English downgraded?

Will this change affect things?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/china-english-college-test-gaokao


China to downgrade English section of college admissions test

English section of the Gaokao to be reduced from 150 points to 100, and Chinese section increased from 150 to 180

Beijing education authorities plan to de-emphasise English scores on standardised tests, a sign that China's obsession with the language may be waning.

The Beijing municipal commission of education plans to reduce the English section of the all-important college admissions test, the Gaokao, from 150 points to 100 points in major cities by 2016, China's official newswire Xinhua reported.

It will boost the value of the Chinese section from 150 to 180 points. Currently, the test weighs English, Chinese and maths equally.

Officials have spun the proposal as both a practical decision and a matter of national pride. "The change highlights the fundamental importance of mother tongue in the curriculum," a representative from the commission told Xinhua.

Education authorities are also considering scrapping mandatory English lessons before the third grade. They currently begin on the first day of primary school.

Shandong and Jiangsu provinces, as well as Shanghai, may remove English from the Gaokao entirely. Public consultation on the proposal began on Monday, Xinhua reported.

Wu Mengran, a 19-year-old recent high-school graduate in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, said the change would allow students to spend more time studying oral English rather than blindly copying grammar patterns in preparation for the test.

"In China, you can be really good at English tests but still not be able to use English to communicate," she said. "Very few people study English here just to study English."

Chinese schools currently mandate English classes until university, giving rise to a sprawling £3.1bn private English training industry. Even remote cities are full of test prep schools and tutoring agencies.

Xinhua called the proposals "no more than a minor tweak", emphasising that they would change the way that English is taught without diminishing its importance

I'm very much doubt change will be make affecting.

Washback - the effect of testing on teaching and learning - will depend on the nature of the changes, rather than the magnitude. As long as the CEE still tests vocabulary and grammar, that's what will be taught and studied, and those 100 points are still critical to most students The MoE English Curriculum Standards of 2001 actually opens the way for communicative language teaching to occur in schools, but has been blocked by the reality of the Gao Kao.

At a college level, has the end of the compulsory CET 4  made much difference to the employment of native speakers?

This change, for most of us, I think is not really important. If parents only wanted their kids to do well on the GaoKao they would not look for an FT anyway. GaoKao is just endless (and meaningless) vocab lists and grammar rules. It's memorization as is the rest of the test. CT's are far more experienced in making kids memorize useless crap than we are. I would not shed a tear if it was removed from the test entirely.

China can bang on about how Chinese is the most spoken language in the world until it's blue(red?) in the face but almost anyone with the ability to formulate a logical thought will understand that to be irrelevant. It's only widely spoken IN CHINA (Ok...to be fair I guess I have to give them Singapore and Vancouver). English is used in many countries all over the world and it's practically required for some professions. English will open doors to students that would otherwise be closed. Learning 2,000 year old Chinese characters that nobody uses outside of an academic setting will help........who?

This change does not worry me. I find this recent push for the Chinese language at the expense of English to be..like so many things here...backwards.

This change, for most of us, I think is not really important. If parents only wanted their kids to do well on the GaoKao they would not look for an FT anyway. GaoKao is just endless (and meaningless) vocab lists and grammar rules. It's memorization as is the rest of the test. CT's are far more experienced in making kids memorize useless crap than we are. I would not shed a tear if it was removed from the test entirely.

China can bang on about how Chinese is the most spoken language in the world until it's blue(red?) in the face but almost anyone with the ability to formulate a logical thought will understand that to be irrelevant. It's only widely spoken IN CHINA (Ok...to be fair I guess I have to give them Singapore and Vancouver). English is used in many countries all over the world and it's practically required for some professions. English will open doors to students that would otherwise be closed. Learning 2,000 year old Chinese characters that nobody uses outside of an academic setting will help........who?

This change does not worry me. I find this recent push for the Chinese language at the expense of English to be..like so many things here...backwards.

I think what at least half of the parents do is put their kids into a big school like XDF/EF etc since they don't understand anything about English learning but they know it's important for the tests. So that industry will take a big hit or will have to adapt and teach more maths and science and less English (which is bad news for people teaching English with these sort of companies)

I agree with your broader point, Chinese education system looks awful from where I'm sitting, they aren't learning to speak English they are just learning to pass the test and they will forget all of it by the time they are 20 unless they have a use for it. I think school everywhere is more about getting people used to turning up and doing 'work' rather than actually learning skills, and in China the way that high school becomes so extreme for 16-18 year olds is much more about their working culture than that anyone decided that everyone needs to have a deep understanding of Algebra, English Grammar etc

XDF will be fine because they specialize in a different kind of test prep. Their bread and butter is TOEFL/IELTS and, increasingly, SAT and other English medium subject tests like APs, SAT II, etc. You guys would weep to hear what XDF can charge for these specialized classes -- it is completely ridiculous and far far surpasses what any parent is willing to pay for simply Gaokao prep.

I've honestly never heard of a kid joining outside English classes for the purpose of prepping Gaokao. If they want Gaokao prep they go to their teachers who will be more than happy to provide extra special after class lessons. This happens for almost every Gaokao subject, English isn't really any different.

This will have no effect on anything, it's just another silly uber-patriotic move. All the part-time gigs I have ever had were for students who wanted to pass IELTS, SAT or AP tests.

This will have no effect on anything, it's just another silly uber-patriotic move. All the part-time gigs I have ever had were for students who wanted to pass IELTS, SAT or AP tests.

I also do GRE. These kids are head and shoulders above the bell curve. The lower the standards at regular schools, the better for us.

This will have no effect on anything, it's just another silly uber-patriotic move. All the part-time gigs I have ever had were for students who wanted to pass IELTS, SAT or AP tests.

China does have a big problem with people learning Chinese though

I read somewhere that 400 million Chinese people don't speak or barely speak Mandarin, and I read somewhere else that more than half of people under 25 struggle with the writing because they do all their writing on computers and phones

This change does not worry me. I find this recent push for the Chinese language at the expense of English to be..like so many things here...backwards.

I've argued elsewhere, with predictable outcomes, that the vast majority of Chinese people don't need any English. A small cohort need English literacy for work related reasons, and a few need to be literate and communicatively competent. This " backward thinking" argument doesn't make sense. Why spend 1000's of hours, such as with the Gao Kao, on something so pointless? I know that people in Training Centres are strongly represented here, but you [and I] are working with a few special cases, not the broad rump of Chinese English learners.

Quote from: ericthered on October 26, 2013, 12:43:17 PM

This will have no effect on anything, it's just another silly uber-patriotic move. All the part-time gigs I have ever had were for students who wanted to pass IELTS, SAT or AP tests.

China does have a big problem with people learning Chinese though

I read somewhere that 400 million Chinese people don't speak or barely speak Mandarin, and I read somewhere else that more than half of people under 25 struggle with the writing because they do all their writing on computers and phones

Yeah, this actually seems fairly reasonable to me.  The vast majority of students are more likely to need to communicate effectively with a person from a different region in China than with a laowei. 

Additionally, this may be fulled by the realization that the Chinese method of teaching English in high school produces piss-poor results (regarding fluency), as we know all too well.  Logically, this would be the first step towards developing a test better suited for evaluating a student's ability to communicate in English, but TIFC.  At the very least, I suspect there are more Chinese teachers who can teach Mandarin effectively compared to English.  This should put students on a slightly more level playing field, in theory.

If this truly becomes an issue, I suspect language mills will target adults more rather than children.  As I hate teaching kids, I view that as a huge benefit.

Additionally, this may be fulled by the realization that the Chinese method of teaching English in high school produces piss-poor results (regarding fluency), as we know all too well.  Logically, this would be the first step towards developing a test better suited for evaluating a student's ability to communicate in English, but TIFC. 

This "method", which is essentially grammar-translation, will only change when its not driven by the Gao Kao, which only assesses students' knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. CET 4 is the same, with only CET 6 placing emphasis on the ability to actually use the language in a meaningful way. I don't think its fair to blame the students or their teachers. Teachers teach to tests and are under enormous pressure to get good results.

In fact, I'm always surprised at how many communicatively competent English users are produced by a system that, in theory, should produce none! I'm pretty sure that self-education is the reason. Quiz any half-way decent English speaker and you'll find they have listened to English radio, warched English movies and TV, cornered unsuspecting foreigners etc.