“Oh My Gosh! The Expression Is Too Chinese”: Attitudes of University Teachers and Students towards China English

Abstract

AbstractWith the wide spread of English in the global context, scholars increasingly call for the reshaping of English education towards teaching English as an international language. One oft-mentioned proposal is to increase students’ exposure to more English varieties, in particular the variety of English used in their country or region. Against this backdrop, this study investigated the attitudes of Chinese university students and teachers towards China English (CE), an emerging variety in China and the ideological underpinnings beneath their attitudinal responses. In the study, 33 English teachers and 31 students were asked to first evaluate the understandability and acceptability of CE features that are identified in literature and then provide reasons justifying their choices in a questionnaire survey. Results show that both teacher and student participants were reluctant to accept CE as a legitimate variety but their attitudes diverged as regards specific CE features. The in-depth exploration of their justifications revealed that native speaker English ideology, Chinglish stigma and the communicativeness of CE to the outside world were their major concerns in evaluating CE. Findings in this study have implications for educators who attempt to localize English language teaching.