3.2 Disadvantages of learning English in the Chinese system
Jenkins (2002) has argued that English is spoken in every part of the world, both among speakers within a particular
country who share a first language, and across speakers from different countries. So native speaker accents are not
necessarily the most intelligible or appropriate accents when a non-native speaker is communicating with another
non-native speaker. However, as I know, the goal of pronunciation teaching has been to enable students to acquire an
accent that is as close as possible to that of a native speaker up to now in China. According to the interviews, most
interviewees believed that pronunciation was the most facilitative to communication. They were eager to speak like
native speakers with traditional accents. So, when they met teachers who had pronunciation problems in English
training courses which were hard to avoid in China, they would not be satisfied with the courses and felt disappointed to
the courses in China:
Of course it was a problem. One of my English teachers’ pronunciations was not good which influenced me more or
less though I only attended her courses for two months. It is hard for me to communicate with native speakers if I have
pronunciation problems. We would not understand each other. Language is a tool for us to communicate with others. If I
can’t do it, so what do I learn English for?
Most of interviewees presented that, in China, the students could only be given the speech dominated education by a
teacher-centred, book-centred, grammar-translation method and an emphasis on rote memory. They all agreed with the
point that such a teaching style in English training courses was outdated and boring:
Now, when I have experienced various flexible teaching styles, I think the teaching style in the training course in China
is too behind the time.
They only emphasized on the rote memory of grammar and vocabulary which were so boring and useless I thought.
What I could do was only reading and writing even if I had done all the things teachers asked me to do. I hoped I could
talk with native speakers, but my listening and speaking were so poor. Some of interviewees thought the teaching method of focusing on exam skills in English training courses were good for
them to improve the IELTS scores in very short time. On the other hand, some of interviewees believed those students
were only trained to answer various questions on exam papers with exam techniques. Students learned to analyze the
question makers’ thoughts instead of improve their English abilities. These students argued about the meaning of such
kind of method in English training courses in China:
I don’t want to spend so much money and time to do such a meaningless thing. If I attended an English training course,
I should have only one aim which was to improve my English… Even if I could get higher mark in IELTS test which
brought me an offer of an English university, I have no ability to finish my academic course when I study there. If I
can’t meet the entry requirement of English universities, the only thing I should do is to improve my English ability
instead of the ability of guessing answers.