Students striving to be the best English speaker in China

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-05-25/meet-students-vying-be-next-english-speaking-star-china

by anigbrowl • 11 years ago

44 45 11 years ago

melling• 11 years ago

We should make more of an effort to understand the rise of China as it happens. Someday a few decades from now we'll look back and try to figure out how China surpassed everyone else. We only seem to understand events after they've happened.

Adam_O• 11 years ago

I also think that oftentimes I filter the positive stories coming out of China with an 'oh, but they still have that or other thing still going on there, so this feat is less impressive', but that's just creating grounds for a huge underestimation in the long run.

seanmcdirmid10• 11 years ago

It goes the other way also. I guess it depends on what side of the propaganda stream you are on.

seanmcdirmid10• 11 years ago

I've lived in China for almost 8 years now. If you strive for understanding, you'll find your impressions have a bit more propaganda than reality. For example, in most of Asia (Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, India), it is not that hard to find a taxi driver that speaks some English. But forget about that in China (unless you happen to maybe be in Shanghai).

China is making strides, ya, but it is still quite behind the west. Take the educational system for example: it is great if you are middle class with money, but it doesn't work well for most of the students who go through it (whose parents lack those resources or even city hukou to attend a decent school). And there is nothing magical about it, many of the upper class send their kids abroad for education (and the parents often follow eventually).

Anyways, we said the same thing about Japan in the 70s/80s, and they really didn't blow past us. If you want to see where China could go tomorrow, look at Korea or Taiwan today, and that would be an ideal outcome.

lazaroclapp2• 11 years ago

If China does reach South Korea in economic development, though, that means 25,977 USD in GDP per capita. With a population of around 1.35 billion, this means 35 trillions of total GDP, more than twice as much as the U.S. Even more if it matches Taiwan, Japan, U.S. or Norway in GDP per capita, of course.

Now, I think very few people are actually making the argument that China is going to be the most developed country on earth in per capita terms (the U.S. isn't, by most accounts that title belongs to one of the Nordic countries). What most people expect is for China to become a developed high-income country, which is pretty damn significant when we are talking about the most populous country on earth. More than one fifth of humanity joining the developed world is no small deal. It will have and is already having a massive impact in the economy, politics and environment world-wide. That said, whatever the challenges, it's hard to paint over a billion people going from poverty to developed-world-wealthy in about half a century as anything short of impressive. In general we are nearing the tipping point after which most of the world will count as a "developed" country by the metrics of the previous century, and China rising is a big part of that.

seesomesense2• 11 years ago

" Take the educational system for example: it is great if you are middle class with money, but it doesn't work well for most of the students who go through it"

That sounds very much like school systems in the US, UK and Australia.

kev61682• 11 years ago

we said the same thing about Japan in the 70s/80s, and they really didn't blow past us

"pass" another country in terms of what? Total GDP? Or military might, or environment protection, cars per household? It's a really vague notion. There are literally one thousand and one criteria to compare two countries. "pass" or "not pass" is not a useful measure for a nation's progress, imho. For example, Sweden/Denmark/Belgium/Japan/South Korea/etc. need not to pass (in whatever sense of it) USA or UK or another country for its citizens to enjoy high standard of living and peaceful environment. I think the same will happen to China. The living standard and environment will improve tremendously in the near future, passing usa or not.

Xixi3• 11 years ago

You need to take into account the population of these countries. US is 319 million people, Japan 127 and China 1,368 (figures from 2014). South Korea and Taiwan are even smaller at 50 million and 23 million inhabitants.

For China to be as developed as Korea, Taiwan or Japan would mean for its GDP per capita to be roughly on par. A quick calculation shows that if China GDP per capita were to be on par with that of Japan, its overall GDP would be 3.5x bigger than that of US! Which mean the ability (for instance) to spend 3.5x more on the PLA than the US on its army without impacting other budgets.

China still has a long way to go, but it actually has a shot at getting there (contrary to Japan). I think (very personal theory) that the US managed to become the de facto only superpower standing simply by virtue of being the biggest developped country in the world, by far: France, UK, Germany or even Russia are very small (population wise) compared to it. Hell: France, UK and Germany put together are still small compared to the US.

westiseast5• 11 years ago

I always say that it's mind-blowing how wasteful and inefficient the English teaching system is, with literally millions of kids (and adults) wasting millions of houses of precious schooling to study a language that they have no use for, no interest in, no talent with and will forget a lost as soon as they graduate.

That said, whenever I meet people with incredible English (and it happens often) I find it amazing how they did that without ever having come into contact with native speakers or even semi-decent language materials. It's a puzzling one.

b6• 11 years ago

Hmm, I have complicated feelings about this.

I love Chinese people. I've lived in China for about two years, and speak Mandarin like a 5-year-old or so. I'm in awe of their construction projects, their facility with electronics and software, their can-do attitude, their kindness, etc. They are clearly very strong and getting stronger.

But I don't think it will be a clear case of China surpassing everyone else, at least not in everything. In my opinion, one area of weakness is education. In the US, I more often see children being raised with relatively high degrees of freedom, in ways that instill lifelong curiosity, love of learning, and self-motivated study. Education in China is much more often characterized by extreme stress and credentialism.

In my life I hope to play a very small part in building bridges between China and the US, sharing ideas. I hope we will gradually stop seeing it as a competition, start seeing it as cooperative, and no one will be concerned about who is surpassing whom, at least not on an ethnic level.

allemagne• 11 years ago

Or else we'll look back and wonder how so many people failed to recognize its upcoming upheaval.

Zigurd3• 11 years ago

Go there. See for yourself. It is a trip and a half. Almost like visiting another planet. It's reasonably safe. Not as clean as Japan, but surprisingly orderly while being much more relaxed than Japan. Last time I was there frequently, they opened a new coal fired power plant about as often as they opened a new Starbucks. Now their CO2 emissions are declining faster than expected. Are they bringing nuclear plants online quickly? Renewables? If anyone can, China can. It's the most happening place on the planet, and already driving planetary-scale trends.

Zigurd3• 11 years ago

They don't need a best English speaker. They need a lot of adequate English speakers. The best English speaker who is Chinese grew up in Hong Kong.

thaumasiotes• 11 years ago

Doubtful. I know several Chinese who grew up in the US.

Zigurd3• 11 years ago

That's a bet I would take.

yzh2• 11 years ago

The competition has been there for a long time. I personally know some people who have won the regional champion. They are as boring as other non-perfect English speakers. To some of them, this is just a way to get themselves into a good university. It's no use to speak English, or frankly speaking, any foreign language well if one does not know how to think and what to express. It's the content that matters. Yitang Zhang doesn't speak perfect English but when he speaks, people would listen. I think what Chinese students really need is logic and philosophy.

muddyrivers• 11 years ago

I agree with you, except I wouldn't call them boring. It is a skill, a very pragmatic one, to speak excellent English, although it is wasteful to over-spend so much time on it.

In this sense, it is the same, if not worse, than the competitions in math, physics, chemistry, etc. I refused to continue the intensive and monotonous trainings for these competitions after I had a taste of it in a summer camp when I was in high school. Don't get me wrong, I love math and science. I didn't like the info-dump and repetitious natures of the training. I want to take time to think and think deeper. Or I might simply be a slower thinker than the other kids. Anyway, I spent time in reading extensively, and played basketballs when my brain got tired.

Edit: BTW, I have utmost respect and admiration for Mr. Zhang Yitang.

cherry_su• 11 years ago

What makes them boring?

yzh2• 11 years ago

Boring is a very subjective word. Maybe coincidentally the people I met were boring to me. My point is, being good at oral English does not necessarily make one a thoughtful and interesting person. Several of the materials they performed were not that good in terms of content itself. And whenever the results are related to college entrance exam, I cannot help but questioning the purpose of some people who took the competition. That said, I agree there are also true and excellent speakers and thinkers among them. If this competition can serve as a catalyst for ordinary people in China to learn English, especially people from small cities, then it's great.

seesomesense2• 11 years ago

Is there a "Best Mandarin Speaker" competition in the Western world ?

If not, why not ?

westiseast5• 11 years ago

Because Da Shan would win it every year :/

seanmcdirmid10• 11 years ago

I haven't heard from him in a while...is he even in the Spring festival gala anymore?

simula67• 11 years ago

I am not from the western world, but there is huge application to learning English, it is the lingua franca of the world.

I am thinking that these competitions are formed out of people's desire to teach their children to speak English well, by talking up kids who are good at speaking English.

westiseast5• 11 years ago

I judged competitions like this a few times. It's a weird experience. Often the students/academic institutions have a bizarre and extreme view of what makes good language - speaking at 100 mph, emulating some kind of thick Amayreeecaaahn accent, choosing crazily complex topics to memorize... At the end of one horrific competition, a visiting professor from Xiamen University (a good Uni btw) told the crowd you could never speak a language well unless you could memorize 4 pages of A4 :/

Incidentally, years ago the national CCTV English competitions were broadcast live, but after my friend Justin completely forgot his speech and fluffed everything they changed it to a pre-recorded (or time delayed perhaps?) broadcast instead. He was the only person in that final stage who didn't grow up in America or have 100% international school upbringing.

smilekzs• 11 years ago

He was the only person in that final stage who didn't grow up in America or have 100% international school upbringing.

This is why such competitions has always been BS. They've been around for 15+ years. At first I admired those kids (back then my "peers"), but later on realized that the education they received could only have been afforded by a very small "elite" class. English was far from a foreign language to the vast majority of the final-rounders and this applies to every single competition and every single age group. Totally fair huh.

erroneousfunk• 11 years ago

I can only trace a small handful of distant ancestors that came from outside the US, and have only left the country for occasional vacations, but, having never memorized four pages of anything, I should probably take "native proficiency in English" off of my LinkedIn :(

Students striving to be the best English speaker in China

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