OUR Party has always attached great importance to foreign language education and the training of her cadres in foreign languages.
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formally founded in 1921, on August 22, 1920, Comrades Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and others established the Shanghai Socialist Youth League (SSYL) in Shanghai, which was one of the predecessors of the CCP.
In September 1920, right after the SSYL itself was set up, the League founded a foreign language teaching school called Foreign Language Association. It engaged in the training of revolutionaries in foreign languages and also in covering their secret activities.
On the newspaper Republic Daily of September 30, 1920 there was an enrolment announcement saying that the school had set up classes of English, Russian, German, French and Japanese languages, and that the tuition fee was two dollars per month. The announcement also stated that grammar lessons would be taught by Chinese teachers and pronunciation and speaking by foreign teachers. Comrades Ren Bishi, Liu Shaoqi, Xiao Jinguang and writers Ding Ling and Cao Jinghua and other revolutionaries studied at this school.
Then, in 1922, the new-born CCP established the Shanghai University. It was the first higher education institution founded by our party. It had three departments: Chinese literature, English literature and sociology. Comrade Qu Qiubai once served as its Dean of Studies. The revolutionary writer Shun Yanbing taught English and English literature there.
Both these two schools were NGO (non-governmental organization) or private educational institutions engaged in foreign language teaching. Therefore, we can see that private foreign language education has a long history, to say nothing of the beginning of China’s foreign language teaching with the establishment of the Capital Foreign Language Institute （京师同文馆） in 1862 during the Qing dynasty.
QUESTION NO. 2
IN the past few years, there have been discussions about when school children should start foreign language learning. The more common understanding nowadays is that they should start at what is called the children’s “critical period” for foreign language learning （FLL）, or in other words, at an early age.
The general trend in most countries of the world, children start to learn a foreign language at primary school period. Most of the countries of the European Union start FLL at the age range of 8-12. In Spain and Belgium FLL starts at kindergartens.
As stipulated in the National Syllabus Standard for ELL of our country, school children are encouraged to start ELL in the third year of primary school education. However, in all big cities and many medium-sized cities ELL starts at the first year of primary school. Besides, bilingual kindergartens are very popular in our country.
Therefore, whether or not we should start FLL at primary school or even earlier is actually no longer a theoretical or academic question but rather a generally accepted common practice.
What’s more, from the point of view of human resources, a crying need of our country is high-level foreign language personnel. By some NGO statistics, the present number of high-quality foreign language workers is but 10% of what the country needs.
Therefore, in order to meet this need, it is highly necessary to start foreign language learning at an early age and lengthen the duration of foreign language learning. Only in this way can we expect to have an ample number of high-level foreign language workers.
As China is in great need of language workers of other foreign languages than English, such as Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, etc. And yet these languages are usually not taught in ordinary primary and middle schools, it is necessary to have private foreign language schools where these languages can be learnt.
Hence, it is highly advisable that a foreign language school should have a multilingual program. Also, students should be encouraged to learn a second foreign language, or even a third, as a selective course.
A foreign language school should have as many courses as possible taught in a bilingual way. The proportion of the foreign language used in the classroom and textbooks can vary. For instance, in a math course, at least these terms can be said in English: plus, minus, times and divide.
QUESTION NO. 3
IS too much English taught at the expense of the Chinese lessons? Are the English lessons to be blamed for the declination of the students’ level of their mother tongue and the lack of knowledge of their own culture?
The answer is definitely NO.
It is true that nowadays the students’ level of their own language and their knowledge of their own culture are not satisfactory, yet this is not because they learn too much foreign languages. It is because they spend too much time on computer games and TV programs and too little time on reading books of Chinese cultural heritage.
Therefore, a good foreign language school should not only teach foreign language lessons well, but also pay great attention to the teaching of the Chinese language and the students’ acquisition of the Chinese culture.
QUESTION NO. 4
FOREIGN language schools should make great efforts to implement Quality-oriented Education (otherwise called Character Education). This is particularly so as most of the students in an NGO or private foreign language school are from we-to-do families where the children tend to be spoiled.
It is highly advisable for foreign language schools to implement Multi-Intelligence and Skill Education (or Holistic Education) and develop the school children and students in an all-round way. They should be encouraged to learn from the essence of foreign cultures.
QUESTION NO. 5
A FOREIGN language school should not only teach foreign languages well in the classroom but also create a good environment for language acquisition. Students should be encouraged to form the habit of speaking the foreign language they are learning in their daily life. A foreign language can only be learned well by combining language learning and language acquisition.
A good foreign language school should set up a Chinese learning centre where foreign students can be enrolled to learn the Chinese language. This will not only be beneficial to the school financially but will also help to create a language acquisition environment for the Chinese students.
QUESTION NO. 6
ARE students in foreign language schools necessarily weak in the learning of the other subjects?
The answer is also: NO.
The fact is: students who are good in their foreign language learning are usually also good in their learning of the other subjects, particularly the liberal arts subjects.
However, in some foreign language schools, the students’ scores in the subjects other than English in the “mid-exams” are sometimes lower than those of the students of the ordinary middle schools.
From my own observation, this happens in some newly-founded foreign language schools and is usually temporary. Things improve when necessary measures are taken, such as strengthening the teaching force for the other subjects.
It is very important for a foreign language school to have not only good teachers of foreign languages but also good teachers for all other subjects. This will help the school to get out of the possible dilemma of lagging behind the ordinary schools in the teaching of the other subjects and become a school good in an all-round way.
CONCLUSION
THE aim or objective of NGO or private foreign language schools is, first of all, to provide a qualified reserve force for foreign language colleges and universities where students are trained to be high-level foreign language personnel, to help prepare those students who intend to go and study abroad in their foreign language abilities and also to help raise the foreign language level of the labor force in general.
From the point-of-view of the scientific development outlook, foreign language schools and schools with foreign language characteristics are playing an important role in preparing qualified personnel for our country’s socialist construction. We can proudly say that we constitute an indispensable part of our country’s foreign language education.
Therefore, my dear friends, be bold and assured and put your shoulder to the wheel and vie to make your foreign language school the best of its kind in the country.
