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Introduction: Why Study Globalization and Culture through English-Language Learning and Teaching in China?

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Internationalizing Teaching, Localizing Learning

Part of the book series: Language and Globalization ((LAGL))

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Abstract

China Southern University (CSU) Vice-Chancellor Tsing, who had previously worked as an administrator in the USA and had come to CSU in 2002 to oversee teaching reforms and the implementation of the English Language Center (ELC), often recounted a story about her first weeks on campus and her amazement at seeing all of the desks in the classrooms bolted to the floor and lined up in rows facing the teaching lectern. In her desire to institute student-centered teaching reforms and her belief that Chinese education was becoming more Western through the influence of the many foreign teachers on university campuses across China, Vice-Chancellor Tsing felt that the rows of desks had to be unbolted in order to allow students to work in groups with desks facing each other instead of the teacher. After much debate with administrators and staff, she threatened to go through each room with a wrench and unbolt each desk herself. She eventually convinced the university to buy new desks without bolts for most classrooms, and she often remarked that the unbolting of the desks illustrated the perseverance needed to reform Chinese education and change traditional ways of teaching and learning in China. In this way Vice-Chancellor Tsing argued that China and the global West were moving towards a shared educational culture.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As first described in the Preface, China Southern University (CSU) is a psydonym for the focal university examined throughout the book. Vice-Chancellor Tsing is also a pseudonym. Unless noted, all names of teachers and students used in the book are pseudonyms. For example, all teachers throughout the book have pseudonyms, but English names of CSU students are their chosen English names as described in Chap. 4.

  2. 2.

    Kachru (1986, 1992) founded the field of World Englishes (WE), and scholarship examining the spread of English and the different regional and global norms and influences on grammar and pronunciation. His influential model of World Englishes is based on either concentric or interlinked circles. The first or “Inner Circle” contains nations where English was primarily an L1 or “first language,” and those to which it then spread and also attained this status (such as the USA, New Zealand, and the UK). The second or “Outer Circle” includes nations where English has become an official language or co-language, often after a period of colonization (e.g. India, the Philippines, and Nigeria). The third or “Expanding Circle” represents nations where English has been adopted as the language of business, technology, or government (e.g. China, Israel, or Japan). The WE model has been criticized by a variety of academics for placing so-called native-speaker countries at the center of the model and drawing on a traditional view that equates languages with nation-states (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Pennycook, 2001).

  3. 3.

    Soon after the foundation of the PRC, the MOE instituted the gāokǎo or National College Entrance Exam (NCEE) in 1952 as a high-stakes exam of students’ knowledge of high-school subjects. The test is critical in determining the academic and career future of Chinese high-school students. In many cases, the students’ parents’ and family’s futures also depend on successful results. Annually, millions of students take the test. For example, in 2013, 9.4 million students received scores (Muthanna and Sang, 2015).

  4. 4.

    Created in China as part of the Reform and Opening economic policies in the later 1970s and 1980s, SEZs in China allow Chinese and foreign businesses less government oversight and tariffs than other regions in China in order to encourage businesses to invest in these areas. Many of the SEZs are located in southern or coastal China, in areas such as Shenzhen and Zhuhai. In the 1980s, the Chinese government went on to create free-trade and SEZs in entire provinces, such as Hebei, and regions, such as the Yangtze River Delta.

  5. 5.

    Key universities in China participated in the MOE’s “Project 211” that was initiated in 1995 to encourage development at top universities throughout China. Under the Project 211 plan, over $2.2 billion was spent between 1996 and 2000 to increase the research and teaching capacities of the top universities in China. In total, all schools listed as 211 schools were responsible for teaching 80 % of doctoral students, 66 % of graduate students, 50 % of foreign students, and 33 % of mainland Chinese undergraduates (Li, 2004).

  6. 6.

    According to Li and Thompson (1981) Cháoshàn huà is a Min dialect, primarily spoken in eastern Guangdong, near CSU. Most CSU students, however, come from major metropolitan areas around Guangzhou, Foshan, and other cities in central Guangdong Province and speak a dialect of Cantonese. All classes are taught in Mandarin Chinese at CSU.

  7. 7.

    Linguists, Chinese government officials, and local language and culture preservationists have long contested the terms “dialect” and “language” in the Chineselanguage context. In official government policy and in the opinion of the majority of Han Chinese, Cantonese (or Guǎngdōng huà) and Cháoshàn huà are dialects of Chinese (with Mandarin or Pǔtōnghuà considered the “standard”). Linguists such as Li and Thompson (1981) often set aside political aspect of these distinctions by referring to the popular quote, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy,” and they focus on cataloguing the differences in phonology, syntax, and semantics between what Li and Thompson (1981) call Chinese dialect families. This book does not investigate these complex historical, social, and political definitions of Chinese languages, but the wide variety of first and second dialects/languages spoken on the CSU campus does play a role in much of the identity choices and processes analyzed in the book, and I will refer to students as Guǎngdōng huà/Cantonese speakers or Cháoshàn huà speakers throughout the book, avoiding referring to these as either dialects or languages.

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McPherron, P. (2017). Introduction: Why Study Globalization and Culture through English-Language Learning and Teaching in China?. In: Internationalizing Teaching, Localizing Learning. Language and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51954-2_1

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