Socioeconomic Disparities and Early English Education: A Case in Changzhou, China

Abstract

As English has increasingly come to be seen as a lingua franca and a means towards success in a globalizing world, considerable time, effort and resources are being invested in teaching and learning English around the world. In East Asia, the seemingly excessive zeal for learning English has been referred to as English fever, and in recent years it appears to have spread among even young learners. The zeal may potentially have a significant impact on local linguistic ecologies and a substantial societal cost. Drawing from a case study of the wider social and linguistic contexts for English learning among young learners in Changzhou, China, this chapter illustrates how parental socio-economic status (SES) and parental behaviors and beliefs about their children’s English learning influence their children’s English performance at the early stages of their English learning. The chapter also describes Changzhou’s recent policy efforts to minimize achievement gaps by SES while at the same time trying to meet increasingly diverse student needs, and addresses the potential impact of these policies on the local linguistic ecology.