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Communicative
Language Teaching in China
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As the country with the largest English learning
population in the world, China is deeply involved in Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT). However, due to economic, administrative, cultural, and population constraints, and
the academic abilities of classroom teachers, China has to work to adapt CLT to local
conditions. Modified varieties of CLT might suit the present conditions for the time
being, but they are far from scientific, since, as practiced in the classroom, they are
not usually selected on the basis of academic research. If the current situation is not
reoriented, or if the constraining factors are not overcome, traditional,
non-communicative approaches are likely to return under other guises. Nevertheless,
motivated classroom teachers are the potential key to overcoming the existing constraining
factors if they are equipped with applicable linguistic and psychological theories and
useful methods through stimulating teacher training courses.
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China started CLT in the early 70s. In 1979, Li
Xiaoju and her colleagues in Guangzhou began writing and teaching a set of communicative
English textbooks entitled Communicative English for Chinese Learners (CECL). CECL
asserts that "language is communication, and learning a language is learning to
communicate" (Li 1984:2). Since that time several proj-ects such as Junior English
for China (JEC) have integrated topics relevant to Chinese students and common daily
expressions in communication with grammatical structures. Such integration, in fact,
represents the weak version of CLT (Howatt 1984:279), which fosters the development of
communicative competence.
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Some existing factors that constrain CLT
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Though teachers in China on the whole realize
the importance of CLT and are trying to catch up with the new trend, CLT is constrained in
China by such factors as the economy, administration, culture, population, and the
teachers' academic ability.
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A. Economic factors. China is
developing fast, but teachers as a whole are still relatively underpaid. In order to seek
a balance, many English teachers in the tertiary and secondary levels have a second or
even a third extra teaching job, which, on average, adds an additional 50% to the teaching
load. Although there are many advantages of such extra teaching, it does not motivate
teachers to do classroom research, which takes time and energy without bringing teachers
immediate monetary rewards. Consequently, few university teachers will spend time
analyzing learners' needs or designing their own syllabi, nor will they collect suitable
materials to create communicative tasks and activities. What they do frequently, instead,
is lecture to students using the readily printed texts and language points, which makes
their teaching easy and safe but proves to be non- communicative and ineffective.
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For the teachers who are eager to try their own
materials for communicative activities, there are economic constraints. For instance,
photocopying is not provided to Chinese teachers (with the exception of foreign teachers)
by the authorities. Money needs to be collected from the students, and if the students are
unwilling to pay, teachers have to make do without the necessary materials.
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Libraries in China do not contain enough
authentic English books, newspapers, and magazines for teacher and student use. Overhead
projectors and computers are rare and are used for only a few demonstration classes. The
unavailability of resources wastes teachers' energy and time, making teaching preparation
a painstaking process. Consequently, it prevents teachers from appreciating the deserved
value of CLT.
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B. Administrative factors. Middle
schools in China use communicative textbooks which include communicative tasks and
activities. However, when teaching performances are evaluated by the administrators, the
focus is on teachers. Teachers are graded in terms of how well they speak English, how
well they demonstrate the language points, how well they use the blackboard or other
teaching realia, and how well they discipline students. Students and their learning
processes are largely ignored. As a result, teachers are more active than students, who
simply follow their teachers rigidly and mechanically. The fast- paced lessons leave
students no time for reflection or commu- nication.
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Although administrators usually guide teachers,
they may not be experts in English teaching. Consequently, they may impose materials on
teachers which are not communicative and do not conform to course goals and may include
material in the examinations unrelated to the class.
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C. Cultural factors. Basically,
China has a Confucian culture, which seeks compromise between people. When it is applied
to language learning, it is obvious that students are reluctant to air their views loudly
for fear of losing face or offending others. For this reason, group discussion may be less
fruitful than individual essay-writing. In addition, there are some Chinese sayings which
discourage oral communication in class. The following are some examples:
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Silence is gold; Eloquence is silver;
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It's easier said than done;
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It's the noisy bird that is easily shot dead;
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A real man should be good at thinking, but weak
at speaking;
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Don't speak out unless spoken to;
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A man should be responsible for his words;
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What has been said can't be unsaid;
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Keep your mouth shut but your eyes open;
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Keep silent unless you can burst on the scene
like a bombshell;
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Downy lips make thoughtless slips.
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In Chinese culture, teachers are viewed as
knowledge holders. If teachers do not display their knowledge in lectures, or if they play
games with students or ask students to role-play in class, then they are not doing their
job! Meanwhile, teachers are too authoritative to be challenged so far as knowledge is
concerned. Students are not in the habit of arguing for their own point of view, even if
teachers accidentally make mistakes. Students have been trained to be obedient and to
learn by rote ever since kindergarten.
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D. Population factors. China has a
very large English-learning population. When this population is divided into classes in
secondary schools, it is common to find English classes with 60 or 70 students. The
crowded classroom leaves hardly any room for free communicative activities such as
information-gap or problem-solving tasks, especially those which require moving around or
passing messages to one another.
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Although CLT should be learner-centered with
"full rein.given to students' initiative" (Li Xiaoju 1984:9), such a large
English-learning population in China makes learner-centered teaching difficult. In most
large English classes, there are students of very different proficiency levels. Teachers
who want to involve students can do so only with a small number of them, usually the top
ones. It is easy to teach these top students because they are usually very cooperative.
The top students can follow the teachers, whether the teaching is effective or not.
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Students with a low language proficiency level
present challenges to teachers and require special care and effort. These students often
have difficulties in understanding teachers and in expressing themselves, and thus remain
inactive in class. Teachers have to slow down or repeat themselves if they want to
encourage these students to participate and have to design special activities to lessen
their anxiety if they join the class. Although adjusting lessons to low-level learners is
to some extent more learner-centered, the pace is slow and many teachers do not have
enough teaching hours to meet the needs of the student regularly in class. So, many
teachers have to teach at the expense of the majority of such poor students, who are
usually left uncared for.
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E. Academic abilities of classroom
teachers. Although in theory scholars try to keep up with developments in CLT,
when it comes to down-to-earth practice, most classroom teachers do not fully understand
CLT and communicative competence. There are not enough opportunities for every teacher,
both at the tertiary level and at the secondary level, to systematically study linguistic
theories and theories of second language acquisition. Therefore many teachers do not
distinguish real communicative activities from false ones, mistaking linguistic activities
with some artificial classroom situations for communicative tasks.
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In October, 1995, I attended an open class in
which the teacher demonstrated communicative teaching. One of her teaching tasks was to
make her students learn to use such and so. Before class, she prepared a large, but empty,
carton in the corner of the classroom. Later during the class she picked up the carton and
said, "It's such a heavy box that I can't hold it. Who can help me? It's so heavy
that I can't hold it. Help me, please!" The sentences were good and clear, and were
repeated several times, but there was no response from her students. No one went up to the
front to help the teacher, for everyone saw that the box was not heavy at all and the
teacher herself was holding it very easily.
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Communicative activities require real
situations, real roles, and real needs and purposes for communication. But in the above
case, none of the conditions was met, for nothing but the carton was real, which did not
contribute to real communication.
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Most classroom teachers have little, if any,
sociolinguistic knowledge (the type of knowledge focus on the appropriate use of language
in context), which leads to inappropriate teaching. For instance, in the national middle
school English textbook, there is a simplified text of Mark Twain's "One Million
Pound Note," which describes an episode in which the poor hero, Henry, after having
found a one-million pound note, went to a tailor to buy a cheap suit. But the snobbish
shopping assistant, Todd, served him coldly. "The fellow I spoke to made no answer at
first, looked me up and down, noticed that I was almost in rags, and said, `Just a
moment.' "
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When teaching this segment, many teachers asked
students to change Todd's reply, "Just a moment," to a complete sentence. They
told the students that the correct answer was "Would you please wait for me for just
a minute?" The answer is grammatically correct, but is totally wrong according to the
context and the relationship between the shabby Henry and the snobbish Todd at that time.
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CLT advocates that students should learn what is
real and relevant to them, a point ignored by many teachers. When teaching how to use the
word "every" as in "every two days," some teachers asked students to
translate the following sentence into Chinese: "The milkman comes here every five
days." There is no doubt that students could translate it perfectly, but, in reality,
such a sentence is not as real as, "The milkman comes here every other day/every two
days." Since in daily life, if he does not want to get fired, the milkman usually
sends fresh milk every day or every other day in China.
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The above examples collected from real
classrooms certainly do not represent every teaching situation in China, but to a large
extent, they show that many English teachers are not aware of language appropriacy. What
they teach students are isolated sentences correct in grammatical form that are not
authentic or acceptable in real communicative occasions.
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The inductive way of teaching is another
clear-cut feature of CLT because it is believed that the linguistic system can best be
learned through the process of using it for communication. But most Chinese teachers are
so accustomed to deductive ways of teaching that they do not apply induction, even when
provided with communicative materials.
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When teaching JEC, which was designed for the
development of communicative competence, many teachers continue to lecture on the usage of
words, phrases, and grammar. They do not use the materials to facilitate communication
between students or between students and texts so as to let them internalize the language
system themselves. In other words, the teacher is still a proponent of the deductive way
of teaching, though she is practicing CLT.
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Meaning is paramount in CLT, yet many teachers
in China constrain students one way or another when they are communicating for the purpose
of meaning. For example, a teacher once stopped his student repeatedly and arbitrarily
when he asked a female student to retell the text of Albert Einstein at the end of the
lesson. She was confident in her own way of retelling the text and started very fluently.
But the teacher stopped her and asked her to retell it according to the pictures on the
blackboard. The student had not expected this because the pictures were stuck to the board
without her knowledge while she was preparing to retell the story. Also because the
pictures were arranged differently from her retelling sequence, she was puzzled and
hesitated for a while in front of the whole class. She then adjusted her thoughts quickly
and started again by referring to the pictures in her own words. The teacher was still not
satisfied, and he asked her to use the clues he had given on the board. Since the teacher
had not told the students to use them before they started, the poor student had to adjust
again. She could not understand the clues on the board and was confused and kept silent.
Her communication for the purpose of meaning broke down.
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Overcoming the constraints
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It is obvious that CLT has its place in China,
and most English teachers have accepted it as a teaching reform. Like any other kind of
reform, CLT in China needs to be modified and adapted smoothly in the first stage to
overcome the constraints; otherwise it may meet with criticism. Those few who are against
it and those who do not make the effort to meet the challenges of CLT will defend
themselves loudly to resume the traditional or the so-called convenient ways of teaching.
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Classroom teachers are the key to overcoming the
constraints. China is such a big country and so diversified that it is impossible for the
Chinese State Education Commission to call for a specific, unified teaching method to
tackle the infinite teaching problems in classrooms. If equipped with sufficient knowledge
of linguistics through proper pre-service and in-service teacher- training courses,
teachers can be qualified in making creative decisions related to CLT.
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Classroom teachers are the first persons who
face the brand new changes of learning needs and the most flexible in deciding what to
teach and how to teach each lesson to satisfy the new needs better. With the rapid
development in China, students' language learning needs vary greatly. Some students learn
to go abroad, some to work in foreign trades or other careers, and some to continue their
studies. Some want to improve oral English, some want to improve written communication,
and some still want to learn grammar. Learning needs change faster than the Education
Commission changes the national curriculum and textbooks.
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Among the five constraining factors, teachers'
academic ability is the one most related to classroom teaching effectiveness. Economic,
administrative, cultural, and population factors are external and facilitating conditions,
while teachers' academic ability is the internal and primary condition. If teachers have
understood the essence of CLT and its scientific modification in China, they will acquire
a positive attitude towards CLT and be motivated to overcome the constraints. For
instance, another middle-school teacher in my own data, when giving a demonstration
lesson, prepared her indispensable handouts at her own expense. This enabled every student
in her large class to participate in a communicative activity of strip stories-reading and
interaction. Shy students were also given roles to tell others what happened in their
handouts. This activity indicated that in the teacher's eye, every student in her class
was equal and that the teacher trusted every student impartially. Encouraged to struggle
for meaning, shy students gained self- confidence naturally through such an interesting
and communicative practice.
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Alternatively, when learning English, quiet
students in class who do not want to express their ideas in public can be instructed
patiently about English-speaking culture conventions. Or they can be entrusted with roles
which will require them to interact with their partners focusing only on meaning. Later
they can interact in groups or in class without being criticized for language mistakes.
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The large class size is an undeniable fact, but
a creative teacher is ready to rearrange the desks and chairs to leave room for various
group activities. In fact, if teachers just remember to assign the job to students, they
will cooperate. The administrative constraint can be solved automatically once CLT experts
are elected to be leaders.
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To upgrade teachers' academic abilities,
teacher-training courses are necessary. In most parts of the world, the main emphasis in
English teacher training courses is on methodology. However, nowadays in China, language
proficiency courses for teachers are stressed and are very prevalent. Hundleby and Breet
(1988) and Berry (1990) also observe that "China is a situation where teacher
training is seen principally as a process of training the language level of the trainees,
to the virtual exclusion of methodology." (quoted from Cullen 1994:163). Proficient
language is essential for language teaching, but it is not enough for CLT. Theories of
linguistics, psychology, and pedagogy support the use of creative CLT in class and should
be incorporated into training programs. Educated with a necessary theoretical background,
classroom teachers in China can understand better the new curriculum and the new sets of
CLT textbooks, knowing the facts as well as the reasons behind the change. Moreover,
equipped with the necessary knowledge, teachers can teach more scientifically, avoiding at
least some of the teaching errors mentioned above. In other words, if teacher training
courses in China are more theoretically based, classroom teachers will have a better
understanding of the essence of CLT, and then they can be more ready to do research of
their own to explore suitable ways of implementing CLT in China.
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Because CLT in China is a rather new approach,
teachers often misapply it to practice English in artificial situations or in noisy group
work with shallow understanding. Instead CLT requires making decisions of what, when, and
how to teach. Decisions might be made according to each teacher's experience, but
scientific and correct decisions can be made only after a deep understanding of
linguistics and the essence of CLT. Motivated by the value of CLT, classroom teachers will
be encouraged to overcome the existing factors that constrain CLT in China. The most
effective means of cultivating teachers' academic awareness is through pre-service and
in-service teacher-training courses, which should be organized to promote teachers'
theoretical as well as linguistic abilities. Otherwise, in the long run, it is safe to say
that the top- down efforts resulting from the communicative curriculum and textbooks will
be frustrated by the realities of everyday teaching in classrooms. The bottom-up effects
of classroom teachers' resistance will fill the new bottles of CLT with old wine.
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Leng
Hui is a lecturer at Liaoning Normal University, P.R. of China. She teaches
English to freshmen and sophomores in the university. |
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Return
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- Campbell, K. P., and Z. Yong. 1993. The dilemma of English language instruction in
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- Cullen, R. 1994. Incorporating a language improvement component in teacher training
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- Holliday, A. 1994. The house of TESEP and the communicative approach: The special needs
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