English Fever: Is it abating?

"Diction" is another word for "enunciation". It is about how clearly we speak and how comprehensible our pronunciation is.  Someone who swallows their words or mumbles does not have good diction.  

The primary use of the word "diction"  (and the way I have always used it) is not as a synonym for enunciation.  It can be a synonym for enunciation but that isn't its only, or primary, use.

You can check the Wikipedia page if you like.

  Yay! Pedantry!  

Maybe it's a British/American thing. 

Bob, not to argue semantics too much, but when we teach "diction" what we usually mean is word choice. It is something different from usage, and although some usage errors can involve incorrect diction, usage is broader in scope. In the US, if you teach an English composition course designed for native speakers you'll see these concepts come up a lot. This might indeed be a British/American thing.

I do think the discussion of Standard English is a really interesting side discussion and I honestly don't really know the answer to your question. Why are Chinese students/teachers so obsessed with some very strange and outdated idea of a standard English accent? My best guess is that most Chinese learners don't really know what true fluency sounds like and accent is something they can focus on that is fairly easy (in their minds) to correct. It is also something that acts as a distractor from the difficult aspects of learning English. Most Chinese learners don't really know what the end result of all their studying should amount to, but they know they should sound like either a BBC news anchor or Brad Pitt.

On the main discussion, I have always thought of college students studying English as being somehow separate from the English fever phenomenon, which I see as something that mainly involves training schools and private lessons. I mean there was a period, about 5-10 years ago, when new English training schools were popping up right and left. You'd get on the bus and see people clutching textbooks and you'd go outside and hear people screaming their crazy English. Does that still happen? And did the people who sat in English class every Saturday morning for 2 years accomplish anything?

I think the question of whether people are satisfied with their experience studying English is kind of complicated. There are several answers. First, did these students actually learn anything? Did they improve? No matter how much your English school and teacher might have sucked, it would be pretty unlikely that someone could study for years and learn absolutely nothing. But arguably these students weren't studying just to learn, they expected English to somehow improve their lives in some measurable way. And in that sense, I think that a lot of the students who bought into English fever probably are not satisfied with what they got out of it. There are very few people in China who will actually see any tangible benefits from learning English, and I think that there are probably quite a few people out there who feel a bit cheated because after all these years of English study, what have they gained? Learning for learning's sake is not a concept that the Chinese generally embrace, and so unless there is some sort of gain to be had from studying English, the Chinese simply aren't going to continue studying beyond the basics needed to pass the exam and get by.

And so then you come full circle -- who are the people who actually benefit from the study of English and how can the market shift and cater to these people? Instead of trying to convince everyone that they should be learning English, how can they make sure that the people who do need English get the instruction they require. What these people require is not songs and games and blonde haired blue eyed backpackers, but people who can actually teach.

Bob, not to argue semantics too much, but when we teach "diction" what we usually mean is word choice.

That is certainly what I mean by it, yes.

Here's another question: do you think that the importance of the English language within the Chinese education system has anything to do with long-term competition against a rising Indian economy?  Or should I put my tinfoil hat back on.

tinfoil hat

That reminds me - I once met a guy in a bar who strongly believed that English education in China had been deliberately hamstrung by the powers that be. 

This was apparently in order to turn the vast majority into useful but harmless drones who can just-about-but-not-really communicate in English.

Say, sufficient for a low level foreign trade job, but certainly not sufficient to engage in meaningful political discussion with foreigners, or read contentious Wikipedia articles for example.

He was pretty convincing after a couple of beers and a bad day of classes.     

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tinfoil hat

 

This was apparently in order to turn the vast majority into useful but harmless drones who can just-about-but-not-really communicate in English.
  

Now yer talking! This is exactly why learning English, in the sense of the CET4, is compulsory! Reading user manuals, incoming orders, send off letter of credit..........

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tinfoil hat

That reminds me - I once met a guy in a bar who strongly believed that English education in China had been deliberately hamstrung by the powers that be. 

This was apparently in order to turn the vast majority into useful but harmless drones who can just-about-but-not-really communicate in English.

Say, sufficient for a low level foreign trade job, but certainly not sufficient to engage in meaningful political discussion with foreigners, or read contentious Wikipedia articles for example.

He was pretty convincing after a couple of beers and a bad day of classes.     

I think there is some degree of truth in that

All education for young people everywhere is as much about 'socialisation' as the actual content. It's not purely the quality of teaching or them being smart that makes rich people from rich famlies who go to expensive schools get good jobs after school....

Expensive 'Western-style' education (in English) still seems to be in demand:

Monash close to China kick-off

The finishing touches on Monash University's sprawling campus in Suzhou are still being applied… The graduate school is only the third foreign university in China...The other foreign universities in China are the University of Liverpool and the University of Nottingham.  American universities New York University and Duke University are expected to receive approval for campuses to operate in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Still cheaper than the alternative though. This is the future of international education in China.

I keep wanting to find the moron who wrote my daughter's English textbooks and make his suffering legendary.  It's bad enough that the focus ignores the concept of language as a tool of communication and instead focuses on the most obscure possible grammar issues that even Grammar Nazis wouldn't care about, but a dangerously large percentage of the material is 100% wrong.

Tried an internet search? Then put a "Bounty" on his [sexist assumption] head. Say he insulted The Prophet, which generally works.

I must concede, as a hater of text books, that decent non "English speaking countries are wonderful and you people are losers" tomes, whilst rare, are useful teaching and learning tools. There was a definitive collaborative EFL text book writing exercise on this forum years ago: maybe vi or vii. Obviously it didn't make it, unless someone somewhere is living a comfortable retirement.

Another side to this argument?  Seems somebody doesn't like the role (and possibly power) NESTs have in the HK education system specifically...

University 'Blue Book' criticises recruitment of foreign teachers

The Chinese-language Blue Book of Hong Kong: Annual Report on Development of Hong Kong (2012) says the NET scheme, in place since 1997, should be abolished because of its social and political bearing on Hong Kong. It describes some of the teachers selected as having "taken root in Hong Kong".

"The government has assigned the scheme to import foreign English teachers to the British Council as the agent. Some of the English teachers it has selected ... have taken root in Hong Kong and become permanent residents. The social and political impact brought about by this particular, exceptional channel is worth extra attention.

"The import system … should be abolished."

Note: It seems the BC have not been running this scheme for years, it belongs to local education authorities now.

What?  Evil FTs going native and settling down?  There are proper solutions for dealing with dangerously crazy people like that.

The Empire was largely established so that young men who did not "fit in" at home [often alcoholism, and/or raging-as opposed to standard British-homosexuality] had a place to live. This has obviously altered with time, but the TEFL industry and HK remain a refuge for some. A few senior posters will recall "Bertrand" on Dave's: a classic example.

On a slightly different tack, Malaysia provides special visa status for self funded retirees. An attractive option, given the climate, the food, the cost of living c.f. many of our Western homelands. Not much of a TEFL industry though.

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I think the question of whether people are satisfied with their experience studying English is kind of complicated. There are several answers. First, did these students actually learn anything? Did they improve? No matter how much your English school and teacher might have sucked, it would be pretty unlikely that someone could study for years and learn absolutely nothing. But arguably these students weren't studying just to learn, they expected English to somehow improve their lives in some measurable way. And in that sense, I think that a lot of the students who bought into English fever probably are not satisfied with what they got out of it. There are very few people in China who will actually see any tangible benefits from learning English, and I think that there are probably quite a few people out there who feel a bit cheated because after all these years of English study, what have they gained? Learning for learning's sake is not a concept that the Chinese generally embrace,
...

To be fair, learning for learning's sake is not something that ANYBODY but a select few generally embrace.  I study mathematics sometimes because I am interested in it even though I will never really use it (unless I become a math teacher).   Having said that, I'm not going to learn Arabic, just for "learning's sake".   I would need a reason to be interested in Arabic which is not likely to happen in the near future.

I don't even think that Americans in general, are into the "learning for learning's sake" bandwagon.  They want to learn something that will help them get a good job.  In other words, they are not much different from the Chinese.

And so then you come full circle -- who are the people who actually benefit from the study of English and how can the market shift and cater to these people? Instead of trying to convince everyone that they should be learning English, how can they make sure that the people who do need English get the instruction they require. What these people require is not songs and games and blonde haired blue eyed backpackers, but people who can actually teach.

Both songs and games are not in and of themselves, bad ways of teaching.  They are not things I personally tend to want to use for some reason.

As to "who can actually teach" I really don't know.   I don't consider myself to be a good teacher although I do give it an honest try.  I have met people who think they are good teachers who actually aren't.  Some teachers I have met who are good at teaching children, tend to be kind of childish themselves sometimes. 

Also, anyone who has been around teachers for any length of time will notice that "credentials" don't seem to equate to "good teacher".   I try to be a good teacher, which is basically all I can do.  I always think that it's not difficult to find someone who would be a better teacher than me, but what can you do?

Anyway, given my math and logic background I would say that if we really did know much about "who can teach" then we wouldn't have very many bad teachers for very long.

Suppose we start out with 1000 teachers and 999 of them are bad teachers and only one of them is a good teacher.  Let's list them as T1, T2, ... T1000.   Let's say T1 is a good teacher.   What we do is, have T1 teach T2 and T3 how to be good teachers.   Since T1 is a good teacher and knows how to teach, T2 and T3 will become good teachers.   We would then have a system where T1, T2, and T3 are now good teachers.  Then we have T1 teach T4 and T5 how to be good teachers and T2 teach T6 and T7 how to be good teachers and have T3 teach T8 and T9 how to be good teachers.   Since T1, T2, and T3 are good teachers and know how to teach, this will mean after the second iteration, T1, ..., T9 will now be good teachers.

After only 6 iterations of the abmaove process, you would have a majority of the teachers as good teachers.  After 7 iterations, ALL of them would be good teachers.  If it takes 4 years to teach someone how to be a good teacher, then you would have NO bad teachers after 28 years.   

Any problems with the above process would have to do with the fact that we don't know what "being a good teacher" really entails.

So you want to have a teacher teach other teachers how to teach and how to teach other teachers how to teach, right?

I think my mother did her doctoral dissertation on something like that.  She should be grateful that I wasn't on her committee.