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[seklarwia]

In China, I never met an ES child who didn't know at least some very basic English. And it's not unusual for kindergarten to start introducing English. Where I was working there was a kindy with 80 odd kids. Although many were not even speaking properly (some were only 2) they pretty much all understood basic commands in English and when I used to visit my friend there, I'd have lots of girls running up with combs, brushes and bands in hand shouting, "Brush! Brush!" or showing me dirty hands and shouting, "Wash! Wash!" (Their favorite morning song always repeats the short commands twice)

I'm not sure about really rural western China(the news even in China always seems a bit fake when it comes to western regions), but in more central and eastern China ES kids really all study English. I knew foreign teachers who worked in tiny schools in the mountains who were solo teaching ES kids in English. Even as part of my TEFL training, I was doing observed practicals in an ES school where I was teaching Japanese JH topics on my own. I had a small class of 14 boys and 4 girls to practise with and never once required assistance from the trainer despite me speaking no Chinese at the time.

And even in my town/city, the little kid with their mummy stood behind me in the PO or supermarket could normally assist me when I was struggling with intonation or pronunciation and couldn't make myself understood. The mothers normally just stood there all proud of their kid because they themselves spoke no English at all.

The thing is that the people of China really are proud of their country and its leaders and it doesn't even occur to the people to question what the leaders say. This is a country, where the government said they needed to cut the number of cars on the road in Beijing for the olympics, so with a year to go, people were getting into a habit of only driving their cars on the designated days decided by the reg number. If the government says English will make the country stronger, the people will go and out and learn English no matter how impossible the task seems and teachers will go and get retrained to teach whatever is needed (although the brutal truth is that if they didn't the school would replace them with someone who had). The people of China do not debate or resist change if they are told not to, so it was likely quite easy to get change to happen.

The strange thing, is that many Chinese English teachers are just as textbook, vocab and grammar orientated as JTEs, but some how by high school, many kids are having elective subjects taught entirely in English. I taught effective presentation skills to HS 2nd years. One of my collegues from India taught booking keeping and accountancy to 3rd years.

And then there are the IELTs! From HS the kids are taking these crazy difficult tests (I used to help with the literature analysis prep classes and got to see many past papers) the average UK GCSE student would likely fail.

[Glenski]

[Mr_Monkey]

[ShioriEigoKyoushi]

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[seklarwia]