English Language Teaching in Higher Education in China: A Historical and Social Overview

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the historical and social development of English Language Teaching (ELT) in higher education in China. The discussion of history focuses on three waves of ELT development in China’s higher education and how these three waves reflect China’s fluctuating relations with the West. The first wave came with the modernization of China in order to combat imperialism and rejuvenate the nation at the turn of the twentieth century. The second wave occurred after China began to adopt socioeconomic reforms and the policy of opening to the outside world in 1976 after the Cultural Revolution. EFL gained great momentum and experienced the third wave after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in the twenty-first century when multinational corporations began to invest heavily in China and built economic partnerships with China. With this historical overview as a background, the authors then explore several important issues that serve as prisms for understanding the social and cultural influences behind some college-level ELT practices, including the dominance of ELT in language curriculum in Chinese universities, current methodological debates, the effects of English language tests on a centralized higher educational system, and Chinese university students’ perceptions of the role of English.