Job Discussion Forums

[Granada Girl]

Do Chinese students tend to have a preference??

[cj750]

The British Uni system is easier to gain access so many of the programs that are performance based are the BC qualified...and I have worked for British Universities as well as New Zealand based Colleges for the last four years even though I am an American. . I prefer these as they pay better than Oral English jobs...and the students desire to have Americans as teachers is due to the ability to understand the teacher and the thought that the English is pure...or as I have heard..pure North American accent...

[Plan B]

Although individual students have rarely voiced a preference for the type of English, the private language miills almost universally use American English as the focus for their courses. For me, this is a cause of frustration, as the American English resources are arguably inferior to the British texts.

However, although I have occassionally seen job adverts requesting North American speakers only, I don't believe that this preference extends to the nationality of the teacher.

[ryleeys]

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

This is a very interesting thread with the potential for sharing valuable and professional insights through healthy and civil discussion.

Have fun.

[cj750]

The reasons stated by schools and companies where I have worked:
American Text Books and Language Trainers are more expensive than British ones. The students have often expressed dismay with "the Kings English" as not being "up to date" and hard to understand.
As I work for a school with links to British Uni' ..the book used in our program is an English one and of good standing...English for Academic Purposes and it is up to date and could be used to improve IELTS scores. One thing to note though...the schools that allign themselves with the British system are performance based schools and your continued employment is determined by the students testing skills and scores. Unlike an Oral English Class, whereas no notable progress can be noted...test performance is key here and the British counciled trained teachers do better in this situation than their American counterparts.

[Roger]

The wind is slowly changing.
Until recently, American accents were clearly favoured over British ones. THis no doubt had historic roots: Americans brought English to China after this country abandoned Russian as their first foreign tongue. Britain as colonial owner of Hong Kong was in a poor position.

BUt the ups and downs in the relationship between the U.S.A. and China and the various shortcomings of the English teaching methods adopted as a consequence of leaning too close on American education institutions have breached gaps in the wall.
Instead of TOEFL, IELTS is now given official sanction. While this isn't an expression of favouring British over American English it does mean American English is a little sidelined.
Ever more students are preparing for IELTS exams. Thus European and Australian English has come into the foreground. For Chinese to pass IELTS exams the countries where they can continue their tertiary education include members of the E.U., which is interesting because as of now students don't pay tuition.

[NateM]

One thing I've noticed is that nearly all the Chinese-English electronic dictionaries base their English on British English, not American English. At my school, there's long been a close relationship with Rolls Royce as well, and so the British influence here is pretty strong. Still, I'm not sure if that preference extends to the students themselves, although they might have an easier time with British pronounciation.

I think that, ideally, I'd like to see some sort of mish-mash of the two take over in China. I think both ways of pronunciation have advantages over each other, and both, in my opinion, have areas where they exacerbate some of the common problems we see in terms of communicability when applied to Chinese learning the language. Between well-spoken British and American native speakers, these differences aren't that much of a problem, but with Chinese English learners these can mean the difference between understanding what they say and a big "Huh???".

[latefordinner]

To be honest, I wonder why the fuss. For most Chinese students below the graduate level, the difference is less than the difference between their own tortured chinglish and anything recognisable as English.
cj750:

[rickinbeijing]

This is an interesting thread and a topic of frequent discussion offline. Perhaps some recent historical perspective can inform it. Until the 1990's, British English dominated mainland Chinese secondary school textbooks. American English was presented for its novelty and informality, at least as perceived by most Chinese editors at the People's Education Press (which, incidentally, controlled 90% of the market until 1993). Subsequently, the pervasiveness of American English on the Internet and much of the mass media including, notably, the music and film industries, has made it far more popular with Chinese teens. At both the secondary and tertiary levels, I have consistently been told by mainland Chinese students that they prefer American English as it is easier for them to listen to. British English, of course, dominated the radio waves when the BBC and CRI were the only stations one could easily receive. Now, with the advent of music-talk shows, especially JOY-FM, based in Beijing and carried on CRI and with VOA, that is changing. Moreover, the British Council dropped the ball during this period in terms of its sponsorship of many language activities in mainland China to the point that the Minister of Education scolded his British counterpart for it. Since the mid-1990's most of the Chinese produced English textbooks for primary and secondary education have used a combination of British and American English despite the fact that the Chief Editor of PEP is an avowed Anglophile. Where a bias is most evident is in the textbook selection of private foreign publishers for middle schools. Here the British English remains dominant, as in e.g. the Go For It series. Likewise, literature courses at the university level (and accompanying analytical reading courses) continue to show a bias in favor of British authors. This is partly due to finances: most English department libraries illegally photocopied classics for decades and these were mostly British. Many simply cannot afford to purchase class sets of contemporary literature (anything published after 1945, which leaves out a lot of fine American literature). And a disproportionate number of faculty are trained in British literature and so feel more inclined to teach it themselves.

I have indeed heard hip young Chinese students pan British English as outdated and American English as cool. That's simply a matter of personal perception, I suppose.

I must take issue, however, with the assertion that American textbooks are generally inferior. What they lack is the entrenched British distribution system (especially Cambridge University Press), which also receives preferential shelf space in Xinhua Bookstores.

Actually, nearly all of the Anglo-American textbook are mostly comprised of generic Western content. Where real strides are being made in content culturally specific to mainland China and in terms of genuine collaboration with foreign editors and writers is at, ironically, People's Education Press. Their most recent series, The New Senior English for China (NSEC) is the wonderful result of these concerns and efforts.

And as informed sociolinguists will tell you, the debate may become moot in the not-too-distant future as Chinglish evolves into Chinese English in much the same way as Indian and Singaporean English.

[bendan]

[rickinbeijing]

bendan,

To state emphatically that the differences between British and American English are incredibly minor demonstrates a considerable lack of awareness of these two major branches of English on your part, to put it euphemistically. For source material on this point, and on the rise of Chinese English, I refer you to Graddol (1999) and Crystal (1997). You should already know the specific publications I'm citing here.

Many Chinese students at key senior middle schools and universities which my colleagues and I have personally taught can readily discern these regional differences.

I almost didn't want to dignify your other comment with a reply: to assert that there are no hip young Chinese students is to demonstrate an acute lack of awareness of the current generation. It also suggests that you are more than a bit patronizing in your tone. Apparently, neither have you heard of Mian Mian, Han Han, Annie Wang, or Chun Sue--just to name a few young and hip Chinese teen writers that would make even Wang Shuo blush.

[Roger]

Ricky says that until the 1990s British textbooks dominated the scene; it is impossible to refute this statement but it must be put in a different context.
The truth is that, yes, a good many textbooks at that time were NEW CONCEPT ENGLISH, probably the world's most successful English teaching material. I still feel it is better than most other books. But it also is true that this series is a little outdated although it has been revised on occasion. Some of the texts clearly are no longer fashionable from a topical or even vocabulary point of view (one text is talking about 'rocket's that were sent to space when nowadays we would use a word like 'spacecraft'). This series was bron just about 40 years ago.

But textbooks don't decide which accent students prefer; the overwhelming majority was indoctrinated to believe that "American accent is best". Please, please, I said: "Indoctrinated". And I mean "indoctrinated". \

Thus, your average student would ask you "can you teach me 'American accent'?" Or "which English is best: American English or British English?" You certainly do not want to discuss such questions, do you? At least I did not consider either to be "best".
My first private training centre boss even promised his self-paying adult learners that "Professor Roger can teach you real American English'. I had never said so much, and I told him he was misleading people. Nevertheless, that's what he promised them because the market demanded this...

On the other hand, anybody who had higher goals had to pass a TOEFL, not a typical British-English test. But this has been changing now for a few years. See my previous post.

[shenyanggerry]

I teach my Ss that there is hardly any difference between 'American' and "British' English. The diference between regional acents in both US and UK far exceed the difference between RP and CNN English.

[rickinbeijing]

This is becoming tiresome. Uh, Rog, you cannot refute the statement because it's true. I know: I worked as a textbook writer and principal foreign editor for PEP for four years and one of my friends wrote his Ph.D thesis at the University of Hong Kong on this very subject. But, of course, I realize you crave to comment on every thread on this forum. As for New Concept English, it has its merits but more demerits, I'm afraid.

As for shenyanggerry, you can tell your students there is little difference until you are blue in the face but that will not make it so. The differences are not limited to diction and pronunciation but to grammatical construction and idiomatic expressions. While none of this proves a daunting obstacle to the serious EFL student, it is nevertheless an obstacle initially, and sometimes a matter of confusion.