One‐Way Ticket: A Story of an Innovative Teacher in Mainland China

Abstract

This article is based on a true story about a Chinese teacher who applied an innovative pedagogy in her rural hometown in mainland China. It unfolds the highly complex and often dangerous remaking of ideologies and power relations inherent in pedagogical reform as a microcosm of other concomitant changes in the society at large. It also reflects the inadequacy of teacher education in preparing teachers to survive the micropolitics of the seemingly neutral or beneficial-to-all education reform.Anthropology & Education Quarterly 31(4)397-425.

The Effect of Output Task on EFL Writing: How Far Can It Go?

“…This is, at least partially attributed to the lack of teaching staff. The EFL classroom in China is so big (always more than 50 students) that only a teacher-centred approach is welcome and assumed to be effective and communicative language teaching methods are not as effective as expected, either due to the students' negative attitudes (e.g., Rao, 2002) or to the teacher's dilemma of teaching grammar (Ouyang, 2000;Zheng and Borg, 2014). To cater for the national examinations, many highly controlled exercises used in Chinese EFL teaching, the majority of which are in the form of multiple-choice comprehension questions.…”

A Novel Probe into College English Quality-oriented Transformation Based on the Impersonal Evaluation Criteria of College English Instruction

“…The current situation of CEI in most Chinese colleges and universities does have a lot to be desired, but most college students lack passion for English due to both teachers' and students' tunnel vision which hinders their vision (Ouyang, 2000;Shih, 1999). Accordingly, both teachers and students are dissatisfied with the other side and are at loggerheads over the other side's poor performance (Kang & Wang, 2003).…”

“…The universality of the global language is characterized with its wide linguistic application as regards rich computer-based wording, high-tech lexicons in addition to daily communicative expressions (Ministry of Education of China [MOE], 2005). It is no wonder that the English language works as an important international working language utilized so popularly around the world (Ouyang, 2000). The latest statistics show that around 93% of the academic papers and other publications are published in different journals or periodicals and read at various seminars or workshops in English, and furthermore, the Internet is mainly dominated as well by English environment (Zhou, 2013).…”

A Case Study on the Influence of Organizational Culture on Language Classroom

“…Furthermore, our trainees assume that it is necessary for them to do some translation work and to give some grammatical explanation in favor of the examination-oriented education, in which the National College Entrance Examination is the compasses in their voyage of English learning and teaching. The last but not the least, there is a general consensus among the trainees that the teacher is a knowledge giver, a what-he-says counts authority as well as a disciplinarian (Ouyang, 2000). Teacher-centered instruction is overwhelmingly an efficient and a successful way as it is, for the primary and secondary schools to face the challenge given by outnumbered students.…”

“…The specific objective of the program was "to introduce them [teacher trainees] to new ideas in the theory and practice of English language teaching, particularly to the communicative language approach and the learner-centered classroom" (Ward, 1995:14). A more general objective was to narrow the gap between the urban cities and rural regions in education (Ouyang, 2000). Now we're thinking whether it is effective or just a waste of human and material resource to take a top-down reform with little regard to regional differences, and whether teacher training programs that prepare teachers for such reform should be focused on methodological aspects or on the social contexts in China.…”