On February 22nd, The Guardian reported that Gordon Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, said during his visit to China that the British educational output had doubled in the past five years. At present, the annual profit of English teaching is as high as 654.38+000 billion pounds, accounting for 654.38+0% of British GDP and 4% of total exports. In the next 20 years, the number of English speakers in China will be the total number of native English speakers in the world. Brown called China's huge English education market "a great opportunity".
Zhou Chenggang, the headmaster of New Oriental School, confirmed Gordon Brown's view. He used to be a reporter and program host of BBC Asia-Pacific Department. He said, "The British have regarded English as an industry. They promote English by studying abroad and promoting their own culture. Everything in Britain is going downhill, and now English has been regarded as a lifesaver. China is also a huge market. They sell English to China, and then promote their own culture and history. In this respect, the United States has the advantage of cultural hegemony, so they never deliberately promote English. The popularity of English is related to the countries represented by this language, which are powerful and respected. Why don't we learn Ethiopian? China is now the fastest-growing country in the world, Chinese is getting more and more attention from the world, and the infiltration ability of China people is unparalleled. China, a major international city abroad, is in the center of the city. These people form their own communities and spread Chinese invisibly. However, the popularity of Chinese in the world should reach the current level of English, which is not achievable in the short term. "
It seems that the starting point of the English learning craze in China can be traced back to 1978. On June 65438+1October 18 this year, Beijing Daily published an article entitled "Theoretical Front-Mastering a Foreign Language with Revolutionary Mentors as an Example". At the end of the article, we issued such a call: We must be ambitious, use foreign languages as a weapon, and make contributions to building China into a powerful socialist country. On February 23rd of the same year, 65438, an article in China Youth Daily commemorating the 85th anniversary of Chairman Mao's birth showed such a detail: Chairman Mao was very busy in his later years, but he still took time out to learn English and read every word more than ten times. Seeing him working so hard, the staff asked, Chairman Mao, why do you have to learn a foreign language when you are so old? Chairman Mao kindly told her that this was the need of struggle. These two reports can be regarded as the outposts of the English learning boom in China. 198 1 year 1 month 65438+4, the State Council promulgated the Interim Provisions on Studying Abroad at One's own expense, and the road to studying abroad was opened. At that time, there were only 285 candidates in the TOEFL test for the first time. Two years later, it rose to 2500, and 1985 reached 8000 and 65435.
China began to promote English school education from 1984. At that time, English entered the college entrance examination as the main subject; 1September, 1987, the university began to implement CET-4; 1989 1 month, with six levels. According to Lin Qingxin, Associate Professor of the English Department of Peking University, the original intention of CET-4 and CET-6 is to provide a unified standard for evaluating college English teaching, and it also reflects the government's promotion of English learning. From 65438 to 0986, China linked the evaluation of professional titles to a certain foreign language level. From then on, professional and technical personnel from all walks of life, such as science, education, culture and health, have to pass the foreign language proficiency test before they can participate in the professional title evaluation. Professor Lin Qingxin said that after nearly 10 years of brewing after the Cultural Revolution, the first upsurge of English learning after the founding of the People's Republic of China rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
From 65438 to 0993, the first TV series "Beijingers in new york" was broadcast in China. In the same year, many non-governmental English training institutions emerged, such as Li Yang's "Crazy English Training Course" and New Oriental School, which had a wide influence in the future. 200 1, Beijing's Olympic bid. In the last presentation of the China delegation, Beijing Mayor Liu Qi said: "More than 600,000 volunteers are ready to participate in all the work of the Olympic Games at any time. Our citizens, old and young, are actively learning foreign languages in order to welcome guests from all over the world in their own languages in Beijing. I want to tell you that I used to study Russian, and now I study English with the citizens. " After the successful bid for the Olympic Games, the national English craze rose again. Folk English training institutions have mushroomed, and they have also become the way to make money for those who know the times. According to the Survey Report of Famous Foreign Language Institutions in 2004 jointly issued by English Center of China Radio International, Sina Foreign Language and School Choice Network, by 2004, there were no fewer than 50,000 English training institutions in China, and the total market value of English training had reached 654.38+0.5 billion yuan. Behind this is an amazing number of English learners. Take New Oriental School as an example. 1994, 3558 people were trained in New Oriental English. In 2004, the number of trainees reached 750,000. Zhou Chenggang, president of Beijing New Oriental School, said: "Modern people live with great goals, and English fever is just the word' demand'."
In 2004, there was a debate in China's academic circles and media called "The Defence of China". Some scholars have pointed out that "our inherent China tradition is facing all kinds of shocking changes" and "Chinese has become aphasia". On February 25, 2005, Yuan Guiren, Vice Minister of Education, said at the 2005 annual conference on language and writing that the phenomenon of attaching importance to foreign language learning and use while neglecting or weakening domestic language learning and use should be corrected.
Regarding the influence of English popularization on Chinese, Associate Professor Lin Qingxin, head of the English Department of Peking University, said: "Languages are equal, and there is no difference between good and bad. But the development of language is also the survival of the fittest. The popularity of English enriches Chinese vocabulary; English itself has its own laws of development, such as becoming more and more straightforward, but the general laws of its language will not change. " Professor Lin does not think that the characteristics of language itself will lead to the popularity of a certain language, but more from the sociological reasons behind the language.
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