"China has been in the grip of “English fever,” as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, for more than a decade. A vast national appetite has elevated English to something more than a language: it is not simply a tool but a defining measure of life’s potential. China today is divided by class, opportunity, and power, but one of its few unifying beliefs—something shared by waiters, politicians, intellectuals, tycoons—is the power of English. Every college freshman must meet a minimal level of English comprehension, and it’s the only foreign language tested. English has become an ideology, a force strong enough to remake your résumé, attract a spouse, or catapult you out of a village. Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States. English private schools, study gadgets, and high-priced tutors vie for pieces of that market. The largest English school system, New Oriental, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange." |
This quote from a New Yorker article written in 2008 perfectly sums how English has developed into a language of unparalleled importance and status in Chinese society in the past 30 plus years under the country's policies of market reform and opening up.
The growth of English in China is intertwined with the country's unprecedented growth and development. Since the late 1970s, political leaders have seen English as a key tool for spurring China's modernization and growth as well as its integration into the global economy. As a result, government policy has heavily promoted English learning in and outside of the country's education system.
Yet the development of English education in practice, like the development of China as a whole, has been severely unequal. The areas that have benefited the most from China's market reforms, the eastern coastal areas and major cities, also have had the best English education infrastructure and resources. But China's "Open up the West" Campaign since the late 1990s has sought to change this regional development imbalance with greater direct central government investment in Western and inner regions of the country.
The province I will be doing my research in, Yunnan, has been a significant beneficiary of this campaign as a site for facilitating greater cross-border trade and investment with neighboring Southeast Asian countries. My work aims to see how the greater recent economic growth and trade in Yunnan province has translated into the development of English education in the secondary school system of its capital, Kunming. I plan to interview local education officials, administrators, and English teachers, examine local curricula and English education textbooks as well as sit in on English lessons within selected schools to gather data for my research.
The document below gives more detail about my proposed research methodology and plan while in Kunming.
The growth of English in China is intertwined with the country's unprecedented growth and development. Since the late 1970s, political leaders have seen English as a key tool for spurring China's modernization and growth as well as its integration into the global economy. As a result, government policy has heavily promoted English learning in and outside of the country's education system.
Yet the development of English education in practice, like the development of China as a whole, has been severely unequal. The areas that have benefited the most from China's market reforms, the eastern coastal areas and major cities, also have had the best English education infrastructure and resources. But China's "Open up the West" Campaign since the late 1990s has sought to change this regional development imbalance with greater direct central government investment in Western and inner regions of the country.
The province I will be doing my research in, Yunnan, has been a significant beneficiary of this campaign as a site for facilitating greater cross-border trade and investment with neighboring Southeast Asian countries. My work aims to see how the greater recent economic growth and trade in Yunnan province has translated into the development of English education in the secondary school system of its capital, Kunming. I plan to interview local education officials, administrators, and English teachers, examine local curricula and English education textbooks as well as sit in on English lessons within selected schools to gather data for my research.
The document below gives more detail about my proposed research methodology and plan while in Kunming.
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