Employing native-English-speaking teachers in China: Benefits, problems and solutions

Abstract

The beginning of this new century has witnessed two important events in English language education in China. The first is the expansion of English language education into the primary curriculum. In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) required that primary schools located in cities and county seats start to offer English classes at Primary 3 from the autumn of 2001 and that the rest start to do so in the following year (MOE, 2001). The second is the increase of enrolment in various types of Chinese colleges and universities. For example, in 1999 the number of students enrolled in Chinese higher education was six million, but it rose to over 20 million in 2004 (Jin & Cortazzi, 2006). Such a rapid development of English language education has resulted in a number of difficulties and challenges for EFL teaching in China, but the most serious constraint comes from the lack of qualified teachers (Rao, 2010). To compensate for the shortage of English teachers, many Chinese schools are endeavoring to attract more native-English-speaking teachers (henceforth NESTs) to fill up EFL teaching vacancies. In 2006, for example, there were 150,000 foreign EFL teachers working in China (Jeon & Lee, 2006).