On Macro-Planning for China s English Education from Elementary to Tertiary Levels in the Era of Globalization MEI Deming ZHAO Meijuan Abstract This paper explores the mechanism of macro-planning for China s English education from elementary to tertiary Levels in the backdrop of the accelerating trend of globalization. China s formal English education begins with the school age, even as early as the onset of kindergarten education in some areas, develops full fledge with the secondary school education, and keeps up at the college level, branching out into English for Non-English-Majors and English for English Majors. This long march English education program consumes more or less 18 years of an individual s most robust life, contributing to less than desirable English language proficiency for communicative purposes. Worse still, this long march, more often than not, turns out to be a journey that repeats itself at various levels of formal schooling. To remedy the 1
inefficient syllabi of English education in China, we propose a three-stage overall plan for formal English education in China, namely, Happy English for the elementary school level, General English for the secondary school level, and Professional English for the tertiary level, each with a clearly-defined focus, but consistently centering on the development of the student s communicative competence grounded on the appropriate linguistic competence and substantiated by sufficient cultural knowledge. In particular, the Happy English education provides an interesting, daily-life syllabus for young learners; the General English education offers well-structured courses with general knowledge-based contents and stresses the mastery of the grammatically accurate system of the English language appropriate real life communication. The Professional English education requires college students to further their English development in specialized areas of the students concurrent academic majors or in areas of their strong personal interest, and encourage students to use English for acquiring updated knowledge and learn about the advances in fields of their studies and research. Key words: macro-planning English education three stages 2
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