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anonymous
Q: What's the future of teaching english in China?
It depends whether the government sees The English language as important to get ahead on the world platform. As we all know, English is already the international language of choice so if the government decides that everyone should learn Chinese if they want to trade with them, the English will be less important. I doubt that day will come since there are already about 300 million students studying the language here. Also, the government can't be so blind as to shut itself out of the English speaking world. So, in my opinion, English will continue to be an important language here in China.
For foreigners it should be pretty good as a change has come about whereby English grammar exams are no longer of major importance. They might have been done away with altogether. It seems the government has realized that the kiddies weren't learning to communicate, but were only learning the rules of English. So Chinese teachers of grammar may be a bit stuffed for work in the future, but foreign teachers will probably get busier.
who knows... for the next years foreigners are still needed, maybe the next generation with all the people who studied abroad become english teacher so they dont need foreigners anymore.
i ll give them 1000 years to catch up so dont worry
It all depends on the government, assuming there is no huge shake up of governmental power. If the Party understands that English is still a valuable skill, they'll keep it as part of the curriculum, and they'll need native speakers, or at least teachers not using traditional Chinese methods. Rote memorization of grammar rules and vocabulary lists don't result in good communication ability.
Of course, if the Party decides to take a swig of hat orate and decide that English is bad because it is not Chinese, then blind nationalism could cause it to be devalued. True, English is too valuable skill to get rid of just due to nationalism, but this is the Chinese government we're talking about... not like they haven't hamstrung their own people before, and the "Chinese way is the right way, because 5,000 years of whatever" thinking is always there.
The short(er) answer is that if the government is smart (or at least not willfully ignorant), it'll keep English in the schools, but this is the same government (more or less the same) that launched a space program rather than spend money on improving rural education, and still thinks the best way to educate students is to force everyone to cram facts into their brain, and then regurgitate on a single test that determines their future.
dom87:
to be honest 99% of the people dont need english and will never need it, so maybe you value english too high.
in germany we have english from class 5-13 but most people will forget what they learned later on because they never use it.
so it all depends on what you wanna do later in your life if english is necessary or not.
for me it was but for most of my friends it isnt.
I think it's future is still pretty good but it will become less important over time as the current generation of students lets the gov't know that English should be a elective. We all know that there is an extremely high probability that 90% of the students will never use English in the next 40 years. My guess is based on my own experience teaching and evaluating the English skills of the students I have taught over the past 4 years.
The salary will go lower as it is now, just check the job market and the cost will climb. We'll have to leave someday..
