Exploration On The Responsiveness Of Foreign Language Education Policy From The Perspective Of Public Opinion

Since the reform and opening up,China's foreign language education policy has made an important contribution to the realization of national modernization and the advancement of internationalization.Looking back on the process of foreign language education planning in China,although the top-down planning path is the leading one,social survey and public opinion solicitation are also important planning activities.At the same time,foreign language education planning also stimulates people's complex feelings on foreign language education.However,the current research rarely discusses how foreign language education policy should respond to public opinions and feelings and improve public satisfaction.With the development of the Internet and new media,the discourse space of citizens has changed,and the expression of public opinion is very active.Public opinion has become an important influencing factor of public policy.Therefore,this study aims to explore the responsiveness of foreign language education policy under the perspective of public opnion.NMET is an important foreign language education policy in China,and foreign language education planning closely related to the changes of NMET policy.This study takes the policy changes of NMET as the main line,and selects four key nodes as empirical cases to explore the relationship between public opinion and policy responsiveness in NMET.According to the analysis of this study,policy responsiveness is subject to institutional context,external environment and social public opinion composed of public sentiments and media discourse.In order to explore the general relationship between public opinion and policy responsiveness,three specific research questions are put forward in this study:(1)what are the characteristics of public opinion in NMET?(2)What is the relationship between public opinion on NMET and policy responsiveness?(3)What are the influencing factors of the relationship between public opinion and policy responsiveness?The theoretical basis of this study stems from the theory of politics,public policy and news communication,which are related to the opinion-policy nexus analysis,and discourse institutionalism is taken as a comprehensive theoretical perspective to examine the process of foreign language policy change in college entrance examination,and thus constructs a responsive analysis framework.In terms of research methods,this study mainly focuses on qualitative research integrated with quantitative analysis methods to analyze three sources of data:(1)policy text,historical research literature and the research report from think tank;(2)Huike News Database and China Journal Network;(3)Sina Weibo data,in which data are collected by the third-party crawler software.The whole approach to explore the responsiveness of foreign language education policy goes with two aspects: overall analysis and the specific nodes' analysis.The paper consists of seven chapters.The first three chapters describe the research status and basic concepts and theories.The fourth chapter reviews the institutional and cultural context of the policy changes of the NMET policy.The NMET policy is mainly reflected in subject status,proposition mode,testing contents and formats.Since the reform and opening up,the changes of NMET policy can be divided into three stages,namely,the stable rise period,the adjustment period and the consolidation development period.The change of policy can be regarded as a positive response to the external political,economic and cultural conditions and social public opinion.Then in the fifth chapter,the author analyzes the general characteristics of public opinion on NMET.This chapter describes the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics,public opinion themes and hot events of NMET public opinion from three media: newspaper media,social media and academic journals.The analysis of public opinion shows that in the period of adjustment and change of NMET policy,the attitude of public opinion towards English is more complex.On the one hand,it recognizes English as a tool of internationalization and modernization,on the other hand,it requires weakening the subject status of NMET and reducing the social function of NMET.Since the launch of the new round of college entrance examination reform,public opinion has focused on the two examinations in one year and the cultural conflict between China and foreign countries,which is likely to cause social hot events.NMET listening is the most frequent college entrance examination emergencies,and there are different ways of local policy response.However,with the promotion of the new college entrance examination reform,the focus of response is to strengthen the management of the examination,and steadily promote the listening and speaking test in college entrance examination.The sixth chapter explores the relationship between public opinion and policy responsiveness through the key nodes of NMET policy changes.The research shows that although the reform policy of the national college entrance examination system highlights the reform of the content and form of the college entrance examination since 1999,the focus of public opinion is on the subject score,scoring method and examination method.After the reform of the first college entrance examination in 1984,NMET has established the same subject status and score weight as Chinese and mathematics,and has been strengthened in practice.Since the new century,the public began to reflect on the English Craze,and the voice of weakening English is strong.In 2006,Jiangsu Province reduced the score of NMET for the first time through the positive response and consultation to the public opinion.In 2013,the reform of the college entrance examination in Beijing catered to the public opinion and proposed a plan to reduce the score of NMET.However,professional discourse played an important role in the public opinion and maintained the status of NMET.Since 2017,in order to overcome the drawback of "one test for life",the " Two Tests in One Year " of NMET in the pilot provinces of the new reform of college entrance examination has reduced the risk of English listening accidents in college entrance examination,but the requirements of test technology and the policy implementation ability of local governments have become the constraint factors of " Two Tests in One Year ".The seventh chapter is the implication and conclusion part,which summarizes the policy response to public opinion into four modes: active consultation,active negotiation,passive consultation and pressure response.It puts forward the possible path for the development of responsive foreign language education policy from three aspects,namely,correct understanding of ideological conflict,rational use of public opinion survey,and the construction of good public opinion environment.The research innovation of this thesis is mainly embodied in three aspects: theoretical basis,research methods and research application: firstly,the theoretical connotation of foreign language education policy responsiveness is constructed on the basis of multi-disciplinary knowledge,and the scientific path to responsive foreign language planning in line with modern governance ideology is explored;secondly,as to the research method innovation,the integration of qualitative exploration,media framework analysis and policy narratives expands the connotation of qualitative research;finally,the application innovation of this study is that policy responsiveness provides a new perspective for the current college entrance examination reform and foreign language education planning.