Around one year ago, I wrote a letter to the senior administration, expressing my concerns over the teachers, students and some other relevant issues in our university. Recently after a series of reflections upon my own experience over the year, I realized that in fact my concerns of last year have not been mitigated much and to some extent the situation is staggering. Therefore, I decide to readdress these issues one by one in the forthcoming days to my fellow students via Qianjian and hope my concerns can also correspond to theirs.

I believe most of the students chose this university not just because of the brand of CUHK, but more because of the credibility and quality behind this brand. Among all those fascinating assurance, “bilingual teaching” is one of the key reasons for which many students decided to come here. A lot of us dreamed of having a learning environment in which we can well get the hang of English in four years. However, after almost one year of study for year one students and almost two years of study for sophomore students, are we still confident about this kind of expectation? To what extent our English has got improved over the past year or past two years? What kind of competitive advantage do we really have over the students in other top universities in China in terms of English? In this article, I want to find out what is wrong with our bilingual teaching and learning.

I was nervous, maybe so were many other students, during the summer before officially becoming a student in an English teaching environment. The nervousness reached its peak in the first week of year one. However, it turned out that it was not difficult to understand the English of teachers in class. Maybe the period of having difficulty varies among students, but most of us can cope with it in 3 months at most. However, does this mean we can adapt to any English-teaching environment in the world? Not really. We can just find an open class available online offered by some good universities like UCB or NYU. Are we 100% confident to be able to understand at least 80% of the contents and take notes promptly without any subtitles on the screen?

To be a qualified student in a real English-teaching environment, one has to be proficient in reading, listening, writing and speaking. Based on my observation, almost no students except international students in this university can be really good at all of these. By saying “good”. I do not mean “perfect”. “Good” is the level with relatively few mistakes and is enough to survive us or even succeed us in a real English-teaching environment. Since there are a large number of students aspiring to go oversee for postgraduate study, “good” English is necessary. However, the truth is a lot of students have not even reached the entry level yet, not to mention being proficient in using English.

It is indeed that not all students have the interest or need in learning English very well and not all students have the aspiration of studying abroad. But what if the infrastructure and environment in the university are good enough for promoting the use of English as well as for assuring a high level of English for each individual after four years’ study, are we willing to take it?

Why not?

Under that circumstance, improvement of every student’ English ability is just a matter of time. As the Chinese adage goes, “When water flows, a channel is formed”.

So what does the current dilemma of our bilingual teaching derive from? From my perspective, on the one hand, it is because of the lack of work and practice which is mainly due to the lack of motivation for students. On the other hand, there are certain shortcomings of our current bilingual teaching pedagogy, making it unable to effectively motivate students and offer practical means.

In terms of our own efforts in learning English, there is never shortcut as many of us have been told. In this sense, considerable efforts and devotion of students are inevitable. There is only three- hours English lecture each week with little reading material. I won’t believe that a person can count on these three hours and several short essays of only a few hundred words to learn English well. To a large extent, we are still trapped in the traditional senior high model that only rote memorization of vocabularies and exam paper can really do us favor.

You can pause for a little while now and recall how many new vocabulary you have accumulated over the past year’s study and how many words you can now use proficiently in your essay and spoken English. Five hundred for the first questions and five thousand for the latter one? Is it enough?

I am not here to validate how much vocabulary we have to master, but it is definitely not enough if you find you’re reading slowly, find it hard to squeeze out words when writing an essay or find yourselves only able using rudimentary words. Trust me, these problems also face me without question. In our class, there is little room for effective discussion in English and most of us are reluctant to speak out. In the course of time, it is harder for us to get rid of frequent mistakes of syntax and grammar in our spoken English and written English.

In other aspects such as reading, the stage most of us are currently at is pretty “primitive”. Average books we read in one year may be less than five(both in English or Chinese) per person besides the curriculum books, while in contrast the required or non-required books in other foreign top university can be counted in dozens. If we are much too comfortable with our pitiful reading quantity, how can we survive the intense English learning requirement in the future and how can we equip ourselves as a knowledgeable person in such an information era?

Although on the issue of learning English, students share a considerable portion of responsibility, it is not my initial intention to comment too much on the work of ourselves, but to figure out why, in such an excellent bilingual university as it claims to be, we are not having the expected outcome from the pedagogy. There must be something wrong or at least inappropriate.

First of all, I want to address the seemly non-correspondence between our English course and the real English level of us students. For quite a long time, I have been defending our English course and the attentiveness of our teachers when someone tried to question the course. I used to say that learning English is more a personal pursuit and one can not rely solely on teachers. I also argue that we need to transform our way of learning and be more adaptive. Frankly Speaking, I really have learned a lot from the previous courses and I thank my teachers much. However, there can be more and there should be more to do.

It’s apparent that a significant gap exists between what we truly need and what we are being taught. In current teaching model, deliberate accumulation of vocabulary and elaborate grammar analysis are no longer explicitly emphasized. Instead, we skip the speaking part and go straightforward to the writing. When you ask a year two students randomly about their view on English course, they are likely to say they are unable to memorize so many tedious concepts in class. Even for a simple essay structure already taught in year one, I can still get asked by somebody in the year two. I am not saying writing is not important – it has indeed always been an extremely difficult part in both Chinese and English. But we are not native speakers, so is it practical or at least reachable for many of us to adapt to the difficult writing part in the limited lecture hours? Shouldn’t we have a more customized teaching pedagogy instead of being benchmarked against certain standards?

Nonetheless, there is no excuse to lower the standards at will. What I appeal for is a more practical teaching pedagogy suitable for us student, which can make us confident enough to say I do have learned a lot and confident enough to speak English out loud. The fulfillment or adjustment of the English course relies not only on the front-line teacher and students, but also on those who design the course and senior administration who aspire to promote our university to an international level. Maybe only when our university become a really international one, it is much likely that current teaching pedagogy will be appropriate.

The second point I want to address is that, in addition to the English course, the so called “bilingual teaching” also just perform practically with little function for major courses. The current dilemma is that most teachers for major courses are Chinese, adding up to more than 80%. During the only three hours’ lecture we may have the opportunity to be in an English-alike teaching environment while the illusion soon disappears once the class is over. My professors or lecturers are all devoted and professional teachers with a remarkable personality, from whom I have gained a lot of knowledge. However, it is no doubt that English has hindered them from delivering more information and hindered us from receiving the message effectively. If teachers are unable to keep coping with course-related issues in English, there will be little incentive for students to use English. In the course of time, there will be another vicious circle.

I just learned from the official website of the LSE that language exam certificate such as IETLS and TOFEL can be exempt if the previous degree is taught in English. Then I started wondering whether our university can be recognized by other universities in terms of bilingual teaching. If so, why do we use English during less than 1% of time in our daily campus life? If so, why are there dozens of students signing up for those language exams? Isn’t it the obligation of the university to equip us with necessary English skills, offer us and other universities that the firm assurance that we are really capable of using English proficiently? How come the claim of “bilingual” and the real situation do not match? How come we are gradually accustomed to current conditions and unaware of the disparity with other top English universities?

I am a little bit worried.

In fact, there are already many universities in mainland China offering courses taught in English. If we just listen and speak English in that three hours, what is the superiority of our so called “bilingual teaching” pedagogy? Dose it still make sense to us? Does it still appeal to the potential students of our university? These probably are questions requiring deep thoughts of our senior administration and relevant teachers.

At last, I would like to address the overall atmosphere of English learning in our campus. Ever since the enrollment, there have been different kinds of endeavor in our university dedicated to promote using English, such as English Club, English Animator, and SALL. As one of the core members in the English Animator in year one, I have always considered it a pity that not many students can really preserve using English and the scale of EA has always been limited to a certain amount of enthusiasts. As for SALL and English Club, I don’t think they matter significantly based on my observation. The reason why we need to promote English is that most of us have not yet reached the entry level and we have to endeavor to prepare ourselves.

Currently our university is on an upward trend of developing, with more facilities installed and good reputation built up. There is doomed to be more attention to our university from society and other universities. It is also predictable that the percentage of international students will increase dramatically in the forthcoming years. Then, are we still going to be comfortable with the status quo? Is it still appropriate to overlook the current dilemma in bilingual teaching and spoil international students with weird English emails or broken spoken English in the future.

Now, it is the time, as the end of spring semester is approaching, for senior administration and we students to reflect upon what was going on over the past year and what adjustment is in need. In terms of bilingual teaching and learning, we need to realize what kind of dilemma we are in right now. I am pretty sure not many people want to be ordinary students in an ordinary university. That’s why we have to keep adjusting.

I hope the senior administration will have a thoughtful consideration about this issue and stop overlooking the potential negative impacts. I also hope my fellow students can be well aware of what they are pursuing and do whatever they need to prepare themselves. Personally, I have been dedicated to the development of this university and will keep on with firm belief.

It is the right time and we are able to make everything possible.

Postscript

1. In this article, I mean no offense to anyone, just stating the facts and my own understanding.
2. Frankly speaking, bilingual teaching should not be just about the language itself but more about the different way of thinking and perception, which I consider to be a weak link in current teaching and learning environment. For the sake of length, I didn’t address this explicitly in this article. I hope next time I will review this problem or somebody else will be willing to take the chance of exploring more on this issue.
3. I want to particularly mention that I decided to write this article publicly instead of sending it to the senior administration confidentially. It is mainly because only with your joint effort and voice can the power be amplified and effective adjustment be taken as soon as possible. Since I am a sophomore in SME, all my evaluation is based on my own experience. Namely, I have no specific comments on the teaching in SSE and year one English course. However, I believe bilingual teaching and learning should be a common issue facing most of the students and faculty at this university. Therefore, I sincerely hope my article can arouse your further thinking towards our teaching and learning. This is in order to save us twists and turns along the 4 years’ journey.
4. For so long I have been hearing a variety of comments on our university’s issues. Despite all these feelings, not a lot of them have ever been effectively transformed into actions no matter whether the feelings are objective or not. I hope the topic “bilingual teaching and learning” is just the starting point. More comments based on my own experience are coming soon. It will be of much delight for me to have you join me rekindling the community’s enthusiasm for expressing unique and well-grounded opinions about the university’s affairs on Qianjian.
5. Special Thanks to Fangwen Lin for deliberate revision and Alan Chen for edit.