Young English learners’ attitudes towards China English: unpacking their identity construction with implications for secondary level language education in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the expanding use of English around the world, it is important to understand various stakeholders’ attitudes towards it from a Global Englishes (GE) perspective. The GE perspective has challenged native speakerism and recognized the multilingual nature of the English language. In particular, a GE perspective leads to the sustainable development of a language from both sociolinguistic and ecolinguistic perspectives. Echoing the diversity and complexity of the English language use and teaching, this paper investigates senior high school students’ attitudes towards the local variety of English in China, and unpacks their negotiation and construction of identity through their English-language learning journey. Through a series of interviews, this study found that the students still perceive English as a school subject, and see themselves as perennial learners of English. As the GE perspective was not widely recognized, and that students have not developed their awareness of the global use of English, several implications of teaching English from the GE paradigm, from curriculum design and teaching materials, are provided to increase the awareness of the global use of English. This paper also highlights the importance of viewing the development of English from an ecolinguistic perspective for the sustainable development of the language.