Why do most of Chinese college students who can only speak dumb English?为什么中国人学英语容易学“哑巴英语”？
I had heard the term “dumb English” several years before I went abroad. I considered myself not part of what they were referring to. However, after my first trip abroad, right after graduating from high school (supposedly the time when knowledge is most abundant), I was deeply struck. Even asking for directions at the airport or saying a simple sentence like “I live in XXX city in the province of Ontario, and my driver’s name is XXX” felt hesitant and awkward.
I grew up in Guangdong, where various dialects are spoken. I speak Mandarin with my dad, Teochew with my mom, Hakka with my grandparents, and Cantonese with my friends. I don’t consider myself clumsy in languages.
After years of practice, my spoken English has greatly improved. During this process, I encountered many Chinese students who, like me initially, struggled with spoken English. I gradually realized that many issues in English classes during my school years in China triggered these thoughts.
In China, English classes are not originally designed for “communication.”
Because Chinese-English classes were not originally designed for “communication.”
Initially, Chinese English classes were designed for “reading.” The reason for promoting English education in the past was that almost all top journals and papers in the field of technology were in English. To publish a paper, you needed to understand English. To read papers, you also needed to understand English. Therefore, a subject called “English” was created. A curriculum and textbooks were developed based on English, and students learned from them. After learning, they would be tested, evaluating their ability to solve problems. This process is similar to the nature of Chinese language, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, politics, history, and geography.
Language communication is a very sensory, spontaneous, and constantly changing thing. Both English and Chinese are constantly evolving. Some things that are considered “wrong” or “non-standard” become correct when used by many people, if they can convey your meaning and achieve the purpose of communication.
Examinations, especially in China, especially the Chinese college entrance examination (gaokao), only require two things: fairness and examinability.
The process of accurately and meticulously differentiating people’s problem-solving abilities and then arranging them into work-training institutions — this process, as many people say, determines a person’s fate — what job to take? how much work to do? and how much money to earn after work?
This determines that what is learned is best to have both difficulty and ease, ensuring that some people cannot learn it — differential; what is learned is best to be black or white, right is right and wrong is wrong — fair.
English, in fact, if you don’t know various clauses, tenses, voices, “advanced words,” phrases, and some playful phrases taught by training class teachers (which are mostly inappropriate), you can still achieve the goal of personal communication. If you master basic vocabulary, know basic grammar, dare to speak, and know what you’re saying rather than memorizing the nonsense from
However, how can something without absolute correctness or error and does not ‘stump’ some people be used for exams?
For oral language, which should originally assess whether a person knows what they are saying and can convey their thoughts and emotions with appropriate voice. The judgment of a person’s oral proficiency sounds vague, irrelevant to right and wrong, and is something everyone can do if they have a mouth. Its existence is not important and is not valued.
Writing, which should originally assess whether a person knows what they are writing and can convey their thoughts and emotions with appropriate words, has been transformed into memorizing grammatically correct short sentences.
Therefore, Chinese middle school (and, in fact, most universities) English education is not about English but about training in English grammar knowledge tests, in the form of problem-solving. The goal is to fairly differentiate problem-solving abilities in the college entrance examination and channel students into different work-training institutions, transforming them into workers of different levels — like all other subjects in the college entrance examination.
Thank you for reading. If you find any of my writings helpful or inspiring, feel free to highlight, clap, comment.