Yiling
I’m glad to learn that the major lingua francas between Japanese expatriates and their Chinese colleagues are Mandarin and Japanese (Kubota, 2013). I’m kind of relieved to know that in a social context where people speak different languages (Mandarin and Japanese in this case), English has not taken the place and prevail as the dominant language for communication. The worldwide mania for learning English has been constantly drawing our attention.
As a strong economic power in the process of globalization, China has attracted numerous international corporations to expand their business in Chinese market, resulting in the great demand for professionals with English literacy. In fact, Chinese kids start English learning as early as the age of three. By the time when they attend school at six, English is a required course, sharing equal importance with Chinese and math in the curriculum up through till Grade 12, when most students take Gaokao (college entrance exam) to compete for an opportunity for university education. Of course English language proficiency is tested in all four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. As a result, for better scores in Gaokao, students are spending a lot of time and money learning this foreign language, not to mention those preparing for SAT, IELTS, or TOEFL to study abroad.
But what about our mother tongue Chinese? This question was raised by educators when they noticed that the younger generations’ knowledge of Chinese language and culture is noticeably decreasing. Is it that English is better than Chinese? And English culture is better than Chinese culture? So that our kids prefer English to their mother tongue? Are we going to stand by and continue this nationwide English mania by degrading our own language and culture?
It is agreed that something must be done to deal with this linguistic imperialism and a revolution took place several years ago and is still ongoing, initiated by educators of Chinese language and culture, who advocate for prioritizing Chinese learning instead of English learning. This is implemented mainly by increasing the difficulty of Chinese tests and decreasing that of English tests as well as other measures to guarantee Chinese reading time. As a world citizen, we learn English but not like crazy; while as a Chinese citizen, it’s non-negotiable that we should learn Chinese as well as whatever it is behind the language, and that tell all this knowledge to our younger generations.
Reference
Kubota, R. 2013. ‘Language is only a tool’: Japanese expatriates working in China and implications for language teaching. Multilingual Education, 2013, 3:4.
Ken’s reply
Thank you for your post, which was very helpful for me to understand how people from other than Japan think about the value of their mother tongue (s).
But what about our mother tongue Chinese? This question was raised by educators when they noticed that the younger generations’ knowledge of Chinese language and culture is noticeably decreasing. Is it that English is better than Chinese? And English culture is better than Chinese culture? So that our kids prefer English to their mother tongue? Are we going to stand by and continue this nationwide English mania by degrading our own language and culture?
Among the questions you suggested above, I especially have an interest in the early language education in ESL countries such as China and Japan. It seems that the governments launched the curriculum focusing on English education without investigating a side effect of it carefully. In Japan in 2020, English education (as a subject) at elementary schools will be started. However, as you mentioned, there could be something the students will lose instead of receiving English education unless the curriculum is changed. Introducing English classes will result in the loss of hours for the other subjects the students learned before. And the serious issue is the most people who are in charge of setting up the curriculum are lack of knowledge on English education, language acquisition theory, or teacher education. In fact, Japan will be lack of the English teachers since implementing English education into elementary schools will need more teachers. This means there would be a possibility that teachers with low English language proficiency or little pedagogical content knowledge might be employed. If they teach English to the elementary kids・・・
Your observations, about China and Japan respectively, raise the question: How much of the seemingly heedless flight to English words and ways, with its concomitant disregard for how the local language may fare on the lips of younger speakers, can be put down to new technology, purely? Is it the rapid and easy access to “authentic” language spoken by media stars and Youtubers that is fuelling the change? Would globalization be progressing as fast if borne at a technologically slower pace?