Vol.:(0123456789)

SN Soc Sci (2021) 1:85https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-021-00072-2

ORIGINAL PAPER

A local English: not Chinglish but China English: evidence from Chinese university English classrooms

Chen Li1

Received: 6 July 2020 / Accepted: 31 January 2021 / Published online: 1 March 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

AbstractLocal varieties of English within different sociolinguistic realities, especially those in the “expanding circle,” have been a contemporary issue gravitating around some models of English(es) such as World Englishes and English as an intercultural language (EIcL). To this end, this paper aims to unfold China English (CE) in the context of Chinese university English classrooms; namely, how CE has come to be produced and recognized by Chinese learners of English. The analysis is subject to a diachronic contextual analysis of CE, which goes through three historical phases starting from the establishment of People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the imple-mentation of the Open and Reform Policy, then to the beginning of the new millen-nium and afterwards. Evidence of CE’s appearance and development are presented through teaching pedagogy, attitudes of teachers and students, instructional materi-als, and tests and evaluations. This study seeks to claim that CE has been incubated as a naturally inevitable product of China’s globalization and internationalization, from being rejected to being recognized and encouraged, on the breeding ground of Chinese university English classrooms.

Keywords China English (CE) · Chinese learners of English · Chinese university English classroom

Introduction

How many people are speaking English? According to the St George International website, it was estimated that in the year 2015, there were definitely above 1.5 bil-lion speakers of English globally. As stated in this website, 67 nations from the total 195 countries in the world, adopted English as the primary official language and another 27 countries adopted English as a secondary official language. The

* Chen Li 11859999@qq.com

1 College of Foreign Studies, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, Guangxi, China

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contemporary scene is reflected by an “expanding circle” which includes a steadily increasing number of countries (Crystal 2003).1

The global spread of English has challenged the ascendancy of the two major “standard” varieties in English language education, British English and American English, which has led to the emergence of a number of local English varieties in different parts of the world. What is more, the increasing number of non-native speakers in the world has influenced some of the important issues related to Eng-lish language teaching (ELT). Strict traditional adherence to native-speaker pronun-ciation and culture in ELT are among the issues challenged by the World Englishes debate (Coskun 2010). For example, Ates et al. (2015) have tried to incorporate the world Englishes perspectives into education programs to prepare students for the realities they encounter in today’s globalized world, revealing vast benefits. Apart from that Li (2016) proposes concrete strategies in addressing problems resulting from the tendency in Chinese universities, with a purpose of incorporating world Englishes into ELT in Chinese universities.

China, as one of the countries in the expanding circles, is also on the scene as English is becoming more popular in this country due to the increasing develop-ments in technology, economic integration into the global economy, the increase in tourism income, the spread of private channels and cable TV, and the flow of for-eign movies, especially American films, into China. Since English is considered as a foreign language rather than a second language for Chinese people, what English are they learning or speaking? With China’s entry into WTO (World Trade Organi-zation) and the rapid progress of globalization, there has been increasing interest among researchers to seek the growth of English as a variety spoken in China. Uni-versities, which have cultivated most English speakers in China, must have wit-nessed a gradual process for China English (CE) to appear and to be recognized. However, how CE has come onto the stage remains unclear, especially in the Chi-nese university context. Aiming at unfolding this picture in the incubator of Chi-nese university English classrooms, this paper seeks evidence from previous empiri-cal studies and related literature through aspects of teaching pedagogy, attitudes of teachers and students, course materials, tests and evaluations, etc. It is argued that, CE, a term different from Chinese English and Chinglish, is an inevitable product of social economic development. It is the nativization of English accompanied by the downplay of native-speaker English norm, with distinct Chinese socio-cultural characteristics, which is intelligible to speakers of English in China as well as other parts of the world.

1 The US linguist Braj Kachru (1985) has suggested three concentric circles, representing different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used, namely (i) the inner circle, which refers to the traditional bases of English, including the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; (ii) the outer or extended circle, where the language has become part of a country’s chief institutions and plays an important “second language” role in a multilingual setting: it includes Singapore, India, Malawi, and over fifty other territories; (iii) the expanding or extending circle involves those nations which recog-nize the importance of English as an international language, though they do not have a history of coloni-zation by members of the inner circle, nor have they given English any special administrative status, such as China, Japan, Greece, Poland, etc.

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Chinglish, Chinese English, and China English

Why is Chinglish stigmatized?

Chinglish is a term loaded with stigma due to the negative transfer of Chinese into English, like Singlish (the generally accepted variety of English is Singapore English). The term Chinglish is clarified to draw a distinction from China English by two Chi-nese scholars in the journal of English Today (Jiang 1995; Dong 1995). In their clari-fications, Chinglish is regarded as a kind of blended language or interlanguage, which appears in the speech of learners in the intermediate stage of English acquisition, usu-ally ill formed but unavoidable. Following this clarification, Wei and Fei (2003, p. 43) also define Chinglish as an interlanguage used by English learners who tend to ignore the basic grammatical structure of English.

This paper adopts Eaves’ (2011) argumentation that it is Chinese English that can be referred to as interlanguage, whereas Chinglish is a “nonsensical, problematic form of English” that is resulted from poor translation, misspelling, and errors. She lists some examples of Chinglish which appear on the signs of some scenic spots on the road side, such as “return journey way,” a phrase indicating the way back down the mountain. A proper translation can be “return route” or “way back.” More examples are “mental toy” for “intellectual toy,” the toy considered as bearing an educational function. People may also see some signs in some public areas, like “slip carefully,” referring to “Cau-tion. Wet floor.” These expressions of Chinglish are erroneous and unintelligible, even to Chinese speakers of English.

Chinglish may also involve some mispronunciations due to learners’ deficient ability of detecting the distinctive features in English and Chinese. In addition, pronunciation of Chinglish is produced by learners with an utterance of a strong accent native to their mother tongue, usually affected by their dialect, which is unidentifiable to the listener and usually render the listener very confused and uncomfortable.

Except for the above erroneous lexical translation and mispronunciations, Chinglish may also violate the core grammar of English, such as a word-for-word translation of “好好学习, 天天向上” to “good good study, day day up,” meaning “if you work hard, you will make progress everyday.” This kind of expressions does not conform to the core grammar of English, which may be unintelligible to English speakers outside of China while Chinese learners of English can only comprehend the meaning of those expressions by translating them back to Chinese word by word.

In sum, Chinglish is stigmatized due to its erroneous word-for-word translation, or semantic inappropriateness which fails to convey the original meaning of Chinese, or the mispronunciation affected by speakers’ mother tongue to a degree that is unidentifi-able and unintelligible, as well as its violation of the core grammar of English, all of which are unintelligible to speakers of different varieties of English. Its existence is, therefore, stigmatized.

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Chinese English as an interlanguage

As for Chinese English, Zhang (1997, p. 40) claims that it can be regarded as Ching-lish, followed by some others who do not think it necessary to differentiate these two terms (e.g., Hu 2004; Wang 2015). However, Eaves (2011, pp. 66–68), by cit-ing Richards et al.’s (1992) definition of interlanguage, argues that Chinese English is different from Chinglish in that the former one should be regarded as an inter-language spoken by Chinese learners of English whose “fundamental mistakes do not render the sentences entirely unintelligible to a native speaker.” For example, “You bring us happy. Where have you where have happy (Eaves 2011, p. 67).” This expression used by a Chinese secondary school student is somewhat comprehen-sible, although it has some grammatical problems. Another example is “can reus-ing” and “can’t reusing,” appearing on the signs of the trash cans in some places of China, which can be glossed as “recyclable” and “unrecyclable” (Eaves 2011).

As for pronunciation, Chinese English may involve some phonetical inappropri-ateness due to the lack of some phonemes in Chinese and Chinese speakers’ habit of pronouncing their mother tongue, which is nevertheless comprehensible. For example, the sound/θ/may be pronounced as/s/in “thank,” and a final/Ə/may also be added to the words ended with a consonant.

Some expressions are grammatically competent but conform to the pragmatic use of Chinese, such as “Your body is healthy” and “Because we are students, so, we need to respect our teachers.” In Chinese, “ni hen jiankang,” meaning “you are healthy,” can be regarded as being quite broad, since Chinese people usually add a more specific term to refer either to “physical health” or to “mental health.” In addition, “yinwei,” meaning “because,” is alleged to be used usually on a par with “suoyi,” meaning “therefore,” in one sentence by a Chinese speaker, and this habit tends to be transferred to their use of English, resulting in Chinese English. These grammatically competent expressions seem to pose no problem to speakers of differ-ent varieties of English.

In sum, unlike Chinglish which can be erroneous in grammar, or confusing in pronunciation, Chinese English is not much deviated from the core grammar of Eng-lish, or contains grammatical errors that do not render unintelligibility, with the pro-nunciation carrying an accent of Chinese yet acceptable. Compared with Chinglish which bears semantic inappropriateness sometimes, Chinese English involves little or no semantic ambiguity. It can be regarded as an interlanguage used by Chinese learners of English in their developmental stage of acquisition towards CE.

CE as a developing variety of English

As a developing variety, CE has its unique course of appearance and growth in the China context. Roughly from the 2010s, CE has been advanced and reported to grad-ually gain recognition and legitimacy, generating an inevitable beneficial outcome for Chinese learners of English, such as more confidence in expressing themselves or in describing China-specific cultural phenomena (He and Zhang 2010; Wang

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2015; Edwards 2017). CE has been differentiated from Chinese English and Ching-lish, and conceptualized in the literature since the 1990s (Jiang 1995; Li 1993; Wang 1991). It has been discussed independently and further elaborated since the 2000s (Du and Jiang 2003; Jiang and Du 2003). Its various features, such as phonological features (Li and Sewell 2012), lexical, syntactic, and discourse pragmatic features (Bolton 2003; Kirkpatrick 2007; Wei and Fei 2003; Yang 2005; Zhang 2002), have been described.

Based on previous literature on definition of CE, He and Li (2009) instantiate CE with respect to its phonological features, lexical, syntactic, and discourse pragmatic features. In line with Kirkpatrick (2007), He and Li (2009) think that CE might not bear some common-to-all distinctive phonological features but some acceptable replacement of phonetic sound, such as “/θ/with [s] and/ð/with [d], insertion of final [Ə].” Besides, mother tongue is also considered as can be expected in CE by He and Zhang (2010).

As for lexical features, He and Li (2009) summarize several points, such as (i) being native to China, or being China-specific; (ii) inclusion of borrowing and inno-vations; and (iii) loan translations and transliterations. For example, CE is reflected in loan translations like “one country, two systems,” “the Spring Festival.” These expressions seem to be word-by-word translations, but they do not render ambigu-ous meaning and confusion if the listener is informed of related background infor-mation, since they contain socio-cultural relevance specific to China. Besides loan translations, transliterations also appear in CE, such as “he speaks Putonghua,” “fengshui,” “guanxi,” “zongzi,” etc. These culture-loaded expressions are represent-ative in Chinese and cannot find proper English counterparts and are, thus, translit-erated from Chinese Pinyin (another example of transliteration). In passing, as one of the six major distilled spirits in the world, Chinese-distilled spirit has changed its English name since January 1st, 2021 and is now officially called Chinese Baijiu, expanding its international influence.

In terms of syntactic features, He and Li (2009) classify them into four points based on previous discussions: (i) idioms made up of four morpho-syllables; (ii) par-allel structures; (iii) topicalization of adjuncts; and (iv) the null subject parameter. In addition to these four points, other expressions with settings of parametric proper-ties of Chinese language can also be inclusive in the features of CE.2 For example, an answer of a yes–no question can be “yes, I don’t like it,” and subject pronoun copying as “some of my college classmates they like to dress up very much” can also appear in CE.

With respect to discourse pragmatics, there appear greetings as “Good morning, teacher Zhang,” and response to compliment can be “too” modest in the culture of native speakers, which, however, might well conform to the norm of Chinese cul-ture.3 Besides, the writing or composition can be structured inductively, coming

2 The word “parameter” refers to the term in the Principles and Parameters theory under Generative Lin-guistics which concerns the syntax of a natural language. Principles describe general aspects that are common to all languages, and parameters refer to specific aspects which determines syntactic variability.3 For more examples, please refer to Wei and Fei (2003), Eaves (2011), and the appendix of Wang (2015).

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to an important conclusion after the narration of detailed amount of evidence. For instance, reasons can come before the result, like “Because Beijing is the capital of China, it is home to many workers from other cities who do not hold local hukou (Education in China 2016)” (hukou is an instance of CE).

Differentiating the three terms and postulation of this paper

As instantiated above, in terms of grammar and semantics, Chinglish involves errors more serious than Chinese English, whereas CE conforms to the core grammars of English. Lexically, Chinglish usually fails to convey the appropriate meaning or may incur misunderstandings and confusions to the listener, while Chinese English tends to avoid these instances of inappropriateness but has word retrieval difficulties in some expressions that are endemic and unique to China, which, however, does not make it entirely unintelligible to the listener. Different from Chinglish and Chinese English, CE conveys a precise meaning of words without ambiguity. Syntactically and pragmatically, Chinglish tends to be expressed in a way that usually conforms to Chinese, which is quite deviated from the core grammar of English, while producers of Chinese English try to reduce this tendency. Their use of English, however, exhib-its immature grammar, inconsistency, and lack of coherence in their ambivalent choice of foreignizing or domesticating their ideas. CE, although exhibiting syntac-tic and pragmatic properties of Chinese, conforms to the core grammar of English, which is intelligible to speakers of different varieties of English. As for pronuncia-tion, CE is not supposed to necessarily follow either American or British English. It may carry certain accent of dialectic Chinese, which, however, is totally identifiable and intelligible. Compared with CE, Chinese English may carry an accent of speak-ers’ mother tongue and may sound not so comfortable, while Chinglish may make it hard for the listener to identify the phonemic morpheme in the pronunciation of a speaker due to a very strong accent transferred from probably dialectic Chinese or the deficiency in pronouncing certain sounds.

To sum up, Chinglish can be regarded as being in a low stage of English acquisi-tion by learners with deficient training, which, however, is not a necessary phase that a learner is supposed to experience. The appearance of Chinglish has a unique socio-cultural background, as Wang (2015) points out that native speakerism and Chinglish are actually the two sides of a same coin. It is stigmatized and unaccepta-ble by any English speakers. Chinese English, as an interlanguage, involves expres-sions with errors within an acceptable range. During English language acquisition, it is a phase that any Chinese learners of English with Chinese as their mother tongue will experience (except for bilinguals), owing to the fact that English is a foreign language rather than a second language to Chinese people. Compared with Chi-nese English, CE can be regarded as being in an advanced stage of English lan-guage acquisition, which conforms to the core grammar of English as one of the developing varieties of English and embraces a high intelligibility and a favorable impression.

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It can be argued that the common tenet that these three terms share can be “speak-ing or using English in a Chinese way,” and this “Chinese way” is what renders them different from each other. The reason and course behind their appearance can be found in the incubator of Chinese university English classrooms in which most of the advanced learners or speakers of English are cultivated. It is postulated that the advancement of CE is a nativization and localization of English accompanied by the downplaying of the native-speaker norm of English. Hopefully, this cloudy picture of nativization and localization will come into focus more clearly in the next section of exploration in the context of Chinese university English classrooms.

The China English Turn in the Chinese University English Classroom

As stated in He and Zhang (2010), over 440–650 million Chinese are learning or using English either with a high or low proficiency for whatever purposes. Previ-ously, English was a compulsory course only in middle schools and universities in China. After the Compulsory Education Course Standard (experimental draft) was launched in 2001, English became a compulsory course in primary schools. This has made English classrooms the incubator for CE to appear and develop. Through years of role changing, CE has come to be differentiated from Chinglish and Chinese Eng-lish, and acts as a developing English variety emerging in the context of China and a “possible pedagogical choice” for Chinese learners of English (Deterding 2006; Hu 2004). In what follows, this section delves into CE’s coming onto the stage as a developing variety of English through different aspects concerning the higher educa-tion of English in China, i.e., teaching pedagogy, attitudes of teachers and students, instructional materials, test and evaluations, etc., with evidence from related litera-ture and previous empirical studies.

Teaching pedagogy

Different language teaching pedagogies are favored in different socio-historical backgrounds. Based on different stages of economic development in China, the dis-cussion in this section is divided into roughly three phases: 1949–1978; 1978–2000; 2000–2020.4 The implementation of teaching pedagogies in these three phases reflects distinguishing characteristics.

From 1949 to 1978 (the Grammar translation teaching time)

The Grammar translation (GT) teaching method is said to have dominated foreign language teaching in Europe from the 1840s to the 1940s and was employed in

4 The year 1949 was the time of the establishment of PRC; the year 1978 was the time of the initiation of the Open and Reform Policy which symbolized an important start of economic development; the year 2000 was the beginning of the new millennium which, for China, could be a new phase of development in welcoming the Beijing Olympics.

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China before 1949 (Yang 2000). It is also claimed to have been used in China up to the end of the 20th century (Rao 1996). It can be viewed as a prevailing pedagogy in the college English classrooms before 1978.5 During this period, college English was a compulsory course in the first 2 years, and the educational objective for this course was to improve students’ reading and translation abilities (Fu 1986). This objective was in line with the GT method, which was claimed to be teacher cen-tered and book centered, with a purpose of helping students read and appreciate the classical literature of English language rather than improving their oral and listen-ing abilities. Under this teaching objective, grammar was emphasized and was under strict requirements. In the main course of intensive reading, teachers were supposed to spend much time on the explanation of words and grammatical structures through translation, with the students listening to the teacher’s explanation and accepting English knowledge passively. All class activities were teacher oriented under the GT method, and “students were required to recite relevant grammar rules and remem-ber word meanings from dictionaries without any context. (Chang 2004, p. 35).” It was also observed by Lehmann (1975) that, in the GT class, students were usu-ally required to read aloud by following their teachers, resulting in few interactions between teachers and students. Spontaneous use of English was limited since ques-tions and answers between teachers and students were mainly based on text (Yang 2000). Therefore, when students were put in a communicative situation, they would probe for vocabularies and expressions in the dictionary or their textbooks, and assemble them into sentences without considering the appropriate context, result-ing in word-for-word translation from Chinese or sentences conforming to Chinese grammar.

Apart from that, the limited English competence of students was resulted from the shortage of capable language teachers. Many teachers of the GT time grew up around 1949 and received education in state-sponsored universities where they were taught and trained with English treated as an instrument to understand foreign-lan-guage information in texts (Yang 2000). These teachers were far from fluent in spo-ken English, which led to much use of Chinese in GT class.

During this period, few opportunities of engaging in oral interactions with teachers and peers limited the students’ development of oral competence and even reduced their needs of expressing themselves. Students would therefore be reluctant to produce English that they were unconfident with, which rendered an expression in Chinese as “yaba yingyu,” meaning “dumb English or mute English.” On the other hand, the emphasis on grammar revealed a dominant role of the native-speaker norm of English. Therefore, with a limited knowledge of English, it seems hard for stu-dents to utter expressions that should serve for the Chinese context and at the same time conform to this native-speaker norm, rendering Chinglish.

5 Dzau (1990) observed that the Audiolingual Method was also tried out in many schools. However, it was abandoned during the Cultural Revolution (Adamson and Morris 1997).

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From1978 to 2000 (the communicative‑based approaches time)

Since the Opening and Reform Policy was carried out in 1978, English learning has boomed again as a result of China’s modernization and internationalization (Ouyang and Hua 2017). There has been growing “communicative needs” for social and eco-nomic reasons. The traditional text-based GT method was challenged as not being able to satisfy the growing tendency of learners in China. They viewed English as their own language rather than “as a foreign language controlled by the “other” (Zhu 2003),” which generated needs for ELT in China to go beyond lexical and gram-matical limitations and focus on improving communicative ability. The College English Syllabus published in 1985 adjusted the objectives of language teaching by emphasizing students’ communicative skills. According to this syllabus, apart from proficiency in reading, listening, and translation ability were required, writing and speaking ability were encouraged. English was supposed to be regarded as a tool to communicate and acquire knowledge (College English Syllabus 1985). The stress of listening and speaking skills suggested that students’ language performance be encouraged. In accordance with these teaching objectives, the communicative-based approaches, with a focus on meaning instead of form, have come to challenge GT by considering English as a tool for communication. These approaches add oral and lis-tening practices into classroom activities, in which fluency and acceptable language output is the primary goal of learning (Yang 2000).

However, the real practice in English class fell short to improve students’ com-municative competence as (i) intensive reading remained a core course in most col-leges (Yang 2000), (ii) interaction in class was not communicative activities but practice of pattern drills (Dzau 1990), (iii) the vocabulary requirement for college graduates in the College English Syllabus of 1994 was 4000 words, as remained the same in the College English Syllabus of 1985. Except for the situations in college English teaching for non-English majors, the national curriculum for English majors that has been revised to be based on the CLT (Communicative Language Teach-ing) method, as Chang (2004) describes, also failed to improve students’ cognitive competence. Less attention has been paid to broaden students’ social cultural world-views, whereas more has been paid to fixed expressions and concepts (Chang 2004).

Not knowing much about the target culture, students taught by teachers who did not have much of the experience themselves could not be responsive to expressions that were not in their textbooks. Since textbooks with greetings as the starting les-son usually begin with “how are you,” nearly all Chinese learners of English would come up with a spontaneous and only answer as “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” This kind of mechanical copy of textbook English indicates that students are not able to creatively use English for the lack of exposure to the real-life communica-tive situations. In light of this, it can be inferred that roughly in the first decade of the employment of the CLT, Chinglish was produced more than it was the GT time, which can be ascribed to students” being encouraged to communicate on the one hand, and the insufficient input of English language and culture on the other. How-ever, thanks to the Open and Reform Policy, foreign journals and newspapers came into university libraries. American and British movies, documentaries, and videos were no longer forbidden. This rendered good sources for students to develop their

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English competence and resulted in Chinese English which is “grammatically more advanced” and “contextually more appropriate” than Chinglish.

As China was approaching the millennium, students’ communicative compe-tence received continuous emphasis as reflected in the College English Syllabus of 1999, in which the five skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing, translation) were required to help students communicate with English. In order to achieve this goal, universities adopted different methods such as TBLT (task-based language teach-ing), and CBLT (content-based language teaching), and some “eclectic” methods. Being not just one of many important school subjects, English was also viewed as an effective instrument, aiding international competitiveness and personal advance-ment. Oral and listening practices were observed to take up more time in and out of class, which were more meaning-based than structure-based. Nevertheless, the native-speaker norm was still put in an important position as English teaching remained test-oriented, which reflected a low tolerance of errors. In a survey about error correction in 1990s, it was revealed that most of the teachers paid much atten-tion to the linguistic form of errors while neglecting the purpose of communication which emphasized the fluency of speaking, and they tended to correct those errors immediately, reflecting low tolerance on errors (Tao 1998).

In sum, although the communicative-based approaches were regarded as an effec-tive means to improve students’ language competence by offering more chances for them to produce English, the emphasis on grammatical and lexical accuracy remained in the test-oriented teaching. An inconsistency arises in the expectations between fluency in English communication and accuracy in grammar in written tests, owing to the imbalance of economy and educational resources in such a devel-oping country as China. Therefore, around the end of the 20th century, the improve-ment of learners’ English competence teemed with both Chinglish and Chinese English.

From 2000 to 2020 (the internet‑based approaches time)

With China’s entry into WTO in 2001, the roles of English have extended to all ends of the Chinese social spectrum, especially to sports and government for the prepara-tion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. There was a growing need for spreading Chi-nese culture in English because English was viewed as both a way to express oneself and one for others to learn more about Chinese culture. It is therefore a medium for social practice. Many ESL teachers came to China on annual contracts teaching at all levels, from primary upwards, bringing Chinese learners of English more and better exposure to real and “standard” English (Eaves 2011). Practitioners in educa-tion welcomed the supreme status of English and acknowledged their preference for American English (Ouyang and Hua 2017).

During the past two decades, massive reforms have been undertaken, during which China has been experiencing rapid economic growth and social transforma-tion (Education in China 2016). In the College English Curriculum Requirements (2004, pp. 21–25), a computer- and classroom-based multimedia college English teaching model was suggested to be implemented in English classrooms. Among the internet-based approaches, the rise of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) has

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pushed forward experiments of flipped classrooms as various systematic self-made online courses are shared on the internet. The flipped classrooms have changed the traditional leading role of teacher into a facilitator, in which passive students-centeredness has become more impassive. Based on online-learning before class, students can turn impassive listening to the teacher into active question raising and group discussion during class time, looking for answers through peer collaboration under the teacher’s guidance. Facilitated by the internet, class activities have been enriched; repetitious drills and imitation have been replaced by more interesting in-class performances such as role play, drama, dubbing English movies, debating, etc. The internet-based approaches have paved the way for students in broadening their horizons of English language and culture as well as different varieties of English.

In the recent two decades, English has been politically ideologized and selec-tively appropriated as a tool to serve China’s needs on the world stage (Ouyang and Hua 2017). Underlining the need for a change in ELT practices, Erling (2005) sug-gests that ELT professionals around the world should move their focus away from inner circle varieties and approach English as a means of intercultural communica-tion involving speakers from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. With more emphasis on communicative competence in College English Curriculum Require-ments (2004), students were offered more chances to be exposed to various lan-guage backgrounds and cultures, not just the native speakers of English. CE, in this context, began to unroll in confident swathes under Chinese perceptions of growing power and national pride as Chinese learners of English began to realize that differ-ence can be respected.

Attitude of teachers and students

Being a country heavily influenced by Confucius philosophy, China has long endured the idea that the duty of teacher is to pass on knowledge. Before the Open and Reform Policy was carried out, Chinese teachers of English, with a lack of Eng-lish proficiency themselves, thought that, as teachers, they should have near-native pronunciation and always follow the native-way of using English. This, they imag-ined, would qualify them to pass on their knowledge, which was not surprising since these teachers experienced education under the native-speaker model during their schooldays. Therefore, they would regard translation as a reliable way of testing and measuring students’ mastery of English language (Rao 1996). However, some teach-ers were concerned about not being able to answer spontaneous questions about the target language or culture arising from interactions in the classroom. They tended to strictly follow the teaching objectives and syllabus, and perceived that any Eng-lish used by students should be based on the textbook by conforming to the native-speaker norm.

After the Open and Reform Policy was carried out, the native-speaker norm was still strictly followed, with teachers playing a dominant role as a ruler and students as obedient listeners. According to a survey about students’ attitude toward error correction made in the late 1990s (Qiu 1997), 77.6% college students thought that errors should be corrected immediately, and 61.2% of them thought that teachers

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should not overlook grammatical errors. Besides, errors on pronunciation, vocabu-lary, and sentence structure ranked the highest among all types of errors investi-gated. In addition, most of the students thought that, upon pointing out the errors they made, correct answers should be given in the meantime. The results of the sur-vey showed a low tolerance on errors and expressions that were not “native-like,” and reflected the dominant role of the native-speaker norm. This sought to claim that expressions that do not conform to “standard” English are not favored. During this period, while Chinglish and Chinese English were unavoidable among Chinese learners of English under different stages of acquisition, CE with characters of Chi-nese culture and society was not recognized or was to be avoided.

With the Beijing Olympics on the horizon, the Chinese government began to rein-vent its public image and address the issue of adjusting translation errors especially public signs. This became an incentive for people to change their attitude toward the use of English in China. In a survey made just before the Olympics (Wei et al. 2010), although university students still tried to follow the native models, they were shown to be aware of other varieties of English at the same time. In another survey (He and Li 2009), although students were shown to prefer the “standard” variety of English as the teaching model, they could accept “salient, well-codified, and prop-erly implemented features of China English.”

As a result of the economic development, internet technology has enabled people around the world to know each other and offered almost everyone a chance to real-ize that there exist different varieties of English outside of the “inner circle.” The existence of Singapore English and emergence of Hong Kong English have come to be realized by people as developing varieties in Kachru’s (1985) Expanding Circle, in which China is included. With more access to the internet, university students found themselves in situations where the ability to encounter difference, diversity, and ambiguity is of great advantage, both for personal and economic reasons, and, ultimately, for peaceful co-existence. In a survey made after the Beijing Olympics (Chew 2013), Chinese university students were shown to hold a positive attitude towards learning English. They were not worried that they would be like westerners while enjoying learning the English language because they considered Chinese supe-rior to English. Another survey (Wang 2015) revealed a diverse attitude of teachers and students toward specific features of CE being included in the teaching model, despite that they were reluctant to accept CE as a pedagogical model due to the native-speaker norm and Chinglish stigma. These survey results show that, although the native-speaker norm still receives much attention, it is being downplayed.

Teaching materials

Before the 1980s, English textbooks were much about politics, with an aim to promote national identity (Yang 2000). Teachers were expected to teach accord-ing to the requirements of the curriculum developed by the government. Based on this centralized curriculum, almost all English textbooks were designed to teach grammar, reading, and writing, with little emphasis on listening and speaking, let alone activities such as games or role playing (Rao 1996). There were rare

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opportunities for students to engage in real-life communication (Cowan et  al. 1979). Besides, grammatical points in the textbooks were explained mostly in Chinese (Dzau 1990). Under these circumstances, students could produce little English for a lack of exposure to the target language and culture, and their Eng-lish coming out of the textbooks could hardly be adapted to the Chinese context, resulting in much Chinglish which tries to conform to the native-speaker norm on the one hand, and which could not denote meaning in Chinese-specific context on the other hand.

After the implementation of the Open and Reform policy, a series of text-books were compiled in an attempt to adapt to the communicative-based teach-ing approaches, such as Communicative English for Chinese Learners published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in Beijing, and A New Eng-lish Course published by Foreign Language Education Press in Shanghai. With a focus on dialog, sentence patterns, language structures, pair drills, and group discussions, these textbooks aim at providing EFL students with opportunities to interact with their peers and teacher so as to develop their English communicative competence.

In terms of the content of the textbooks, cultural themes and scientific themes were included in some passages. However, in the requirements of college English syllabus of the 1980s and 1990s, the aim of improving communicative competence was to understand the culture of the “inner circle.” Cultural information in the text-books were mostly about English-speaking countries (Yang 2000). It can be inferred that when students were encouraged to talk about culture, especially Chinese cul-ture, they could only express them in a Chinese way, resulting in much Chinese English. With China coming to the new millennium, more authentic materials (such as signs, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, or graphics) were employed and adapted to classroom activities. However, the cultural themes in English textbooks and materials were usually related to the visible aspect of a target culture which are referred to as big “C”s rather than small “c”s by Lee (2008, 2012), such as actors in Hollywood, McDonald’s, Times Square, Big Ben, the history of Coca-Cola, pump-kins at Halloween, etc. This was not helpful in cultivating students’ cultural aware-ness and cultural confidence (the small “c”s), resulting in an attitude of favoring the native varieties of English over the non-native varieties, as revealed in the survey made before the Beijing Olympics (Wei et al. 2010).

In preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, along with the Chinese government’s involving the issue of replacing the translations of public signs with appropriate expressions, there was a growing need of spreading Chinese culture in English. However, the lack of cultural information in course materials has aroused teachers’ attention, and there have been appeals for involving more topics of Chinese culture in course materials in order to serve for the campaign of “Chinese culture going global” (Wei 2009; Zhang 2012). Around the recent decade, varieties of textbooks have been compiled with more elements of Chinese culture included. Apart from that, the internet-based teaching approaches have enlarged the diversity of learn-ing materials by breaking the limitation of textbooks or other resource constraints, enabling students to add exposure to different varieties of English. This has offered excellent opportunities for CE to develop.

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Tests and evaluations

Examinations, in Chinese history, have long been put in high status as to judge learners’ performance (Pan 2015, p. 112). During the GT time, as aforementioned, the purpose of teaching was less of communicating but more of understanding and appreciating the written works in English, so were the purposes of tests and evalu-ations. Grammar was valued more than content and structure in the assessment of writing. Skills such as listening and speaking were, thus, largely ignored. Since the textbooks were required to be strictly followed in teaching, the assessment was gen-erally summative. Under this standard of judgment, there were only right or wrong answers, which renders only summative evaluation at the end of each semester.

After the Open and Reform Policy was initiated, communicative-based approaches were gradually added into the picture. However, there was observed to be a mismatch between CLT approach (which values listening and speaking abili-ties in real-life communication) and the examination (which emphasizes accuracy in language form) (Zhu 2003). In the late 1980s, College English Test Band 4 and Band 6 (CET4 and CET 6) were implemented, which has been a requirement for achieving the bachelor’s degree in many universities in China until now.6 With the booming economy and technology, English proficiency was assessed by these tests, which was regarded as a guarantee for a promising job for university graduates. The top priorities given to these tests, which comprised much of the class content, led to students’ failure of effectively applying English to real-world communication. The defect was indicated by such ironic remark as “high score, low ability.”

Along with the initiation of the college English curriculum requirements at the turn of the new century, (College English Teaching syllabus 1999), changes and adjustments had been made in terms of the content of these tests. For instance, with more emphasis on speaking and listening abilities, the spoken test of CET was intro-duced in 1999; the listening part now takes up 35% instead of 15% as in previous times. The voice, in listening sections in CET, was recorded by people with dif-ferent accents like Australian, Turkish, Indian, etc. Besides, Chinese context was added into the scene in listening and speaking tests. Besides that, the multiple-choice section, which requires exact answers by conforming to the native-speaker norm, was abandoned. As for the writing section, students were asked, for example in one CET4 test, to write a letter about a three-day trip to a foreign friend who was going to visit China, and to introduce places to visit and customs that he or she might encounter. In addition, the content of the translation part has also undergone a change since 2013. Now it includes Chinese to English translations, which might cover different topics such as Chinese culture, economy, customs, etc. In the Chi-nese to English translation test in one CET4 of 2019, some expressions are very much culturally loaded, such as jianzhi “paper cutting,” hongdenglong “red lantern,” and wushi “lion dancing,” etc.

6 College English Test, usually includes Band 4 (lower level) and Band 6 (higher level), is held only twice a year nationwide facing all university students in China. Most universities regard it as a standard to assess the qualification of students’ graduation.

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Test-oriented English education is changing in terms of assessment and evalua-tion, as has been reflected in college English curriculum requirements in different periods. In the College English Syllabus of 1985 and 1999, the evaluation for stu-dents’ performance was basically summative. It was not until 2007 when the forma-tive assessment was added into the picture in the new syllabus College English Cur-riculum Requirements (2007). Formative assessment undergoing reforms in recent years combines students’ self-assessment, peer assessment, with teacher assess-ment in forms of record of students’ performance in and outside classroom activi-ties, online self-learning, portfolios of learning records, and conducting interviews (Han and Yin 2016). With the employment of this all-round evaluation standard, the native-speaker norm is downplayed, since students’ language proficiency is not the only aspect to be evaluated.

Conclusion

This paper shows how CE has been incubated in the context of the Chinese univer-sity English classrooms through descriptions of its role changing from the aspects of teaching pedagogy, the attitudes of teachers and students, the instructional materi-als, as well as tests and evaluations. The pedagogical approaches such as GT, CLT, TBLT, CBLT, and some eclectic ones, have affected the development of CE, with the change in the employment of teaching models from focusing more on linguis-tic competence to more on communicative competence, and with the hegemony of native-speaker model being downplayed gradually. The text-based GT classrooms restrained students from producing English that did not appear in their textbooks whereas the communicative-based approaches encouraged students to produce English, emphasizing more on fluency rather than accuracy, resulting in much Chinglish (owing to the study in the GT classroom during their middle school) and Chinese English (due to the progress they make under a more favorable learning environment). After that, language policy in the new century and the internet-based approaches have facilitated English teaching and learning, which incentivized the development of CE.

Being promoted as one of the developing English varieties in the context of the “expanding circle,” CE is observed to challenge the dominance of native-speaker model in China (Gao et  al. 2014; Xu 2010). Teachers and students gradually rec-ognized and realized the emergence of CE and began to accept it. Encouraged by the emergence and flourish of different varieties of English through various learning materials and online sources, Chinese learners of English are eager to use English of their own, to introduce Chinese culture and society to people in the world village. In the coming decade, CE will not only be further accepted by teachers and students but also be encouraged to be used, stepping up its way to be fully accepted in the future as one of the varieties of World Englishes.

In addition to attitudes of teachers and students, instructional materials have also changed to afford the development of CE. These materials are increasing in type and quantity, serving for the change of the goal from understanding English to appreciat-ing English. Being equipped with the materials from the single source of textbooks

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to multiple sources, Chinese learners of English produce less Chinglish and are making more progress in producing Chinese English, stepping up their way to CE as a more accepted variety of English. The standard of tests and learning evaluation in university English classrooms have been changing too, with frequent error correc-tion gradually replaced by encouraging students to express themselves with less care about the grammatical errors and “non-standard” pronunciation.

Chinese learners of English are becoming intercultural speakers with no need to strive for “standard” pronunciation and to follow the native-speaker norm of Eng-lish. As students enjoy more easiness to express themselves, CE would inevitably come up to introduce China to the world. CE in the future will be used not only by Chinese people, but also by people outside of the “expanding circle” who cannot avoid talking and are willing to talk about China, an international rising power.

Funding Not applicable.

Declarations

Conflict of interest The authors declare there is no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Code availability Not applicable.

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