Random thoughts on CET-4/6

I am assuming, like TOFEL, CET 4 or 6 is just an academic English test as a foreign language. If I am wrong, please correct me. I prepared and took my TOFEL years ago, and met the minimum admission requirements for a graduate program. It was the end of my intensive English study. Later on, I started the graduate program at a university of the US and immediately found I had hard time catching professors』 words in classrooms, communicating with undergraduate students as a teaching assistant and getting very basic ideas cross over to others in writing. I knew I was not even close to being there as a graduate student with such skills of English, though my TOFEL score was not too bad at all. I knew I was not the only foreign student with the difficulty in the universities in the US. I believe CET 4 has played the same role in China as TOFEL in the US, which is just a test to measure Chinese students』 ability of understanding and using English. It is one of many university exams students have to depend on it for their future. If there is no other test better than this, we have to adopt it for now until we can figure out the best way of measuring our ability of English in university settings.

We all know there are not many well-trained English teachers in China and there is not good environment in Chinese schools to learn the language. Most of us started learning English in elementary schools, but ten or fifteen years after studying English and expanding our vocabulary, we still speak broken English with very limited words, always connect English words to thoughts in Chinese while reading, and emphasis on how to memorize 200 or 300 basic English sentences or 「standardized" building blocks of essays, instead of learning how to simply tell people what we mean in writing. We have already found the fault with the way we were educated in English, but we seem to be struggling to educate our children or next generation along the same lines. I hate to see this happen, and from what I have observed, we have done a lot to improve our English education over the last ten years, but still far off the basic English requirements for the use in universities for sure.

There are many very qualified and very dedicated English teachers in China. I don't say that out of thin air; I have met some on line. Unfortunately, there are also many who are not (again I have met them on various BBSes desparately asking for help such as making a simple speech at a graduation ceremony.) But the most damaging ones are those who are out to make a fast buck.

Let me give you one example. In the recent (June 17, 2006) CET-6 exams, this question showed up on the "Listening Comprehension" test.

Man: Hello, Mary. This is Paul at the bank. Is Tony home?
Woman: Not yet. Paul. I don't think you can reach him at the office now, either. He phoned me five minutes ago to say he was stopping for a hair-cut on his way home.

Question: Who do you think the woman probably is[/COLOR]?

It is obvious that the woman is not someone at the office, but someone at home: wife, mother, sister, the housekeeping, mistress (ahem, sorry, not at home, but some residence.)  
  However, accroding to what I read on BBSes, one Mr.Ding at diandian correctly said it is a "Wife", while several other "big name tutorial schools" such as New Orient, say it is the secretary. (I was told as of yesterday that this is the case. However, these school tend to change their answers when they see the wind is blowing the wrong way.)
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Another problem are those 必背/背誦範文. There are a few good ones (E.g. Patrick at Iest 雅思 is very good), but there are some that are full of mistakes. Many are actually partially corrected works of students but put under the name of "famous/high profile" teachers so as to give "credibility."
Asking people to recite them would do more harm than good.
  E.g. 吳中東範文  新東方四六級範文  王長喜範文 all have the same mistake of "cannot" written as "can not"; another few have "nature" as "the nature", as well as mistakes such as "cars run on oil", sentence fragments, misplaced modifiers and so on.
Here is another one:
先改了錯，才好叫人去背誦 re: 胡敏的作文14篇背誦 #1 http://www.kaoyansky.cn/viewthre ... &extra=page%3D1

Of course, you can say to me, "Hey you. You make tons of mistakes when you write, so why are you trying to be holier than thou?" My answer is, "I am not charging anyone for anything, nor am I giving lessons and demanding that people memorize my work. In fact, I often tell people ahead of time that there are mistakes in my work."  These 大師 名師 in China have so much clout that people look on them as "models". Everything they teach are look up as the gospel.
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I read somewhere: (not in the exact words) "In China, English teachers takes on mega-star status."  You don't see any language teachers  in the West touted as a 大師 名師, do you?
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All these are the results of requiring every university graduate to pass an English Exit test.  Whereas the idea of universal English literacy at the college level may be good, but don't forget "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."  Perhaps the Education Department in China should serious rethink their policy: not to come up with a patched up system, but a completely revamped system. Ha ha[:446:]. Hire me as a consultant. I am ready. Send me a ticket and I will fly over. [:446:]

Another problem is that there are too many people jumping on the bandwagon of making a quick buck from selling "Learning Instructions." Recently a girl at the diandian net was running a "sentence practice" topic. Many of the "standard answers" she provided turned out to be wrong. I asked her where she got the answers from, and she said they were from a book. I ended up having to go back set by set to correct the "standard answers."
http://bbs.diandian.net/dispbbs. ... ID=67415&page=1

I appreciate your response and your time sharing the view of the English education in China. I always benefit from reading your posts. If I worked for China』s Ministry of Education, I would hire you at no time, and use your expertise to make things better. I have great confidence in you and your leadership of the English education. Anyway, I sustain part of what I am saying there are not many well-trained English teachers in China like you with the visions of English education. No offense against the people teaching English in China. If anyone is uncomfortable with my words, I apologize for the inconvenience. In addition of that, I agree with you that there are many very dedicated English teachers there capable of helping their students pass the college admission English test, CET-4/6, TEM-4/8, TOFEL, etc. They can do much better jobs to get Chinese students over the English testing humps than most of American English teachers I know.

I graduated from an unknown high school in a small town of Zhejiang Province and the majority of my classmates never had their opportunities to go to college. Back then, we spent a few years together to learn English under a dedicated teacher and there was not much we really learnt then because we were taught with the way my parents had been educated, memorizing words, memorizing phrases and standardized sentences, less reading, less interactive language using, etc. Last summer, I went back to the town and talked to my old boys and girls. They told me there were more kids going to college each year than before and there were much better English tutoring systems for the kids to prepare almost any kinds of English qualification tests, again not emphasizing reading, writing and using the language interactively, emphasizing on scoring high in the exams. I don』t know how many junior high and high schools are training their students like that in the nationwide now, but I believe there are a lot.

I am slightly off the subject. Let』s back to where we were. As you already said, there are tons of mistakes in Chinese English textbooks, test preparation materials, translated publications, etc. I am sure all the materials and publications have been reviewed and approved by so called 「great masters」 and their teams. All the mistakes continue being uploaded on the web by the people that may not be aware of them or carried on by teachers. There is nothing worse than to mislead students in classrooms or to ask them to recite the sentences with mistakes.

It』s good to chat with you and thank you for sharing your point of view on the English education in China. Hope you can visit us weekly or daily. We need the people like you, a person coaching pros and training the trainers.

Let』s go over the "Listening Comprehension" test

Man: Hello, Mary. This is Paul at the bank. Is Tony home?
Woman: Not yet. Paul. I don't think you can reach him at the office now, either. He phoned me five minutes ago to say he was stopping for a hair-cut on his way home.

Question: Who do you think the woman probably is?

To me, the answer is a wife. My curiosity usually doesn』t go wild at this time. We have a conversation like that almost every week. I can sense how much frustration would be accumulated with such irresponsible tutoring services by the students needed to pass required exams and the teachers like you.