Learning English: lessons from China

Over the years my students in China asked me all kinds of questions, some personal, some bizarre, but mostly the same ones. “Do you speak Chinese?” was very popular, and my sad attempt at saying “a little” in Mandarin was invariably greeted with peals of laughter. A fair second was the dead obvious “Can you use chopsticks?” Well, yeah, I wouldn’t be able to survive in China otherwise. And also high on the top ten list of questions they asked, generally with sheer desperation in their eyes, was “How can I improve my English?”

Infographic: How to learn English via Kaplan Blog

Anyone who’s been to Asia, and China in particular, can attest that their English language skills are lacking, probably due to the fatal combination of poor teachers, outdated rote-learning methods, and an illogical focus on reading and writing over speaking and listening. Most Chinese students are aware of all this, but they cannot see a way out. They work hard and desire to improve, but the language learning tools they know haven’t given them what was originally promised: fluency in the language. Frequently, I would see that students had created lists of new words having written out each one ten times or so. This repetition will help to instill the spelling but doesn’t teach learners how to use or pronounce the word. When asked why they employed this method, they would look at me with bewilderment as they had never thought about this: it was just something you did when encountering a new word. We all play the cards we’re dealt, and when it’s a bad hand, we fold.

Chinese students face the added unfortunate circumstance that the road to better English is blocked (sometimes by the government): they lack access to input as most of the usual channels–TV, music, magazines, native speakers–aren’t available to them. Their TV broadcasts in Chinese only, except for the sole English channel CCTV-9 which cannot be received everywhere and whose shows can only be qualified as dreadfully boring. The Chinese language music industry is large, so it is only on rare occasion an import from the UK or US makes it to the hit charts. English magazines printed in China commonly target learners but quite frequently make mistakes. One cannot subscribe to international magazines there without a foreign credit card. And talking to a native? Tough luck! According to the 2010 census¹, the percentage of foreigners living in China long term is 0.00044%.² Actually, this tiny percentage includes people from all over the world, so the share of native English speakers would be even smaller: at least 45% of foreigners in China are from other Asian countries.² Furthermore, the foreigners are mainly concentrated in the urban areas of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.² Plenty of Chinese people go through their entire lives never encountering a western face.

The one thing my students did have and I strongly encouraged them to use was the internet. They watched American TV shows through Chinese versions of YouTube the day after they were broadcast in the US. They were more aware of the latest Hollywood productions than I was. Yes, some websites were blocked, but enough of the world outside of China was available to them to read or watch. I found this encouraging, but there was still a downside: their experience with English was limited to the receptive aspects, reading and listening, and hardly ever involved the much tougher and more important productive parts of speaking and writing.

My answer to their anxious question on how to improve English was always: USE IT! They all knew the saying “practice makes perfect,” so they would go and stand by the campus lake and read out loud to the pair of swans gliding by. Not what I would do, but better than nothing. When asked why they wouldn’t just talk to each other, they replied in excuses: we are all Chinese, I don’t know English well enough, I will learn the other person’s mistakes, I can’t trust them to correct me properly. (How those two swans were supposed to correct them has always remained a mystery to me.) They seemed to have more faith in their ability to improve independently than with the aid of others. It saddened me to see this distrust among learners because if you can’t team up in your struggle for proficiency, it is a lonely climb indeed.

Underlying their reluctance to communicate with each other in English was the fear of making mistakes. Chinese culture regards face as the highest good, meaning that you should do whatever you can to avoid embarrassment. Obviously, it isn’t a big laugh to make mistakes, but how can you expect to improve without it? My Chinese students were basically waiting for that moment when they produced only perfect English before producing anything at all in front of another person. Swans excluded, clearly.

How much of the Chinese experience is applicable to learners of English in general? Surely, the Chinese are in a unique position in many ways, but at the same time it does pinpoint a few bottlenecks of learning a language: quality input, peer practice and the ability to overcome fear. Without regular and easy access to English outside of the classroom (where the real learning tends to take place), it is logical students don’t acquire the new language. Students don’t always know where they can find the input they need, and often it is much easier to escape or avoid the new language, meaning only the truly motivated will pick it up. Learners need to practice with each other because, in the end, they are all in the same boat. Overcoming shyness and learning from the mistakes of others are two necessary steps in becoming a successful language learner. The fear of mistakes can be crippling, so any learner needs to realize the ability to communicate is far more important. Language curricula should reflect this as well because languages aren’t meant to be learned in the same way as mathematics and science; they are living, breathing, evolving organisms that in real life don’t walk around with a red pen in hand, correcting a lack of subject-verb agreement or misused pronoun reference. Once learners are able to let go of their restricted, school-created view on when, with whom and how one should learn English, they can enjoy the process. Watching the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory is not only a relaxing moment in the day, nor should it be seen as just a way to learn a language: it should be a combination of both.

Sources:

1. Total population of China as of 2010: www.google.com/publicdata
2. Number of foreigners in China, their origins and location in China: http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevents/t20110429_402722638.htm