English Language Education Planning in China: A Language Attitude Perspective

邱菊

【摘要】語言政策和语言规划研究是社会语言学的重要研究领域。我国的语言规划主要是关于普通话以及少数民族语言的地位和本位规划。然而作为语言规划的一个重要方面，英语教育规划在我国长时间处于一种被忽视的状态，缺少系统且连贯的英语教育规划。我国的英语教育语言规划受到政治、经济、文化等多方面因素的影响。而在价值取向上，存在重视社会价值，却忽略个人价值的现象。英语教育规划只有建立在科学的基础上，才能发挥使英语教育合理发展的政策权威。

【关键词】语言规划;高中生;语言态度;英语教育规划

1. Introduction

1.1 General background

English was not born as a global language as it is today. It happens to be the most widely used language around the world. The rapid spread of English in the world has raised increasing attention and has initial plenty of studies of language policy and language planning since 1950s. Einar Haugen is considered as one of the pioneers and most influential theorists in language planning study. Traditionally， there are two dimensions of language planning： corpus planning and status planning which have been greatly promoted so that it can bring much consideration and supervision to the language policy makers. A third major type planning that is particularly important for education is known as in language education planning.

1.2 Methodology and significance of the research

Researches about foreign language education planning has made certain achievements， while few of them have even stepped into the research of English education planning from the perspective of learners language attitudes. Therefore， the present study tends to conduct a survey of senior high school students language attitudes towards English education and its planning in China， and provide some analysis and suggestions which are expected to be of some value in the research of contemporary English education planning.

2. Language Attitude

Language attitude is defined as favorable or unfavorable responses to varieties of a single language， or different language， or speaking community （Baker， 1992）. attitudes may motivate or be motivated by language policies and therefore affect directly over what languages are going to be taught or not in a particular country or region and how those languages are going to be taught. Language policies may cause an effect on what speakers think and believe about their own languages or languages in contact and these attitudes would impact on prestige and motivation for learning particular languages.

3. Research Design and Date Analysis

The study is aimed at answering the three research questions：

1） What attitudes do Chinese senior high school students hold towards English language， English learning， as well as English education？

2） What problems exist in English education planning at present in China？

3） What implications may the language attitudes investigated suggest for English education planning in China？

To answer these questions， a questionnaire survey was designed and distributed to 120 senior high school students in Guyuan No.1 Middle School in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. By referring to language attitudes questionnaire developed by Wang R. J.s （2008）， some adjustments have been made and fifteen new items have been added in the questionnaire. One hundred and thirteen questionnaires are sampled， excluding 7 invalid ones. In terms of the statistical technique， mean value， Std. Deviation， mode value， and percentage distribution are used to analyze the data.

The results of data analysis show that 1） students have very high evaluation of the practical values and benefits that English would bring to both the country and the individual and， 2） the surveyed students are dissatisfied with the status quo of English education in China， especially in exam-oriented education， poor learning environment， utilitarianism in English learning， low communicative competence， teachers-centered classroom instruction， and unreasonable assessment， etc. Such existing deficiencies of English education reveal the necessity of scientific and systematic English language education planning in China.

4. Conclusion

The research avails to enrich English education planning studies as well as to contribute to the field of research of language planning at large. The investigation of language attitude of English learners may shed some light on the relationship between language attitude and language planning， and further reveal the necessity to have a proper English education planning so as to improve English education in China.

References：

[1]Baker， C. Attitudes and language[J]. Clevedon： Multilingual Matters，1992.