Thoughts:
This chapter brings up a new perspective to view the English learning situation in China by pointing out an expectation for Chinese students that “ students will learn more grammatical items as they progress through the years of English language teaching in school and university, with testing at each stage comprising testing of the items learned rather than testing of language proficiency across macro skills.” This expectation implies that students in China are learning English by separating it into discrete parts and ignoring teaching students how to put those knowledge together and use it as a whole. Rachael’s experience can serve as an illustration of this point. Like what Rachael says in her narrative “To help us prepare for the exam, our English teacher taught us a large amount of grammar knowledge and exam techniques, and let us practice papers every single class. The exam was mainly relevant to reading and grammar rather than writing or other skills. Therefore, I practiced with different articles and grammar exercises from varied textbooks, online resources and past papers.” Instead of testing of the skills of using English, teachers test reading and grammar these two parts of English that they think are more important.
Before reading this Chapter, I always hold the opinion that “the language gap exists because the language environment and the purpose of learning the language are different. In china, except the students who want to study abroad, other students study English because of the general requirement of the education system and the entry exam for universities. Because the purpose for test instead of for daily use, textbooks mainly focus on formal English, especially grammar.” Just like the opinion Phiona Stanley presents in the chapter that as international students we are having “travelled from a culture where the educational tradition is textbook-focused to a culture where the educational environment encourages students to independently explore their personal interest in learning” But the chapter also points out another new perspective that student’s own perception of learning also causes the language gap. This new opinion counters my opinion in my narrative. Like a foreign teachers say that:
[Foreign teachers] turn the students off because [the students] they think they know it, they feel like they’ve already ticked that box, they’ve closed that page in the book…they haven’t necessarily internalized it but they’ve seen it, so they perceive they’ve learned it.
[The students] look at the book and see ‘maybe you could plus verb’, and they think ‘ I know those words, that’s not new, I already know that’… [and] they’ll dismiss it and go ‘boring’…They’re not using it at all.
The situation does happening English classroom in China. Sometimes, we do have foreign teachers to teach us oral English by organizing activities and discussions for us to participate. But students even those students who want to study abroad think the words or sentences in activities have been learned already and have no interest to use them and learn how to use them in different situations.
This chapter provides a more comprehensive view about how English is taught in China. It also points out the problems in English teaching in China. By explaining influence of the cultural perception, examination backwash and separating English instead of teaching as a whole, Phiona Stanleyalso offers a new perspective about students’ own resistance to active learning to help me rethink the reason of the language gap and how to solve the gap . This chapter can be viewed as a “extending” or “forwarding” of the Chapter: Rote Learning in Chinese Culture: Reflecting Active Confucian-Based Memory Strategies. Because it extends from the cultural difference’s influence in English teaching in China to exploring more factors that influence English pedagogy in China.
I can't !!!!
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