Huhua Ouyang
This study argues that at the grassroots level of specific school communities, individual students and teachers always have their own interpretations about and appropriation of any curriculum reform launched by the state from above. The case rests on my longitudinal participant observation of how and why students and teachers in a pro-reform university in mainland China complained about native English-speaking teachers from the West.
The historical context against which this case is set is the great national reform of the past 20 years. In moving toward openness to the outside world and modernization, China needs personnel that are more independent, cre- ative, and productive than it has had. However, the traditional methods prac- ticed in the Chinese classroom, which are based on conservative ideologies and rote learning, have been inadequate to fulfill this goal. Therefore, since the late 1970s the education authorities have carried out a national campaign of reforming the curriculum toward a more Western-style liberal pedagogy.
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which advocates student cen- teredness, communicative learning, a humanistic approach, and practical learning, has become increasingly prevalent. “CLT” has therefore become a buzzword, especially in modern English-language teaching in China. In fact, CLT has gradually become popular globally since the late 1970s, spreading
its main tenets that language is better acquired by learners as free, equal, in- dependent, and rational decision makers using the language in authentic communicative contexts, in a process of discovery. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional notion that language is a set of rules that should be taught and learned by rote in the form of knowledge transmitted from the authori- tative teacher to passive learners. Believing that CLT can bring about learner autonomy and creativity, the Chinese English-language teaching authority has established its reform in line with this international trend (Dzau 1990).
To speed up this reform process, hundreds of native speakers of English from countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Canada have been invited to work in China. These native speakers of English were invited as foreign teaching experts to demonstrate “advanced”
CLT.1They are often assigned to teach in programs jointly managed by the Chinese education authority and international agencies such as the British Council or the British Overseas Development Agency. These foreign experts have usually been granted important responsibilities, including teacher training and in-service teacher development, textbook composition, and test design, to help spread the CLT type of reform nationwide, from the central cities to the more remote regions (Hayhoe 1989). Although no official doc- uments explicitly say so, it is generally assumed that the foreign teachers are experts or authoritative role models for the new and “advanced” method- ologies like CLT, since they originate from the West, as do the reforms. In fact, they are often literally addressed as “foreign experts,” a term used in- terchangeably with “foreign teachers.” Their expert status, relative to their Chinese colleagues, is also evident in preferential treatment in their living conditions and welfare. They exercise the privilege of making independent decisions in their work and of not having to conform to the collective and uniform decision making of the institutions to which they are assigned.
Given this situation, it is logical to assume that the foreign experts and their teaching will be and should be accepted by the Chinese wholeheart- edly. Nevertheless, although many of the foreign experts have had very suc- cessful experiences working in China, it is an undisputable fact that many of them have not. To cite one of these foreign experts, the situation has been such that “a large number of foreign teachers returned from China with dampened enthusiasm, feelings of disappointment and in some cases bitter- ness and rancor. . . . Their Chinese hosts often privately feel that these for- eigners are a weird lot and wonder if it is worth all the time, energy and money they expend on having them” (Maley 1990:103).
As compellingly proven by Martin Schoenhals’ (1993) ethnography of a middle school in Beijing, students’ evaluations can be very useful in re- vealing the real state of teaching. However, relatively little substantial work
has been available concerning students criticizing their foreign teachers. In- terestingly, the scant literature on such criticism springs not from the stu- dents themselves, but rather from foreign experts reflecting on problems they encountered with their students (for example, Oatey 1990). Interpre- tation or explanation of the students’ criticism backed up with the insider’s knowledge is also rare (but see Dzau 1990a; Cortazzi and Jin 1996a, 1996b).
I believe that by critically examining the details of how Chinese students and teacher colleagues evaluate the foreign experts, and why, we can come to un- derstand the extent to which the top-down CLT reform is appropriated, cre- olized, or resisted at the level of the school community.
Although this paper examines criticisms of the English experts, most Chi- nese students still regard having a native English-speaking teacher as a luxury and many foreign teachers do have a very successful teaching experience in China. It is not the intent of this study, nor is it even possible, to measure the merits of the foreign experts against their demerits in the Chinese students’
eyes. Rather, one of the chapter’s purposes is to point out that often the same students who have praised the foreign experts file complaints about them.
The present study is largely ethnography based. The voices of the Chi- nese students and teachers as well as of the foreign teachers will be presented as verbatim as possible, however limited or even possibly “biased” the infor- mants’ perspectives could be. Besides collecting and presenting the data in a naturalistic or qualitative way, I have provided some of the background or historical information necessary for explaining the opinions. My explanation revolves mainly around the research site as a community of practice with more or less shared norms, “forms of membership, and construction of iden- tities” (Lave and Wenger 1991:123). I have close contact with the research site. After four years of undergraduate study at the site as an English major, I have worked there as an English teacher since 1983. I have served as a teacher educator and a course coordinator for two teacher education pro- grams jointly organized by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the British Council for over ten years, and currently serve as the head of the English Department at the site. Presumably, my knowledge about this com- munity would grant me the status of a reliable insider, or a longitudinal par- ticipant observer in a loose sense.
GUANGWAI AND ITS 20-YEAR JOURNEY OF CLT REFORM
The research site Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (hereafter Guang- wai) is located in the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton), which, with a geographic closeness to Hong Kong, enjoys many more opportunities than
most Chinese inland cities to have close interaction with the outside. The in- teraction is especially enhanced by millions of Cantonese-speaking Chinese overseas who are the relatives of the Guangzhou citizens. Guangwai is the city’s main institution for producing qualified personnel to communicate in nine foreign languages, including English.
Since the late 1970s, the British Council and some North American agencies have played an important role in assisting Guangwai to become the most pro-reform institution in Chinese tertiary education. The English De- partment, which is the research setting of this case study, has received much foreign aid as well as support from the education ministry to implement var- ious reform-related projects. Dozens of its Chinese teachers have been sent to pursue a master’s in applied linguistics or English-language teaching with British Overseas Development Agency scholarships for one year in some of the top universities in the United Kingdom.
CLT had been introduced into the Department of English in Guangwai in the late 1970s, largely due to an influential textbook series called Commu- nicative English for Chinese Learners(better known as CECL;see Li 1987) for use by first- and second-year English majors. This pioneer project is regarded as “an attempt at a thorough adoption of the communicative approach” (Dzau 1990b:7) and a very successful one (Malcolm and Malcolm 1988). CECLre- placed the old textbook for undergraduate English majors beginning with the class of 1979–1981. I still remember its shocking impact as an experience to- tally different from what we had been used to in a classroom dominated by the traditional methods. The traditional method, which combines grammar- translation and audiolingual methods, requires students to read a short passage of classical literature (300–400 words) intensively, take notes on the teacher’s lectures on the language points and grammar rules involved in the text, mem- orize the list of its vocabulary and phrases, then practice the grammar in exer- cises. These activities usually took two weeks of eight class hours each. With CECL,we were given about 50 pages of texts and exercises to cover in the same amount of time. The texts were authentic English newspapers, magazines, or daily communication. We skimmed, scanned, and listened to dozens of pas- sages while guessing the meanings of the main ideas and new words from the context. Meanwhile, we were to participate in dozens of oral English activities of simulation and role-play. The overriding criterion was that insofar as our meaning got conveyed, our communication would be valued as successful—
regardless of how broken or half-baked our linguistic form might be. The teacher’s role was supposed to be that of friend, monitor, and mentor.
In evaluations at the end of the second year, half of the students praisedCECLhighly, saying that it had aroused their interest to learn, pro-
vided opportunities to use English, and increased their confidence. The other half, usually the older ones, criticized CECL sharply, complaining that it wasted their time and that they learned nothing solid. The older students got support from the teaching staff members who were relatively senior in age and more conservative and who were in charge of the third and fourth years of undergraduate study. Together they arrived at the de- cision, over the complaints of the other half of the students, that from the third year on, all students should revert to grammar study and intensive reading of literature classics.
From the mid-1980s, CECL took root and gained predominance at Guangwai. These CLT-formulated textbooks spread to the first two years of all departments with English majors. Gradually the teachers of CECLhave become those young graduates who got master’s degrees in applied linguis- tics, where CLT represented progress. Other teachers more senior in age and in position, who were more critical of CECL,have retreated from the first two years’ teaching groups to teach more traditional courses (such as litera- ture, intensive reading of classics, writing, grammar, and translation) to the third- and fourth-year students. In fact, some of the most senior teachers left the Department of English for good and founded their own department, partially due to this split in opinions over CECL.On the other hand, the textbooks have also gone through revisions since 1985: Some lists of vocab- ulary, Chinese translations, and more grammar exercises were added, re- sponding to complaints from those teachers who were educated in traditional methods or were skilled in using them. Although there are still divergent opinions about CECLand CLT among Guangwai faculty mem- bers, today as a collective they tend to see CECLas a source of institutional pride vis-à-vis colleagues from other universities. Moreover, Guangwai stu- dents have become critical of the “traditionalism” of secondary teacher trainees who come to the institute (Ouyang 2000b).
Beginning in the mid-1980s, as part of the endeavor to prove that CLT was good and CECLeffective, Guangwai went on to spend over ten years successfully reforming the national university entrance examination toward a more communicative competency-oriented test in place of the former grammar rules–dominated one. Guangwai has set up the first program of linguistics and applied linguistics both at the MA and PhD levels in China, and the program is now the only key national institution of linguistics and applied linguistics.
Given this background, it would be interesting to see why Guangwai students and teachers, given their identity as pro-CLT reformers, should have made complaints about its foreign teachers.
DATA AND INFORMANTS
The English Department, with a working faculty of about 70 active in- structors, has hosted on average over a dozen foreign experts each year. The data for this study were collected from 1997 to 2000 as part of a larger proj- ect (Ouyang 2000a). The research questions asked in interviews, question- naires, and focus group discussions were: 1) What do Chinese students most often complain about regarding their foreign teachers and their teaching? 2) How do students make such complaints? 3) How do the leadership and ad- ministration handle the complaints? 4) How do foreign teachers involved take the complaints? and 5) Are there any other factors the informants see as relevant to the complaint issue? This chapter focuses on the first question.
Sixxuexi weiyuan, or “class committee members in charge of academic affairs,” each representing one fourth-year class of about 30 students (hence representing altogether 180 students), were chosen to give a detailed report on the research questions. One of these students’ responsibilities was to col- lect their classes’ opinions on teachers’ teaching twice a year. So far, these stu- dents had had nine courses taught by foreign teachers, including oral English, reading-writing, American society, American literature, organiza- tional behavior, and British literature. All these students had had CECLin their first two years of study in Guangwai.
Of the faculty colleagues whom I interviewed, nine were finally selected to be my key informants. Among them, there were department heads, coor- dinators, and teachers with highly varied experience in working with foreign colleagues. Given their duties and background, they had been most heavily exposed to foreign teachers and had been closely involved in and had func- tioned crucially in many complaint events. I also consulted two Guangwai Foreign Affairs Office officials in charge of the evaluation, who had many routine interactions with the foreign experts. Seven foreign experts gathered in a focus group discussion with me and shared their opinions and experi- ences about students’ complaints. The data from the students and foreign experts were in English, and other data in Chinese (sometimes interspersed with English) were subsequently translated by me.
Because of my research questions, I elicited many reports of complaints.
Nevertheless, to quote one student representative:
Before I write down my complaints about their teaching, I would like to make it clear that these complaints do not apply to all of them. I should admit that some of them are excellent teachers. They are skillful in making class lively and interesting, and we do learn something from their teaching.
However, compared with their Chinese colleagues, foreign experts were crit- icized more often by their students. My own estimate, based on my obser- vation as course coordinator and on my foreign experts’ focus group discussion, was that about 60 percent of the foreign experts drew criticism about their teaching, while about 10 percent of them received very serious criticism (such as when students as a class wrote a written report to the dean’s office demanding replacement of the foreign teacher involved). About 10 to 15 percent of foreign experts were highly praised for their teaching, with half of that number having actually “gone native,” that is, having learned about the Chinese traditional methods of teaching or somehow met the local re- quirements for excellence (see a case below for details).
GUANGWAI COMPLAINTS ABOUT FOREIGN TEACHERS As we shall see, much of Guangwai students’ criticism about their foreign teachers and their teaching have to do with things that are not exactly related to differences between CLT and traditional methods. Rather, they are often results of students adopting the standard for ideal teachers and teaching and using it to measure the foreign teachers’ teaching performance and roles.
However, it is exactly my point that any grand methodology or approach is substantiated by and contextualized in such students’ expectations and ideals as a major part of the preexisting practices in any school community. In ad- dition, we can use this reality to check how the new methods and its agents fare at the grassroots.
“Just Improvising”:
Complaints about the Teaching Method
The most frequent complaint, agreed upon by over 70 percent of the Guangwai students, teachers, and leaders, was the lack of systematic organi- zation and linearity in the foreign teachers’ classes, which resulted in a lack of a sense of achievement for the students. In almost all courses taught by the Chinese teachers in Guangwai as well as other universities in China, some fixed textbook is used. For this uniform textbook, every step of the les- son is given in the teachers’ book and is usually followed, and a good sense of linearity is usually not a problem with students. Even in the CECLcourse, all the activities were detailed by the teachers’ handbook. Teachers teaching CECL had spent hours collectively preparing the lessons each week, plan- ning which parts to emphasize or skip over, the correct answers to the exer- cises, the pace of the lessons, and other issues, so as to “standardize” the
process of teaching and the teaching methods. The amount of lesson prepa- ration for teachers is so meticulous that one foreign expert who used to teach at Guangwai exclaimed, “It is amazing how they manage it, and it would be extremely difficult to teach in that way for foreign teachers” (Tim Boswood, formerly the British Council senior lecturer, personal communication). As the working language used in the collective lesson planning and preparation is Chinese, foreign experts do not usually participate in it. This abstention is often taken as a privilege enjoyed by the foreign experts.
In other courses using more traditional methods (where the student repre- sentatives were in their fourth year), teaching in general was very often equated with accurate delivery or transmission of prescriptive knowledge from the teacher as an expert to the student as an apprentice. Students in these courses learn not in the form of active participation, as in questioning and performing activities where they could use or explore the language in class, but by taking notes and reviewing the lecture after class. After consulting various dictionaries or grammar manuals for almost every new word and expression in the text to be covered in the lesson, teachers transfer all those language points onto the blackboard—each with several concrete examples for illustration of its usage in varied contexts—for the students to copy into their thick notebooks. Most ex- aminations still stress how well the lessons as discrete or countable pieces of knowledge have been learned by students, who prepare themselves for the ex- aminations by reviewing and digesting their notes. Therefore, the quality and quantity of the notes students can get from a class is a major indicator of their capacity to learn, as well as an important reassurance of their sense of achieve- ment and progress in learning. A department head remarked:
The most common complaints from students is that foreign experts like to talk wild in their teaching, from the south of the earth to the north of the sky; they improvise too much, and this makes it difficult for students to prepare for their teaching. This is especially frustrating for those good students; we all know that they want to take detailed notes from the lessons. Without that, they felt they had not got anything useful.
A student representative confirmed:
We are not very used to their style of teaching. Most of them only speak, speak and speak, instead of writing something on the blackboard. Chinese students, incapable of taking notes, put down nothing when a marvelous speech is over. Moreover, I find that many foreign teachers’ presentation is not as orderly or systematic as their Chinese counterparts’. I think it is also an obstacle for students to take notes.