Content uploaded by Ling Shi
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Ling Shi on Oct 12, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
() –
() –
Linguistics and
the Human
Sciences
L O N D O N
doi : 10.1558/lhs.v3i2.255
Review
English Language Teaching in China: new approaches,
perspectives and standards. Jun Liu (2007)
London: Continuum. pp. 340
ISBN 978–0826490360 (hb) 978–0826480767 (pb)
Reviewed by Ling Shi
e notion of communicative competence, which denes the behaviors of a
procient speaker of a language, was rst introduced to language teaching by
Savignon (1972) and Canale and Swain (1980). Since then, communicative
language teaching practices have predominated language education. However,
as today’s world becomes increasingly interconnected and technology-based,
communicative competence now entails national and international sensitivities
to new communication needs of global citizens. eorists, researchers and
practitioners are, therefore, searching for new theoretical directions and empiri-
cal bases for better classroom practice. English Language Teaching in China is
a timely book that revisits and re-evaluates the history of language teaching. It
distinguishes itself by pushing the boundaries, re-conceptualizing communica-
tive competence and examining its applicability in the new century from both
global and local perspectives.
e book opens with an introduction that orients the readers to the topic and
a brief summary of the 17 chapters that follow. e 17 chapters are grouped in
three parts. e rst part ‘Teaching English around the globe’ (Chapters 1 to
6) presents an excellent overview of some theoretical issues related to teaching
methods as well as thoughtful re-conceptualizations of communication compe-
tence in international English teaching. e second part ‘Learning and assessing
Affiliation
The University of British Columbia, Canada
email: ling.shi@ubc.ca
.
–
©,
256
communicative competence’ (Chapters 7 to 10) addresses various learning
and assessment issues responding to new teaching challenges. e third part
‘Contextualizing communicative competence in P. R. China’ (Chapters 11 to 17)
examines the applicability of communicative competence in a contextualized
language teaching in China. Chapters in the rst two parts are a collection
of papers from respected scholars based in the U.S. and Australia, whereas
chapters in the third part are contributed by researchers currently teaching
and researching in universities in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Moving
from theoretical frameworks from a global perspective to practical issues from
a local perspective, the book meets the needs of a wide range of readers from
theorists to practitioners. Although it species a focus on China, the book
presents general theoretical and method implications for teaching English
internationally in both EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ESL (English
as a Second Language) contexts.
Part 1 starts with Jun Liu’s opening chapter ‘e place of methods in teach-
ing English around the world’ which serves an introduction to the role of
communicative and other language teaching methods. e author does so by
reporting a questionnaire survey of language teaching methods among 448
TESOLers (members of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)
teaching in either ESL or EFL contexts. e ndings that Communicative
Language Teaching and the Eclectic approaches received the highest rat-
ings for familiarity, preference and use indicate that methods still play an
important role in language teaching. Dierent from previous scholars who
distinguished teaching methods from approaches or principles, Liu dened
method as a generic term for any language teaching model. e new deni-
tion, I believe, should resonate with many classroom teachers and teacher
trainers. Based on the denition, Liu proposed a multidimensional model for
conceptualizing language teaching methods. Readers should nd the model
useful in illustrating the complexity of describing and choosing a method in
language teaching.
With the rst chapter conrming the important role of methods, the follow-
ing chapters (2–5) in Part 1 present strong and compelling re-theorizations
of communicative language teaching. Each of these chapters deals with one
main aspect of communicative language teaching. It starts with Diane Larsen-
Freeman’s chapter, ‘Redening grammar in contextualizing communicative
competence’, in which she renes grammar teaching as an approach to help
learners develop a dynamic rather than a static grammar system so that they
are adaptive to any communicative contexts. In Chapter 3, ‘e uses of com-
municative competence in a global world’, Claire Kramsch, switching to a social
semiotic perspective, recontextualizes language competence in a global world
featuring mobility, variability and change. en Denise E. Murray, author of
257
Chapter 4, reconceptualizes teaching communicative competence along with
electronic literacies. is is followed by Chapter 5 in which Lynne T. Díaz-Rico
re-imagines second language acquisition (SLA) as a performative practice
which diers from the naturally-occurring rst language acquisition. ese new
conceptualizations of language teaching push and challenge readers to rethink
language teaching practices: What grammar needs to be taught so that students
can generalize from one communicative demand or context to another? How
can we follow a social semiotic pedagogy to help students develop contextual
awareness since diverging values and ideologies, apart from imperfect use of
language, could also cause miscommunication in today’s global world? How
could computer technology be used to facilitate the practice of communicative
competence? How could teachers help increase performativity if SLA is not a
natural and native-like act? To further challenge the readers to rethink about
English teaching, Part 1 concludes with Chapter 6 in which Jun Liu highlights
the challenges and opportunities of collaboration between NES (Native-English
speaking) and NNES (Nonnative-English speaking) teachers of English, draw-
ing on the experiences of Shanto University in China.
e four chapters in Part 2 delve into specic issues and challenges of learn-
ing and teaching communicative competence. e rst two chapters (7 and
8) present an overview of the relevant theory and research in the area. Steve
Stoyno, author of Chapter 7, ‘Assessing communicative competence: from
theory to practice’, explores how various theoretical principles could be applied
to develop criterion-referenced assessments for communicative competence
in local contexts. Context-specic assessments of speaking ability, as Stoyno
illustrates, can be constructed by developing real-world tasks based on analysis
of the context of language use and analytic scales that describe how examinees
complete these tasks. en Chapter 8, ‘Learning communicative competence:
insights from psycholinguistics and SLA’, by omas Scovel, reviews research
on various non-linguistic factors that shape the acquisition of communica-
tive competence in a second language, including learning styles, motivations,
memory, the top-down and bottom-up processing approaches, social interac-
tion, and age.
Following the review of theory and research in Chapters 7 and 8, Jun Liu
and Ulla Connor, authors of Chapters 9 and 10, direct the readers’ attention
to the factor of age in second language learning and the cultural/ideological
aspect in the assessment of second language writing respectively. In Chapter
9, Liu reports a study that explores the eects of early English education in
China. Based on his nding that the early starters in a rural school did not
outperform the late starters, the author concludes that teaching quality and
the amount of exposure to English are important external factors that aect
students’ motivation and learning achievements. Compared with Liu who
258
calls for a reevaluation of China’s mandatory requirement to start English
learning at grade 3 or lower, Connor argues, from an intercultural perspective
of how norms of rhetorical style and content of writing change and dier across
cultures, that a cultural/ideological level be added to the existing models of
communicative EFL writing. Using previous examples from empirical research
on Chinese students’ and teacher’ perceptions about what is good writing,
Connor highlights the importance of developing writing tasks that are relevant
for intercultural English learners and writing assessment that is sensitive to
World Englishes and non-native English speaker norms.
Compared with chapters in Parts 1 and 2 that mostly focus on theory and
research applicable to language teaching in general, chapters in Part 3 inves-
tigate the applicability of communicative competences in a contextualized
language learning situation of China, a country that has millions of English
learners. Among the seven chapters in Part 3, three endeavor to show teaching
challenges that could be traced to a Chinese learning culture that respects
teacher authority and prioritizes exams. For example, Don Snow, author of
Chapter 11, ‘Sustaining self-directed language learning in the Chinese context’,
reports an action research study on challenges of autonomous learning in
Nanjing university of China. Also examining learning behaviors of Chinese
students, Jian E. Peng, author of Chapter 13, ‘Willingness to communicate in
the Chinese EFL classroom: a cultural perspective’, presents and discusses a
study that connects students’ non-communicative participation style to social
and psychological factors in both individual (i.e., ability to communicate, lan-
guage anxiety, perceptions of learning a foreign language) and social contexts
(i.e., classroom climate, group cohesiveness, teacher support, and classroom
organizations). Peng traces these variables to the Chinese learning culture herit-
age which prioritizes passing exams rather than communicative competence.
In China where teacher authority is highly valued, the eectiveness of peer
feedback poses another interesting research question. Yue-ting Xu and Jun Liu
report their study in Chapter 15 ‘e eectiveness of anonymous written feed-
back from peers and the teacher on revisions in China’. By mixing the teacher
and peer comments and presenting them anonymously, the researchers found
that student writers accepted both teacher and peer comments and responded
especially to those specic and word level comments.
Part 3 contains two chapters (12 and 14) that elucidate new initiatives in
teaching communicative competence in spoken English in China. In Chapter
12, ‘Using media to teach culture-specic gestures in the Chinese context’, Jun
Zhao compares the use of gestures of Chinese students when communicat-
ing in English and Chinese. e author elaborates on the importance to
enhance Chinese students’ exposure to native speakers in order to develop
an awareness of culturally appropriate conversation gestures. Also suggesting
259
a new teaching initiative, Jette G. Jansen Edwards, in Chapter 14, ‘Teaching
pronunciation in twenty-rst century China: models and methods’, comments
on the emerging models of English as an International Language and China
English, as well as the implications of these models for teaching English
pronunciation in China.
Readers who are interested in English education in China should nd useful
how some of the authors provide speculations on the Chinese culture and
value systems that might have inuenced English classrooms and students’
English communication. ese cultural and value systems include an expecta-
tion of teachers to be responsibility for students’ learning, students’ preference
for non-communicative participation style in classes, and Chinese speakers’
tendency to avoid using wide and frequent hand movements while talking. To
deal with these issues in teaching Chinese EFL students, the authors suggest
adopting specic strategies to sustain non-mandatory or autonomous language
learning eorts (Don Snow, Chapter 11), using video clips of real English-
speaking people talking in reality to introduce culture specic gestures (Jun
Zhao, Chapter 12), conducting various pedagogical activities to encourage
students’ willingness to communicate in classrooms (Peng, Chapter 13), and
implementing peer review by designing appropriate written feedback sheets
and timing teacher intervention aer peer response (Xu & Liu, Chapter 15).
With these pedagogical suggestions, the book brings to light opportunities for
new initiatives in teaching communicative competence in China.
Unlike most authors in Part 3 that report research in Mainland China, George
Braine and Carmel McNaught, in Chapter 16, ‘Adaptation of the ‘writing across
the curriculum’ model to the Hong Kong context’, describe their project that
supports for writing in English at universities in Hong Kong. Since many local
tutors and professors had little writing instruction during their secondary and
undergraduate studies themselves, the authors describe how they adapted the
USA model to the Hong Kong context by training and providing teaching
assistants with a background in applied linguistics and second language writing
to run writing mini-workshops for both undergraduate and graduate students.
Based on their experiences, the authors stress the ‘need for focused, customized
and adaptive English writing support’ (p. 326) in universities in Hong Kong
where students’ English writing prociency is a great concern.
e book concludes with Liu’s epilogue ‘Beyond communicative competence:
a pedagogical perspective’ (Chapter 17) in which the author comments on
the importance of raising students’ ‘competence of communicative incompe-
tence’ so that they could continue to progress aer reaching a minimal level of
communicative competence. Following Crystal (1997), the author highlights
the need to go beyond the traditional practice of judging one’s linguistic and
sociocultural competence against the reference point of an ideal native speaker
260
to a new understanding of communicative competence ‘from intercultural
perspectives in which language use is established by mutual recognition of
interlocutors’ social identities’ (p. 333). e book ends with an important
message for second language learners to develop ‘cultural sensitive knowledge,
mindful reexivity and social identity negotiation skills’ in order to be fully
competent in using the target language for communication (p. 334).
English Language Teaching in China is a substantial read. e strength of book
lies in its breadth and depth of the themes. While I enjoyed reading the book, I
thought it would have been more eective if there were references made among
chapters to help readers make better connections. Such a strategy would also
enhance the coherence of the book. I also encountered a couple of typos. One
of them (page 180, it should be ‘NS’ not ‘S’ for the overall score of 9th graders
in the table) could cause confusion so I hope the author would correct it when
the book gets a second edition. Overall, the book serves its intended purpose
to target at an audience of researchers, scholars and classroom teachers. I
welcomed the opportunity to review the book.
References
Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980) eoretical bases of communicative approaches to
second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1: 1–47.
Crystal, D. (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Savignon, S. (1972) Communicative Competence: An Experiment in Foreign Language
Teaching. Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Development.
