Learning English in China still has a long way to go

Online shopping empire Ali Baba provides a chance to practice English in China Photo:Jessica Carter

China is host to the world’s largest number of English learners, but the opportunities for speaking and learning remain inadequate, leaving many Chinese English users relying on a diet of Western pop culture to get by in business. Jessica Carter writes from Hangzhou, China.

In Hangzhou, a cosmopolitan city of over eight million people two hours south of Shanghai, the glass offices of online shopping empire Ali Baba are still glowing with life. It is 7.30pm. In one room, a group of forty staff have volunteered to stay late without overtime. The incentive is the opportunity to meet English-speaking foreigners – a rare chance to practice English, the language they’ve been trying to learn since middle school.

Among the eager huddle awaits “Honey”, a 25-year-old Chinese woman. Honey – the name she chose in her first English class – was originally from a rural area in northern China until she moved to Hangzhou looking for work, money and opportunity when she finished school.

Like most of her colleagues, Honey began studying English when she was 14. Her language classes were just three hours a week but she studied hard with one aim in mind – to pass the Gao Kao (literally, tall test) to gain entrance to university.

A quarter of her final school grade came from those hurried English lessons. At university, Honey studied English for another two years to pass her CET-4 (College English Test Band 4), an exam all university students in China must pass to graduate.

But after almost ten years of studying to pass English exams, Honey is the first to admit – in a mix of Putonghua and English – that she doesn’t actually speak much English at all. Passing her CET-4 helped her get a good job, but it didn’t make her an English speaker.

Honey is among the 400 million Chinese who have studied English in China in the past 30 years. While the accuracy of the government’s figure is debatable – a report from Cambridge University Press claimed China had only 250 – 350 million English learners – the number is still significant. In a world where only one quarter of English users are actually native speakers, China alone contributes almost another quarter to the world’s total of 1.25 billion English users.

Professor Chris Kennedy, Director for the Centre of English Language Studies at the University of Birmingham, said this was one example of how ownership of the English language is changing. “English is no longer the preserve of native-speakers but is now owned by all speakers of the language whether they are first language speakers or not.”

The prohibitive cost of private tuition and language colleges means that the majority of Chinese students have few opportunities to learn English beyond the government’s education model. This also means that most learners will only ever speak English with their Chinese teachers and fellow students. “In China, few schools and families could afford the fee of a foreign teacher so our English is a sort of Chinglish,” said Honey.

Honey has had few opportunities to practice English since completing university; the only time she and her friends hear English is when they’re watching episodes of American sitcom Big Bang Theory or when a friend sings the lyrics of a Western pop song at karaoke on Saturday night.

Honey, who desperately wants to master the English language, points out that the Chinese education system’s emphasis on exams made it very difficult for her to speak any version of English.

“I had very few chances to improve my English and this will not change. Chinese students are good at writing and reading but worse at listening and speaking English. For most Chinese, after we pass the CET-4 exam, we do not use it any more.”

Chinese official government estimates show the ratio of English teachers to students in Chinese colleges stands at 1-to-130, a figure that goes some way to explaining China’s poor English Proficiency Index rating.

Although hundreds of foreigners are coming to China to teach English, mainly from the big six (England, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa)  the overwhelming majority of English teachers are Chinese who learnt English in the same exam-focused system as Honey.

Amy Ma is one of these Chinese English teachers. She began learning English in school at the age of 13 and describes her English experience as “learning by the textbook”.

Amy, who speaks English with a distinctly American twang – though she has never been overseas – and took her English name from a character on television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond said she found her job challenging at times.

“Being a Chinese English teacher is always stressful because people prefer foreigners to teach them English,” she said. “For people who didn’t grow up in [an English-speaking] kind of culture, it’s really hard to teach its language.”

Amy teaches at private English tuition college Gateway Learning Village, also in Hangzhou, where students live and study in an English-only environment and the experience is far from textbook-learning, making it a unique learning opportunity for those able to go there.

A full immersion study and living environment is one way that the school is applying different methods that integrate speaking more thoroughly into the learning model. Amy works hard, spending hours to prepare classes that encourage students to use English, rather than learning it simply for the sake of passing exams. But schools and teachers like this are rare in China.

While China’s general education system ranks highly on a global scale – in late 2009, Shanghai was placed first in the world in the OECD’s PISA student assessments –a study released in late 2011 ranked China at 29 out of 44 in the global English Proficiency Index. China’s poor ranking in the English Proficiency Index suggests that improvements do need to be made in the country’s approach to English education.

The Chinese government has said it wants to produce 20 million English speakers a year. But the challenge remains to produce 20 million speakers who can actually use the language with proficiency.

Professor Kennedy said it is important for teachers to teach more ‘communicatively’ but this also placed significant demands on teachers’ time and skills, meaning that more language training and development needs to be established in China.

Chinese demand for quality English education is strong. Despite expensive fees, the demand for private English tuition is growing, and the industry is already worth nearly $3 billion. China also ranks first in the world for sending students overseas for overseas education. Many of these students end up in English-speaking countries and return to China with new skills and, sometimes, better English.

The strong correlation between English language skills and economic opportunity is part of the reason for China’s continuing focus on English. Last year Le Yucheng, Director-General of policy planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, compared the number of Chinese English learners over the past thirty years with the number of Chinese whose living standards have improved during the same period – both 400 million.

TEFL Trainer Charmaine Barretto, based in China, said the demand for English learning opportunities beyond the classroom would continue to grow since communicative competence is a must in the business world.

“China is an export-driven economy so people there have to interact with foreigners. People who wish to enhance their job prospects are prepared to pay.”

Honey – the woman from Ali Baba – said even though she couldn’t afford private tuition, she endured years of tedious English classes for the employment and business opportunities it represented.

“China is becoming more and more international. There are many foreigners and foreign companies coming to China so we have to master English to find a good job,” she said.

While many Chinese only need to pass their CET-4 to get a good domestic job, a growing number need English to move or do business overseas. But they are finding that neither the CET-4 nor the CET-6 guarantee a foreign visa.

Immigration lawyer James Jiang, who has been working to assist Chinese visa applicants to Australia and New Zealand since 2004, said it is getting more difficult to obtain a foreign visa for Chinese people.

He attributed this to a combination of factors: partly because governments are making it tougher to get visas but also because Chinese applicants do not speak good enough English.

“If you can speak English well, you are more than likely to be accepted. English is the main criteria for visa success,” Jiang said.

Professor Kennedy said it would be a very long time before Chinese people start to use English as a second language as they do in places like Singapore or Malaysia where many communicate almost solely in English. But he said the competent use of English as a foreign language was likely to increase in the long-term.

“The most likely scenario is that bilingual families [mainly from urban, privileged contexts] will emerge who are confident in both English and Mandarin but will continue to use Mandarin at home.”

With a growing economy – heading to overtake the US – and a growing population, the number of Chinese learning English will continue to grow. Even without high proficiency, China is already host to the world’s largest number of English learners, meaning that the nation’s approach to teaching and using the English language will play a significant role in the long-term future of English as a global language.

What that future looks like remains to be seen.