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This book traces the history of English education in the People's Republic of China from 1949 to the present day. It uses the junior secondary school curriculum as the means to examine how English curriculum developers and textbook writers have confronted

With the relentless internationalization and marketization of higher education in the past decades, English has been increasingly adopted as a medium of instruction at universities across the world. Recent research, however, has shown that despite its various optimistically envisioned goals, English-medium instruction (EMI) is not without problems in practice. This article reports a case study of an EMI Business Administration program for undergraduate students at a major university of finance and economy in mainland China. Informed by Spolsky's language policy framework, the study made a critical analysis of national/institutional policy statements and interviews with professors and students to uncover EMI-related language ideologies, language practices, and language management mechanisms. Findings evinced a complex interplay of these three constitutive components of language policy in the focal EMI program and revealed considerable misalignment between policy intentions and actual practices in the classroom. These findings raise concerns about the quality and consequences of EMI in Chinese higher education. The article concludes with recommendations for further research on EMI policies and practices in China. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

The book outlines the evolution and role of minority languages locally and nationally; it investigates current educational language policies in minority areas; and it assesses the social and economic outcomes of language change for communities in contemporary China.

Tens of thousands of Western 'teachers', many of whom would not be considered teachers elsewhere, are employed to teach English in public and private education in China. Little has previously been known, except anecdotally, about their experiences, about the effect they have on education in the context, or on students' perceptions of 'the West' that result from this contact. This book is an ethnographic study of Westerners' lived experiences teaching English in Shanghai, China. It is based on three years of groundbreaking research into the pre-service training, classroom practices, personal identities and motives, and local socially constructed roles of a group of 'backpacker teachers' from the UK, the USA and Canada. It is a study that goes beyond the classroom, addressing broader questions about the sociology, and politics, of transnational education and China's evolving relationship with the outside world.

This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive and, at the same time, in-depth examination of the spread of English and English language education across Greater China. It consists of two parts. Part 1 presents rich sociolinguistic data for easy comparisons between mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, while Part 2 explores in depth the phenomena inside mainland China to provide contrastive analysis of English language use and education in economically booming areas such as Shanghai and Guangdong and underdeveloped regions like Xinjiang and Yunnan. With the descriptive, comparative and analytical accounts of different territories ranging from nation-states to small villages in remote areas, theories on the spread of English, second/third language acquisition and identity are challenged with new concepts proposed and established.

This monograph reports on a longitudinal inquiry into mainland Chinese undergraduates’ language learning experiences in an English medium university in a multilingual setting with a focus on their strategic language learning efforts. This book examines the issue as to what extent language learners’ strategic learning efforts depend on their ‘choice’, if ‘the element of choice’ is the defining characteristic of language learners’ strategic learning behaviour. The inquiry, using a qualitative and ethnographic research approach, reveals dynamic interaction between learners’ agency and contextual conditions underlying the participants’ strategic learning process. Such understanding informs pedagogical efforts to foster individual learners’ capacity for strategic learning and their capacities in opening up and sustaining a social learning space for exercising their strategic learning capacity or utilizing their strategic learning knowledge.

Although researching emotions in language education has dramatically increased during the past decades, little is written about the effects of aversive feelings like teacher boredom in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context, especially in the context of online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this shortcoming, this study examined the causes of and solutions to teacher boredom experienced by 216 Chinese EFL teachers, including both genders with their ages ranging from 19 to 58. In so doing, the researcher used maximum variation sampling to gather the data via an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The gleaned data were then thematically analyzed by MAXQDA (Version 2020) whose results indicated that most participants consider the online mode of delivery more boring than the face-to-face mode. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that both the antecedents of and the solutions to teacher boredom come under the macro-categories of student-related, task-related, IT-related , and teacher-related factors and solutions. Out of these, IT - related factors and teacher-related solutions were the most frequently raised themes extracted from the data. The study presents some practical implications and directions for future research.

China’s growing economic, military and political stability have, for the first time, started to gain international recognition. As China increasingly opens up to the world, its unique role in the context of economic globalization is becoming more pronounced, which is exemplified by its recent membership of the WTO and Beijing’s successful bid to host the Olympic Games. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in an explosion in the popularity of English language learning in China, which has, in turn, led to radical reform of the curricula, teaching methods, teacher education and assessment system in China in order to improve standards. This fascinating monograph explores the nature of the implemented English language curriculum in China, focussing, in particular, on the pedagogy of secondary school teachers. There follows an insightful analysis into how such teachers, in different situations and with different backgrounds and motivations, make decisions about what and how they teach, and the extent to which they adapt the promoted methods in the their individual teaching environments. The authors then use their findings to propose an innovative and coherent framework, which has far-reaching consequences for pedagogy in China and across the world.

China, with the world's largest population, numerous ethnic groups, and vast geographical space, is also rich in languages. Since 2006, China's State Language Commission has been publishing annual reports on \"language life\" in China. These reports cover language policy and planning, new trends in language use, and major events concerning languages in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Now these reports are available in English.

English learning among Chinese preschoolers has increased in recent years. Despite policies that strongly oppose external English instruction for this age group, many parents are unrelenting and persist in providing English learning opportunities for their children. This study seeks to address how formal and informal literacy activities within the Home Literacy Environment (HLE) mediate the relationship between parental beliefs and Chinese children’s attitudes towards learning English in a foreign language context. Specifically, it explores: (1) how formal literacy activities within the HLE mediate this relationship, (2) how informal literacy activities within the HLE mediate this relationship. The study involved 405 participants who completed a questionnaire on family demographics, beliefs about the importance of early English education, the HLE, and children’s attitudes towards English learning. Quantitative data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with a Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach. Parental beliefs positively influence children’s attitudes towards English through formal and informal learning. These results highlight the importance of fostering a supportive and engaging HLE to enhance children’s positive attitudes towards learning English. The implications suggest that policy and practice should recognize the value of various literacy activities in early childhood education, particularly in the context of a foreign language and academically focused Asian society.