useful language for cross-boundary communication. The global spread of English over the last 40 years is remarkable in the history of the language of English. English has become an international language for multinational and multicultural communication. It is believed that if you can not speak English, you may be lost in the globalization.

As China continues to modernize and open to the world, demand for English language skills has intensified and passion for learning English is also at an all time high. As Jiang (2003) says, “governments are encouraging their citizens to learn English, parents are persuading, even forcing, their children to speak it and college students are doing English at the expense of their majors”. Although the importance of English is widely acknowledged, Chinese students and teachers frequently comment that the major challenge they face in acquiring the language is that “China does not have a good English language atmosphore” by which they mean there are insufficient opportunities to use English in real life situations and a lack of exposure to authentic English language material. In China, upon graduation, college students have worked hard to learn English for ten years; six in the middle school and four at university. They also passed CET-4, many even CET-6. Many have also gotten very high scores in English examinations. However, they can't talk to an English-speaker. They also can't understand books in English.

Why? What is the present status of China's English education? What is wrong with the ESL teaching program in China? What are the factors that impact the efficiency of the teaching and learning in schools? What are the reasons for the failure of ESL teaching and learning in China?

1.A Brief History of ESL Teaching in China

Among the many different aspects of China which have fascinated the West is the size of its population, its long and mysterious culture, and the intricate difficulty of its language. Equally, the West has always intrigued China, with its technological advancement, its cultural diversity within a small space, and the way in which one of its languages - English - has managed to become the lingua franca of the world.

In fact, China had a long history of deliberately avoiding contact with the West for fear of cultural contamination. After the establishment of New China in 1949, the status of English was replaced by Russian as the only foreign language in the country in the 1950s.During the time, English was condemned as unpatriotic because of a national campaign against American imperialism and British colonialism. However, this phase didn't last long because of the deteriorated relationship between Russia and China in the middle of 50s of the 20th century.The substantial change toward English language teaching in China didn't happen until late 1978 when Deng Xiaoping (the late chairman of China) came to power after the crackdown of Mao's (the founder of the new China) wife's clique. English was again prominent as a main foreign language taught in various Chinese schools. By the early 1980s，English had been restored as a compulsory subject in the college entrance examinations.With the following open-door policy, quite a number of Chinese scholars have the chance to go abroad to receive higher education in Western countries.English has become the most popular foreign language in modern China. It is estimated that the number of people studying English in China is much larger than that of all native speakers around the world.

Nowadays, English learning seems to be an extremely critical issue for students in schools. All the heads and faculty have been trying hard to help their students get higher scores on various English tests. This issue even bothers students' parents so much that they have to spend much time thinking how to help their kids improve their English level.They spend a lot of money hiring tutors to help their kids.

However, what disappoints educational institutions, schools, parents and the students is that the result of all their efforts ends with a failure. That is, students who have learned English for over ten years cannot speak the language even though many of them might get high scores in tests, especially those from remote and rural areas in China. Why? What is the present status of China's English education? What is wrong with the ESL teaching program in China? What are the factors that impact the efficiency of the teaching and learning in schools? What are the reasons for the failure of ESL teaching and learning in China? Are students in remote and rural areas of China slow at language learning? Are teachers in these areas qualified enough to teach English? Are teaching facilities well equipped?

2.Modern ESL Teaching in China

A great deal of attention has been paid to English teaching and learning since the beginning of the reform of the Chinese economy in 1978. However, there are some disadvantages of ESL education in China.

First is a lack of qualified foreign language instructors. It is often the case that quite a number of English teachers in China have a very limited knowledge of English while students have high expectation from their teachers. They are no doubt involved in endless and frustrating work of preparing lessons to teach English, which they themselves haven't understood well before walking into the classroom. Due to the low level of their own English, they have to struggle more hours than teachers of other subjects preparing their lessons. Helping students get higher scores in English tests seems to be the only goal because they might lose their jobs if the rate of students' passing test is too low. “Teaching and learning foreign language as communicative skills has been ignored because the skills of how to succeed in taking tests are more important.” (David Wang, 2003) On the other hand, effective English teachers should have abundant cross-cultural awareness, but most of them have no experience of living in English speaking countries. Especially in the rural areas of China, the English teachers are even less qualified. They seldom get chances to be trained to be a more qualified teacher. Qualified teachers are badly needed in these areas, but due to the harsh situations of education, few qualified teachers would choose to come to teach in these areas. “ESL education fails because many ESL classes are conducted by poorly trained teachers.” (Deqi Zhen, 2001) As a result, the teacher development program has become the “bottle-neck” issue in current ESL teaching.

Second is the backward methodology. Teachers, as well as, students typically adopt the Grammar-Translation means to teach and learn English, which focuses on English grammar and vocabulary, on linguistic phenomena rather than on reading the content itself. “Content-based language teaching is more effective than traditional grammar translation.” (David John Wood, 1999) Let alone the practice of listening and speaking. It is no surprise to see a Chinese student who has a very satisfactory mark on his English examination can't express himself well in English with his foreign peer. There is a popular saying about this extravagant scene in learning English as“dumb and deaf”English.

Third is the poor teaching facility. In many rural areas of China, with the lack of funding for education, the schools' teaching facilities are far from sufficient.Some schools in big or medium size cities do have high technological equipment in classrooms. Schools in rural areas do not have. What is even worse is that in some poor rural areas, students never see a tape recorder or TV set while they are still required to understand a thick English textbook. Many English classes have no access to an audiovideo language laboratory, nor do they reach the Internet. This rigid pattern of old fashioned textbook-based, teacherdominated and test-oriented teaching is out of date with the rapid growth of international communication in China. “Video with interesting content and meaningful context is also likely to be both memorable and capable of developing students' language skills.” (David John Wood, 1999)

Fourth is the lack of communication opportunities. Due to poor situations of geographical environment, students in western rural areas have little chance to be exposed to the outside world which influences their understanding of the world and the language which reflects the world. In some remote mountainous areas, most families don't have a TV set, not to mention a computer or internet.They never have a chance to see a native speaker of English and talk to him to practice their English speaking.

Last, but not least, is the number of students in the class. It's normal to see about 40—50 students in one English class, in middle school or in college. The teacher has to face so many students in the class.Therefore, it is impossible for an English teacher to take good care of each student in the class.Only a few students have the chance to answer questions and speak English in the class. But English class is the only place that they can practice speaking English.

The Ministry of Education launched a new campaign to reform ESL teaching education at the turn of the 21st century. The reform aims to modernize ESL teaching on campuses, pushing it out of its traditional track and equipping it with better technology. Great importance is attached to communicative proficiency in cross-cultural exchanges.Due to the reform, the situation has improved a bit.The government carried out some policies to encourage more qualified English teachers to work in the western part of China, especially the rural areas of the west.As for the technology, the government also put a lot of money to equip the classrooms, but that is far from enough.It can never meet the need of ESL teaching in such a big country with such a huge population and so many undeveloped rural areas.

It is clear that the Chinese government, educational administrations, ESL educators and researchers are catching up. However, we are still facing great challenges. ESL educators should continually seek insight and become well informed about what occurred in the past, what is coming at present, and what should be done in the future. In order to function efficiently in its economy with the global market, China needs to bring large numbers of people to a higher level of proficiency in English for a wide variety of functions. Success of English language teaching and learning depends largely on understanding English as a tool for communication.

It's obvious that ESL teaching programs are very important during the course of China's development, but it takes time to achieve a goal which we are satisfied with. It needs support from all sides which are involved. Education fund is essential for ESL programs, but factors like the exposure to cultural background knowledge, teacher's qualification and good methodology are also important in ESL programs. In one word, ESL program in remote and rural areas of China has long way to go.

It's a common phenomenon that Chinese students still have difficulty in communicating with native English speakers even though they have been studying it for several years. It is even worse in remote and rural areas of China. So ESL teaching in those areas is unsuccessful. This paper is intended to illustrate the factors that impact the development of ESL teaching and the techniques and strategies that can significantly improve ESL teaching in rural areas of China. Ultimately, the aim of this study is to promote, advance, and garner support and understanding about the need for ESL teaching and learning in remote and rural areas of China.

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