Cai Jigang (
China Youth Daily): The scale is divided into nine levels. What does the highest level mean? According to the designers, Level 9 is equivalent to the language competency of a native English speaker.
Is it possible for China’s college students to reach Level 9? Theoretically it is, as long as teachers have appropriate teaching methodologies and the students are hard-working. However, if you calculate the time and effort students will have to put in to reach Level 9, it begins to look unrealistic.
The scale is established not just for English majors, but also targets undergraduates and postgraduates not majoring in English. It takes more than 10 years for a non-English major to learn English from elementary school to the second year of college, with most students narrowly passing the CET-4. Now they may be under pressure to pass Level 8 and Level 9. The only option is to reduce study time for their professional courses.
According to a survey conducted several years ago, 46 percent of respondents said that to pass the CET-4, they had to spend half of their study time after class studying English. Moreover, 21 percent said that time spent on English accounted for over half of their total study time in college, even though they were not English majors. English is stealing time from college students’ professional courses.
Not just one aspect of English ability is evaluated in the CET-4 and the new ninelevel system. A student may reach the minimum requirement in terms of reading, but he or she may still fail overall if they do badly in the listening and speaking parts. This exam system requires students to develop all of the skills associated with learning a language.
However, different people have different needs for listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Students of science and engineering learn English so that they can better search for and read research which presents cutting-edge developments in their respective fields. They may also need to learn to write academic reports in English. Therefore, reading and writing are the most important skills for them. If they are forced to practice listening and interpreting, it will do them little good and even impair their professional studies.
Time and resources are limited for everyone. If English is an inseparable part of one’s major and future career, they will voluntarily learn the language. If not, it is a waste of time.
Students should learn the required English skills based on the professional needs of their career. This is the law of foreign language teaching. Certain prominent Chinese scholars doing research into the English language, although relatively poor at speaking and listening, have still taken the lead in their own fields.
The scale for English proficiency is useful as a reference. However, we had better not use it to establish a new proficiency test, which will exacerbate the burden on students.