English Education In Rural China: Practices, Problems And Suggestions

Very few studies have been conducted on English Education in rural China. This study aimed at investigating rural English education with an less adopted perspective:It reported local teachers' and officials' views on the problems with present rural English education, the characteristics of English classes and finally gave some suggestions on how to improve rural English education in the hope that by calling attention to the gap between urban and rural education, more awareness of the problems can be aroused.This study used a questionnaire for rural students to find out about the frequency of different classroom activities and also adopted interviews to investigate local teachers' and officials' views about rural English education. It answered the following questions:1)How do teachers deliver lessons in rural English classes?2)What are the problems observed by teachers and local officials in ruralEnglish education?3)What suggestions do rural teachers and officials offer for improvingEnglish education?The survey and interview results showed that the rural English class mainly adopted a traditional grammar-translation way of teaching, with the teacher explaining texts and grammar points. The classroom was mostly teacher-centred, but students did have chances to interact in English with their teachers and classmates. In addition, the content of rural English lessons was strictly confined to textbooks. Furthermore, teachers usually adopted physical punishment rather than communication to establish their authority among students.This study also reported several problems concerning rural English education:lack of financial support, difficulty of attracting teachers with high qualifications, insufficient teacher training, heavy workload for teachers, lack of class preparation and teaching research, and students'low motivation. In 2001, the central government demanded that all primary schools should offer English classes from 2002 at the latest. Without sufficient teacher reservation and financial input, the hasty policy-making turned out to have caused more problems than it actually solved in rural English education.Suggestions on how to improve rural English education were offered by the interviewees in this study. One suggestion was to train local teachers to make full use of the audio material in textbooks and to assign students more memorization work. Another possible strategy was to encourage local teachers to exchange their teaching problems and solutions. It can be quite realistic and effective to encourage teachers to help each other in groups in overcoming obstacles encountered in teaching practice.This study is significant in various ways. First, on the policy level, it helps to arouse the awareness of educational inequality, and thus can help to adjust the policy making process by providing information at the executive level. Practically, this study also gives advice on how to improve governments' support to less-developed areas. On the teaching level, this study can give practical suggestions to rural teachers on how to improve their teaching.