David Graddol

English in China today

According to a 2010 China Daily article, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of Chinas population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The importance of English in the state education system has been supplemented by the rapid growth of privately-run language schools and training institutes across the country in recent years. The same article quoted a comment by Ms Xiao Yan, the public relations manager of the Wall Street English language school chain, who gave her explanation for the current popularity of English in the following terms: More and more importance has been given to English after China carried out the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world in the late 1970s. And accompanying Chinas rise on the world stage in recent years are growing connections of commerce and culture with other countries, especially those developed English-speaking countries […] The entire Chinese society attaches high importance to the English study as sometimes it even plays a vital role for a person who plans to pursue further education and seek a better career. There is no doubt that people who have a good command of English are more competitive than their peers. (China Daily, 2010a)According to a 2010 China Dailyarticle, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of Chinas population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The impor ...

Tom McArthur's English Today

Tom McArthurs contribution to English language studies has been immense, and has had a powerful impact at a number of levels. Tom started his life as an educator, gaining crucial exposure to English across the globe very early in his career, when in one of his first jobs teaching English at the Cathedral School in Bombay (Mumbai). After a varied academic career, which included a post at the University of Quebec, Tom returned to the UK to start a new journal for Cambridge University Press, English Today. Toms brief at that time was to be the founding editor of a journal that would inform a wide readership about the highways and byways of the English language, during an era when English was becoming a global language at an unprecedented speed.

Varieties of English in the urban landscapes of Hong Kong and Shenzhen

The border between mainland China and Hong Kong has become one of the worlds most fascinating linguistic divides. On one side lies the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen, stretching the entire length of the border – an extraordinary urban development which in many ways epitomises the recent urbanisation of modern China. On the other side lies the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong (see Figure 1). It is not possible to cross from Hong Kong to mainland China by land without passing through one of the Shenzhen checkpoints.

English in Contemporary China

According to a 2010 China Daily article, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of Chinas population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The importance of English in the state education system has been supplemented by the rapid growth of privately-run language schools and training institutes across the country in recent years. The same article quoted a comment by Ms Xiao Yan, the public relations manager of the Wall Street English language school chain, who gave her explanation for the current popularity of English in the following terms: More and more importance has been given to English after China carried out the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world in the late 1970s. And accompanying Chinas rise on the world stage in recent years are growing connections of commerce and culture with other countries, especially those developed English-speaking countries […] The entire Chinese society attaches high importance to the English study as sometimes it even plays a vital role for a person who plans to pursue further education and seek a better career. There is no doubt that people who have a good command of English are more competitive than their peers. (China Daily, 2010a)According to a 2010 China Dailyarticle, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of Chinas population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The impor ...

A moving and mystifying target language

This issue presents a selection of articles on English in various contexts and settings, with a significant focus on education in the first four. Susan Van Rooy describes the language experiences of South Korean academics and their families in a small town in South Africa, and the consequences of their stay abroad for their English language proficiency. She reminds us that not all EFL learners of English have the ‘Inner Circle’ mainstream as their model: Potchefstroom, South Africa offers a mix between Inner and Outer Circle, probably having more features of the latter. Christian Burrows writes about methodologies of EFL classrooms in Japan, where cultural constraints make TBL (Task-Based Learning) more challenging than its Western proponents realise. The next two articles emphasise the need to pay attention to colloquial spoken language. Manfred Markus writes about the need to focus on phonetic accuracy in EFL teaching, or at least to try and replicate mainstream norms as much as possible. Fan Xianlong contributes a paper on the ever-changing spoken norms of the mainstream, based on his experiences as a visiting scholar in the United States. Although many of the features he describes are well known to Western sociolinguists, the article presents a refreshing perspective of how complex the notion of ‘target language’ must be to users of ESL and EFL. More often it is a moving and mystifying target, with its cultural and political minefields that find their way into everyday usage.

Borderland English: signs of transition across the expiring China–Hong Kong border

Scholars working in the World Englishes tradition have usually been concerned with those varieties of English which, following Kachru, belong to the ‘outer circle’ of Englishes that emerged in former colonies. Recent criticisms of the World Englishes approach have argued that too little attention has been paid to the social and economic contexts in which these forms of English are used, since they are as important as linguistic features in characterising their identity. A more radical proposal, raised for example by Bolton, Graddol, and Meierkord, calls for World Englishes to extend its purview to the role of varieties of English in economic and social development. The study reported here indicates how this might be theorised by shifting attention from the form of texts to the way in which meanings are given by members of the community. A language landscapes approach is taken to bilingual signage in the border area between Hong Kong and China, where a former international border is rapidly becoming an internal one – a transition associated with significant social and economic change. We demonstrate how potential meanings given to a particular sign are located in time and place and reflect the identities of readers.

English yesterday and today

This is the first issue of ET in the ‘post-McArthur era’, edited by a new team, that happily still includes Tom. In preparing this issue, the new members of the squad became even more aware of Toms editorial skills, the effort he has put into making ET succeed over 23 years and his general lightness of touch. It is entirely appropriate that this first issue therefore contain something of the old and the new in English studies. We decided to print, in the first half of this issue, short extracts from 6 seminal ET articles from its first 10 years, and invite the original authors to provide extended updates and comments.

English in China today: The current popularity of English in China is unprecedented, and has been fuelled by the recent political and social development of Chinese society

According to a 2010 China Daily article, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of Chinas population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The importance of English in the state education system has been supplemented by the rapid growth of privately-run language schools and training institutes across the country in recent years. The same article quoted a comment by Ms Xiao Yan, the public relations manager of the Wall Street English language school chain, who gave her explanation for the current popularity of English in the following terms: More and more importance has been given to English after China carried out the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world in the late 1970s. And accompanying Chinas rise on the world stage in recent years are growing connections of commerce and culture with other countries, especially those developed English-speaking countries […] The entire Chinese society attaches high importance to the English study as sometimes it even plays a vital role for a person who plans to pursue further education and seek a better career. There is no doubt that people who have a good command of English are more competitive than their peers. (China Daily, 2010a)According to a 2010 China Dailyarticle, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of Chinas population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The impor ...