Topic: news For Better or Worse: English Language Reform to Begin in China

It should be noted that the ratio of transfer between English and Chinese isn’t 1:1. In addition to the overall total for Chinese being raised by thirty points, twenty points also went to the arts/sciences section of the exam. Very few articles have reported this because it detracts from their attempts to describe this change in terms of lingua-nationalism. Which it isn’t. If we step back from this topic a little, I think its worth noting that very few countries mandate the study of a foreign language until the age of eighteen. Although the results of language education in middle and high schools in China can sometimes be rather dubious, at least the will to fully incorporate languages into mainstream education exists. Furthermore, the proportion of time, energy and assessment weighting given to English language by the Chinese education system is extraordinary when compared to the post-16 systems of many other countries. Also, most provinces give more weight to English than Beijing does and contrary to a lot of recent articles, it is not a bellwether indicator of future education practice in other parts of China. Of course, as we all know a lot of this English language education effort doesn’t achieve much and to a significant degree this is due to the nature of education within China and in particular the university entrance examination itself. If viewed in terms beyond reliability and practicality of administration, the “gaokao” is actually a terrible test – one can obtain very high marks using strategies which aren’t based on genuine learning and understanding. It is a test for which cramming works. It is, of course, a very difficult task to create an admissions system which functions properly in a country as large and “developing” as China – I always consider it to be a minor miracle that it keeps on working every year – but that doesn’t detract from the fact that the test is a very poor measure of many things, amongst them language skills. In short then, moving the exam-points-goalposts, whilst notable in terms of potential EFL sector washback, is less significant in relation to more genuine educational outcomes. Altering the questions content and mechanics of the test itself would be far more significant.