A top university in northwest China has scrapped English tests as a prerequisite for graduation, rekindling a heated debate about the role of the world’s lingua franca in the country’s education system after years of rising nationalist sentiment under leader Xi Jinping.
In a notice Wednesday, the Xi’an Jiaotong University in the capital city of Shaanxi province said students will no longer need to pass a nationwide standardized English test – nor any other English exams – to be able to graduate with bachelor’s degrees.
The announcement caused a stir on social media, with many praising the decision and calling for more universities to do the same.
“Very good. I hope other universities will follow suit. It’s ridiculous that Chinese people’s academic degrees need to be validated by a foreign language (test),” said a comment with more than 24,000 likes on microblogging site Weibo, where a related hashtag attracted more than 350 million views Thursday.
Passing the College English Test, a national standardized exam first held in 1987, has been a graduation requirement at the majority of Chinese universities for decades – although the government has never made it an official policy.
The common practice underlined the importance Chinese universities placed on English – the world’s predominant academic and scientific language – especially when the once-insular and impoverished country was opening up and eager to catch up with the developed world after the turbulence of the Mao Zedong era.
But in recent years, some universities have downgraded the importance of English, either by replacing the national College English Test with their own exams or – as in the case of the Xi’an Jiaotong University – dropping English qualifications altogether as a graduation criteria.
The goal of this is clearly
- to garner pro chinese nationalist public support
- to prevent your smartest students from seeing better opportunities outside of the country
There is no small number of highly educated chinese that leave the country.
They didn’t ban learning English though. They can still learn it if they want. Plenty of country’s universities don’t have such a requirement.
But it de-emphasizes english which would have that effect, at least in small part.
What about
- Reduce the overwhelming academic requirements on students?
Right? They don’t need to, not that the opportunity isn’t there.
“English is important, but as China develops, English is no longer that important,” said a Weibo post from a nationalist influencer with 6 million online followers after the university’s announcement.
“It should be the turn for foreigners to learn Chinese,” the influencer said.
The downgrade comes as China turns more nationalist and inward under Xi, who has called on the country to strengthen “cultural confidence” and fend off “Western influence.”
In schools and universities, teachers have been forbidden from using Western textbooks or talking about “Western values” such as democracy, press freedom and judicial independence.
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I’m learning Mandarin at a later age now (40). The keyboard stuff is okay but it NEEDS to be a smart keyboard where you typically use pinyin and it’s not that bad for what it is, but my typos are crazy now.
That being said, I’m ethnically Chinese and it’s really difficult to pick up. I know a lot of foreign languages are but Chinese feels rougher. Also, other Chinese people can be bloody rude when I’m trying to speak Chinese. I’m tired of hearing “stop trying to speak Chinese” … well fuck you too, your English isn’t exactly music to my ears either, but I put up with it.
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French people have this attitude too
The French attitude is generally sympathetic, so long as you’re at least trying.
I’ve often had shopkeepers etc. correct obvious mistakes, “non, c’est 'blabla bla '” “ah, blabla bla ?” “oui”.Except in Paris. Paris, people just want an excuse to be a dick to you.
Except in Paris. Paris, people just want an excuse to be a dick to you.
Lmao. A twitch streamer I watch took a trip to Europe a few weeks ago and Paris was the one place he hated because everyone there were assholes
Paris, the Philadelphia of France
Paris is a terrible city and I am sad it is what most people think of france
I kinda cheated, I’m slightly below conversational Cantonese … which is another dialect of Chinese. I picked up Mandarin because Cantonese is so damned hard to learn on its own rather than Mandarin’s vast learning material out there. The intonation is definitely difficult. I’m still not great at it … the key for me is not really getting bogged down with perfection so far. I just correct myself and move on. It’s easy to get paralysis due to wanting to be perfect.
A lot of Chinese people come to me to speak English and I grew up in London and lots of Eastern Europeans would struggle speaking English as well. I’m more than happy to work with them and practice. Never saw it as an issue, myself as well.
One issue is, I’m ethnically Chinese, but been living in the US for more than 35 years (in my 40s), that when I try to speak my limited Chinese, I sound like a child. So to a person from China, I’m an adult Chinese person sounding like a kid, so it may look like I’m some type of a mentally challenged person. So it can be very difficult. And then if they found out I can speak English, they’ll be like “just f-ing speak English” and get it over with already. Of course it depends on the situation and person. But that’s the general difficulties of being Asian American in Asia (who is trying hard to blend in).
For non-Asians in Asia, they all say “everyone is so nice and patient with me”, and that’s because they are obviously a foreigner and its still a novelty for someone in China to be able to interact with a foreigner (maybe not in big 1st tier cities), so they will give you the time of the day.
As someone who used to be so flat in their verbal communication that they were nicknamed Daria (my hero at the time so I wasn’t too upset), and worked really hard to change that so they could function in society, I am certain I would struggle hard with Chinese language if that’s the case.
I studied Mandarin in college and I feel this comment. Keep it up, Mandarin is definitely a difficult language, but it can be blast to learn. There are other keyboards options on smartphone that may be better suited to learning Chinese. Feel free to dm me if u got any questions.
As for the assholes, yeah ignore them. Every language/country has assholes so the best you can do is just not give them attention. Unfortunately China is growing more nationalist and xenophobic, but there are still plenty of people that are ecstatic to speak with newbies like us in their native tongue. Don’t let the worst get you down :)
I learned Zhuyin (注音) in Taiwan when I was younger, but then stopped using it when I immigrated to the US. At some point, I wanted to type Chinese on smartphones, so I started to learn Pinyin and used Pinyin for a while to type Chinese. The issue with Pinyin is that it uses the alphabets and that collides with English too much, I think as a English speaker, you naturally would try to use English’s way of pronunciation to try to sound out words in Chinese, and that creates problems for me because its a mismatch.
But recently, I started to use the Zhuyin system again, and it is just a lot more natural. Of course for me, I’ve learned it before as a kid, so it wasn’t that difficult to pick it up again. But it would be a steep learning curve for someone new to Chinese. But I still recommend it, it would be like someone needing to learn Hiragana and Katakana when learning Japanese. I’ve also learned from some of the older Chinese people from China that Zhuyin used to be taught in China as well, which was surprising to me. I guess that was the system in use before Mao decided that China needs to “westernize” and go with roman alphabets with Pinyin.
The lack of tolerance is two things, ignorance or patience. Doesnt matter what country or culture, most folks just dont have the time to try to figure out what gibberish you are trying to say. OR they simply don’t have the intercultural experience to know what to do in situations where a non-native speaker is trying to communicate. It’s the old “yelling doesnt help me understand your language better” scenario. I got it a lot when I lived in Taipei and I see it here in the US with my coworkers.
Oh yeah, okay, let me be clear the scenarios you say make sense and are understandable. However, I’ve had school friends and even friends now who tell me to shut up because I sound embarassing. Or even “what are you even trying to say”.
It’s something that really gets to me because there’s a certain vulnerability when attempting new things or things you’re not good at it.
Dont. Get. Me. Started. You just identified one thing that really grinds my gears. Until there is acrid smoke pouring out my ears. Literally. My room reeks of burnt oil and grilled brain. What’s left of it anyway.
god imagine trying to write code in languages like Chinese
FYI you can type in any pictographic language using a regular keyboard. You can switch between languages on the fly too (windows+spacebar on Windows), it’s pretty handy.
I point this out cause people often mention that as a reason they don’t want to learn a different language
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but why would I learn Chinese?
That’s an odd thing to say. Why learn any language? It’s fun, you learn things and it lets you talk to people and engage in things you wouldn’t be able to.
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There are many new technical papers that are only written in Chinese these days, especially in AI.
I think you’re way overstating the keyboard thing? iirc some of the fastest typists (by some metrics) are Chinese.
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You might be 40 years too late with that keyboard comment. Which major language still exists today with no easy way to type with a keyboard?
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People forget, but China itself has a population of 1.4 billion people. That’s at least 4 times the population of the US, you never run out of people to talk to in Chinese. Not to mention, there is also Taiwan and Hong Kong, and several countries around Asia that host significantly large racially Chinese diaspora, such as Malaysia or Singapore. I’m not talking about recent Chinese immigrants, but people who have been living there for generations and have never stepped foot in China.
Language is for communicating with people, it’s a rather narrow view to only see the business use for languages. If anyone wants to pick up a second language, Chinese is as good as it’s going to get. You aren’t limited to 1.4 billion communists to talk to with your Chinese skills, try a Taiwanese or Chinese Malaysian or smth.
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I’m clearly approaching this from the point of view of language as a means to communicate and connect with people, while you see language as something that has to bring you clear benefits. I went to the trouble of writing a whole ass paragraph about how Chinese is not a single country language and there are several countries worth of people outside the firewall using it. Of course no other language under the sun will ever compare to English in terms of practical usefulness, but it’s as good as it’s going to be for a second language, up there with French and Spanish maybe. You don’t have to assume everyone who disagrees is offended.
Sounds like the best way to cripple your scientific and tech sector.
They didn’t ban learning English though? Plenty of countries don’t have this requirement. They’ll learn it if they they feel like they want to.
It will still mean less people learn it which has the same effect.
English speakers really showing themselves in here, huh? I get it, English is my native language too, and it’s definitely convenient for us that others have to learn the language I already know, but you’re being very hypocritical when you say things like “why do I have to learn Chinese?!” You’re also missing the point of the move because this story is about removing the obligation to learn another language. Yes, English is currently the dominant language in a number of areas, but then so was German in the scientific world over a century ago. These things can change, and if that scares you, then I would like you to ask yourself why.
Chinese will never be useful for these purposes, because China is not an open country, and it never will be… so the language will not be at the center of common global efforts toward anything… it is a stupid fascist fantasy… stupid and childish…
What do you mean by “open country”?
perhaps you cannot even imagine what that is, which is exactly my point… you have suffered under a repressive regime, and are unaware of its effects on you and your loved ones… it’s very sad to see from the outside…
the Chinese people have always been wise and strong… it’s unfortunate that their government is so weak and incapable… measures like this one at the University are always a sign of weakness…
and frankly it’s amazing you bring up German in this context… the entire world stopped learning to speak it precisely because they began behaving in this way… it became shameful to speak German… German speaking immigrants in the US wouldn’t allow their children to learn it at home… my own grandmother was one of them…
the Germans all speak very fluent English now, like everyone else…
and England and the US remain open countries…
hi Canada and Australia we love you too
I have suffered under a repressive regime? You mean the USA? It is very sad to see indeed, but not in the way you think. I’ve got news for you: a lot of people around the world are tired of the USA’s shit but you don’t notice because you don’t think you’re affected by the USA’s repressive global world order. In fact, you probably don’t even think it exists and that the USA only stands for truth, justice, and democracy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A top university in northwest China has scrapped English tests as a prerequisite for graduation, rekindling a heated debate about the role of the world’s lingua franca in the country’s education system after years of rising nationalist sentiment under leader Xi Jinping.
It’s ridiculous that Chinese people’s academic degrees need to be validated by a foreign language (test),” said a comment with more than 24,000 likes on microblogging site Weibo, where a related hashtag attracted more than 350 million views Thursday.
Passing the College English Test, a national standardized exam first held in 1987, has been a graduation requirement at the majority of Chinese universities for decades – although the government has never made it an official policy.
The downgrade comes as China turns more nationalist and inward under Xi, who has called on the country to strengthen “cultural confidence” and fend off “Western influence.”
In Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, authorities in 2021 banned elementary schools from holding final exams on the English language, citing the need to ease the academic burden on students.
China made English a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools in 2001, the same year the country joined the World Trade Organization.
The original article contains 715 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
每个人，无论是西方人，南方人， 北方人， 还是东方人， 都应该学习多种语言，不那么困难，n’est-ce pas ?
