Who to Bring Order to the English Training Market?

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 11, 2003

Who to Bring Order to the English Training Market?

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The English training market in Beijing today is one wherein qualified training schools intermingled with the unqualified. There are four main types: first, those aim at helping students deal with various tests; secondly, those focus on pronunciation practice, yet overlooking communications; thirdly, those equal English corners, paying little attention to training of basic skills; and lastly, those pursue slang expressions.

"Speaking fluent English within a half year, and talking freely with foreigners in one year", "Learning English with ease", "Making English your second native language", "Acquiring a good English within one year, and reaching a standard as BBC in three years", ... Inspiring and stirring as they are, these messages of English fast food make many English learners feel puzzled.

At a registration place of an English training organization, a mother with a pile of ads in hand said to the reporter in a little bit helpless way, "I have a puzzled idea which one (training organization) I should believe. So, I can only fumble along as I feel it. What I'm worried about is that the costly and time-consuming training course bears no fruit." Since her child was on the winter vacation, she would rather he (she) be signed up for a training course. However, the cost was beyond her reach: a famous course over 10 days required 1,400-1,500 yuan. She finally decided not to.

Mushrooming Training Courses

Coupled with Beijing successful bid for Olympics Games 2008 and China's accession to the WTO, an upsurge in learning English is in vogue in Beijing. By estimates of Beijing Municipal Education Commission, the city sees at least 300,000 attending English training courses at their expense every year, the annual output amounting to RMB 2bn-3bn. Therefore, training organizations big and small, domestic and foreign set up branches in succession at allurement of the "big cake" of English training, with the total number topping 1,000 as incomplete statistics put it. In order to get a share of the "cake", these organizations then drop ads bombs on consumers by newspaper, TV and radio. English learners cannot help raising doubts.

Inflated Advertisements

Mr. Xu, who once started an English training course, said, "Short-term English training courses actually produce a very limited effect. As 80% of learning rests on oneself, how can schools guarantee students a high level? There is no exception, even to chairman with New Oriental Yu Minhong and founder of Crazy English Li Yang, both of whom speak a native English by years of diligent practice."

Inflated advertisements, in the final analysis, go along with people's eagerness to improve their English for promotion, a job in foreign-funded enterprises or whatever, which are believed to be inexhaustible motivations for taking a make-up English course.

President with New Oriental Hu Min noted in the exclusive interview, in the English training market now prevails an unhealthy tendency that trainers are playing on a conceptual game but not steadfast in their study of English pedagogics. They concentrate their efforts on creating new flashy words & expressions in order to reap a bigger recruitment.

Director with the Wall Street English Lu Yi feng once humorously divided the present English training schools into the four types as mentioned above.

Indistinguishable Foreign Teachers

Mr. Yang with Social Sciences Documents Publishing House complained to the reporter about his own experience. Last summer holiday her daughter attended a course at an English training school that was named after a foreigner and claimed to give lessons by seasoned foreign teachers.

However, it turned out that these so-called foreign teachers were frequently on the move as if they were on a merry-go-round. They came to China out of travel, business or others from various countries such as the United States, Britain and New Zealand. What's funny enough is that they have never set foot in teaching. "So, you can well imagine how's the scientism and continuity of the lessons."

Even annoyingly is that many times Mr. Yang had asked the school for an invoice, yet ended up with a receipt with no stamp on it.

According to relevant statistics, the year of 2001 witnessed over 2,200 foreign teachers working in Beijing. Some of them taught in regular institutions of higher learning such as Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute (BSFLI), Beijing Language & Culture University (BLCU), Tsinghua University and Beijing University. Some held posts in some noted training schools of foreign languages, New Oriental, Dell English and Wall Street English and the like. Others worked like a guerrilla, making up the shortage of teachers in smaller training schools.

"Genuine" foreign teachers should have a "foreign professor certificate" by Beijing Municipal Education Commission and State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, TEFL (Teach English As a Foreign Language) or TESL (Teach English As a Second Language). As a matter of fact, many of foreign teachers do not. They might be nationals of the United States and European countries, or just English native speakers. Perhaps, they were invited through intermediary organizations, introduced by friends, or took over from haunts of foreigners like Sanlitun.

"It is all because of the brisk English training market. In order to be more competitive, training schools have to hold high the signboard of foreign teachers." An intermediary explained with calm. He also added, "I once invited many foreign teachers, too. Some of them don't have a university education, while some are even riff-raffs. But it doesn't matter since they all are accepted by schools."

Expert's Comments

"Whenever I go over newspapers, I see pages of ads for English training. And I often receive an invitation to give a lecture, sometimes several a day." Said Mr. Zhang Daozhen, a celebrated expert of English education, representative of academicians and author of English Grammar. "Such a phenomenon is something pleasing but also worrisome. On the one hand, it is to the good of our country that there are so many people learning English. But some training organizations ask an unreasonable price----thousands or even 10-thousand yuan. Yet how much English ability they can offer to students deserves doubts." As he has made numerous lectures and speeches in training courses, he gets a rough idea about English training.

Mr. Zhang then made an objective appraisal of practitioners on the flourishing English training market. "The English training at present stresses listening, oral and applicable ability, and helps students to overcome psychological barriers, I have to admit it. But some training courses are playing a sheer conceptual game. Leaving no stone unturned, they are pondering over students' thoughts. But they should have tried every means possible to improve students' English ability." Mr. Zhang deemed courses run by Chinese branches of foreign English training organizations as luxury and expensive. He also held that various shortcuts of English learning are really a bothersome problem.

By PD Online Staff Zhu Lizhen

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