English is the main language of communication used in the East Asia as a lingua franca in all types of international contacts. It is, hence, not surprising that the problem of appropriate teaching of English in schools, colleges, and institutions occupies not only the minds of professional tutors and young students’ parents, but also politicians who understand the importance of English in the world.
The internationally recognized status of English as the major language of worldwide communication has been formed by a number of historical and economical factors, including colonization periods in East Asia and the international importance of British and American economies and cultures for oriental countries. Although the time of colonists and forced implementation of English culture went by, globalization processes made English lingua franca for so many countries nowadays that speaking it properly becomes an extremely important skill in the modern context.
This skill is definitely of utmost importance now for the East-Asian countries which have been all involved into international trade and relationships since the second half of the 20th century. For this reason, in China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and many other East-Asian countries English is taught not only in public schools, but also is suggested for learning by some extra courses in pre-school or elementary school periods. In most of cases these special courses are paid, and, thus, often they are not available for poor people.
For instance, in such countries as China or Taiwan where the level of life in cities differs much from the one in rural areas, there are many people who can’t afford such paid courses. On the contrary, in Japan where social contrasts are not so striking people spend more than third of their income for private tutors and courses for their children that, however, include not only English, but also art and music (Qi, p. 116).
The matter is that learning English in public schools is not efficient at all for several reasons. First, in many Asian countries the age of starting learning English language is about 9-12 years old that is relatively late when taking into account that younger the student is, easier the learning process passes for him or her. For instance, in Japan students start learning English only at 12, in Korea – at 9, in Taiwan – at 11, and in most of public schools in these countries students have only two or three classes of English per week that last less than an hour that is not definitely enough in order to speak the language fluently by the end of educational process (Qi, pp. 116-117.)
Another even worse point about public education is that school teachers and learning methods used by them in public institutions frequently do not meet modern requirements, nor international standards of teaching English at all. The main problem consists in that a large number of English teachers in East-Asian countries are not capable to follow international standards and teaching methodology required by such organization as, for example, ELT that relates to “teaching of English as a second language” (Qi , p. 114).
As a matter of fact, most of those methodological instructions refer to teaching English in English without or with a minimum use of native language during the class. Such an approach ensures a complete immersion of students in the studied language making them finally develop the capacity of thinking in foreign language without always addressing their native language for translation.
It is obvious that such a task may not be realized if a teacher does not speak the language professionally himself or herself which is the case of multiple local teachers in many Asian countries nowadays. Moreover, few teachers in these countries are aware of how to teach English to young learners who definitely require quite a different approach in contrast with their older counterparts.
For this reason, one of the main goals that has been actually set by educational systems of the aforementioned countries consists in improving the professional level and training of teachers themselves. The latter primarily consists in passing TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) exams and trainings, since TESOL professionals are considered to be the best in the field (Qi, p. 116). In addition, local governments invest much into attracting English teachers from abroad, especially native speakers. Nowadays, there are plenty of various job opportunities and long-term programs for English teachers in China, Korea, Japan, and other East-Asian countries.
Although all aforementioned countries undergo similar globalization processes nowadays, it is, however, difficult to talk about implementation of English in these countries very generally. As a matter of fact, each country is very individual in its English learning practices which is due to a number of historical and cultural facts. For instance, some East-Asian countries are the former colonies of Great Britain, whereas others have been always independent. This historical nuance is actually very important to how English is perceived in this or that society, since “time does not pass, it accumulates” (Baucom 24).
For instance, in Japan that has been always a strong independent country in the East-Asia, learning English language is not linked to the idea of understanding different cultures and proficiency competence in English is not often supported by assessment exams in this country (Choi, p.17).
Moreover, in Japan where, as it was stated above, English is not included in the educational program of public schools until the age of 12, foreign languages are always studied in conjunction with understanding the major role of Japanese. In particular, according to the new educational program implemented by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2008 teaching English has the following tasks to be completed in the course of education:
Enabling students to understand what speaker mean while listening;
Allowing students for expressing their own thoughts in English;
Developing reading skills in students and allowing them for understanding the authors’ intentions while reading in English;
Familiarizing students with writing in English and teaching them to express their own thoughts in English in the written form (Choi, p.9).
Similar situation may be observed in the South Korea which was colonized by Japan and where English is nothing but a school subject.
In contrast, Hong Kong that during its history knew the period when English was “a medium of communication”, values English proficiency much more than Japan and the South Korea (Choi, p. 17). To illustrate, it would be interesting to compare the goals that are actually set by the educational system of Hong Kong in relation to English teaching:
“to provide every learner of English with further opportunities for extending their knowledge and experience of the cultures of other people as well as opportunities for personal and intellectual development, further studies, pleasure and work in the English medium; and to enable every learner to prepare for the changing socio-economic demands resulting from advances in information technology (IT) – demands which include the interpretation, use and production of texts for pleasure, study and work in the English medium.” (Choi, p.4).
These objectives expressed in the school curricula of both countries are so different that the very idea of general approach to analysis of English teaching peculiarities in the East-Asian countries seems odd.
Japanese program looks very simplistic in comparison with Hong Kong’s insightful approach that supposes not only basic understanding of author’s or speaker’s intention while reading or listening, or expressing ones’ own thoughts while speaking and writing, but allows for real linguistic opportunities to extend knowledge. It is obvious that these approaches are very different owing to variety of cultural, social, and historical factors related to Japan and Hong Kong.
All these aforementioned examples allow for talking about such a phenomenon as glocalization of English teaching in the East Asia. The notion of glocalization is relatively new and has been recently introduced and popularized by the sociologist Roland Robertson who invented it in response to a simplistic approach of globalization. In particular, the term means the following: “the simultaneous occurrence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in contemporary social, political, and economic systems” (Blatter). Therefore, glocalization of English education plays major role in how the language is actually embedded in the local cultural contexts. From this standpoint, English teaching approaches should be considered both in broad context of its global presence and its particular manifestation in different countries.
However, coming back to a so-called “simplistic” view related to globalization, it would be worthwhile to note that although this process made English a lingua franca for the entire world, it also threatens much to its unity which is very often impossible to maintain due to numerous dialects of English. The problem of dialects is especially important to the educational process where mistakes are not acceptable. However, many teachers in the East-Asian countries are influenced by their local variant of English that in turn is tought by them to their pupils.
In this context, Gikandi states: “a language thrives when it can no longer claim purity” (Gikandi 868), and this sentence is true for English of nowadays, because there are fewer and fewer people in the world capable to speak a pure English of Byron and Shakespeare.
In particular, East-Asian countries are well-known for their bad pronunciation and inappropriate grammar use of English language. There are many jokes and sketches that show dialogues between Indians or Chinese which are frequently incomprehensible for native speakers of English.
However, this fact is actually very unfortunate for educational purposes, since in this context of permanently broken English, it is even more difficult to implement its linguistic correctness, especially when talking about students who can’t afford any extra educational courses of English and have to study it only in public institutions. For this reason, it seems that measures for providing special training courses for teachers, implementing various TESOL-related educational projects and attracting more teachers from English-speaking countries may be very helpful in such a culturally diversified context of the East-Asia.
In conclusion, it should be noted once again that globalization of the process of English teaching has both its advantages and drawbacks in different countries. First of all, it is closely connected with the culture of the country, in particular with its historical attitude toward English: if a country is a former colony of an English speaking country, the status of English will be higher than in other countries which were independent. Then, it is very difficult to control the unity and homogeneity of the language when it is so widely spread in the world and always exposed to the influence of diversified local cultures and languages that inevitably causes the loss of purity in English. Finally, globalization is often opposed to the existing local conditions (glocalization) which often leads to quite different approaches and methods in English learning.
Works cited
Baucom, Ian. “Liverpool, the Capital of the long twentieth century.” Specters of the Atlantic. Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 3-34.
Blatter, Joachim. “Glocalization.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 21 May 2013, https://global.britannica.com/topic/glocalization. Accessed 24 Jan. 2017.
Choi, Tae-Hee. “Glocalization of English language education: Comparison of three contexts in East Asia.” file:///C:/Users/%D0%9A%D1%81%D1%8E/Downloads/CHOI_Forthcoming_Glocalization_of_English_language_education_Comparison_of_three_countexts_in_East_Asia.pdAccessed 25 Jan.2017.
Gikandi, Simon.”Editor’s column: From Penn Station to Trenton: The Language Train.” PMLA 128, no. 4 (2013).
Qi, Shen. “Globalization of English and English Language Policies in East Asia: a Comparative Perspective.” Canadian Social Science, vol.5, no.3, 2009.
