The reform of the National Matriculation English Test and its impact on the future of English in China

Abstract

With more and more importance being attached to English since China's economic reform and opening up to the outside world in the late 1970s, the entire Chinese society has placed such high importance to the learning of English that at times it even plays a vital role for a person who plans to pursue further education and seek a better career (China Daily, 5 August, 2010). However, the end of 2013 saw an ‘unanticipated’ reform of policy on the National Matriculation English Test (henceforth, NMET) instituted by the Chinese Ministry of Education (henceforth, MOE). It was ‘unanticipated’ because in the past few years the Chinese government has invested heavily in English language teaching. As reported by ABC News (15 November, 2010), ‘China is pushing its people to learn English’, and English has thus occupied a prominent place in the life of the Chinese people because it is the ‘key’ to success (Chen, 2008: 16-37). According to this new policy, the once favorite ‘son’, i.e. English, may lose its predominance in the Chinese foreign language landscape and its importance may be diminished in exams. These changes are likely to cause a series of chain reactions since the dominant position of English largely lies in its weight in various levels of exams, with the NMET having the greatest impact. Given the determining factor of the NMET in Chinese people's attitudes towards English, NMET reform would almost undoubtedly change the current situation of English in China and it would be no exaggeration to say that it will have a foreseeable impact on various aspects of Chinese social life as well. In this article, I briefly review the causes for the ‘focus shift’ and attempt an analysis of the impact of the role of English in China in the future.