Learning English is not a betrayal of Chinese culture

Editor's note: In a post on his micro blog, Hua Qianfang, a writer and vice-chairman of the writers' association of Fushun, a city in Liaoning province, lamented the huge amounts of time and money Chinese people have "wasted" on learning English, saying that, for most children, who will unlikely use the language in their future life and work, it is more rational to rely on professional translators or translation software, if needed, than spending years studying a language they will seldom or never use. The argument has stirred a heated discussion online. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:

The writer's concerns sound reasonable to some extent. But his views are based on two tenuous assumptions: that the children will not use English very much in the future, and they will not be able to master the language even after studying it for years.

Chinese tourists make more than 100 million trips abroad each year now, something that was unimaginable just a few years ago, let alone the millions of foreign trips made by students, workers and businesspeople every year.

Thus, it is obviously a reckless proposal to stop teaching English in schools, which is now part of China's compulsory education. It will deprive the children of the opportunity of learning the most widely used language at a golden period for language learning in their lifetime, just because of a live-in-the-past assumption that they will seldom have many opportunities to use the language in their future life.

The writer has remained tacit over the fact that mastering a different language can broaden people's access to information, promote the development of their intelligence, and put more job opportunities within their reach.

That many Chinese students still cannot communicate in English fluently after learning it for nearly 10 years from primary school to college should be attributed to the rigid exam-oriented language teaching methods, not the difficulty of the language itself.

What's truly worrying is that the writer added that most trumpeters of English in China are culturally self-degrading, if not xenocentric, which has obtained large numbers of thumbs-up in social media. These people go too far in equating learning a foreign language with surrendering to a foreign culture, which lays bare not only their lack of understanding of the English language but also their lack of confidence in Chinese culture. Almost all time-honored major cultures are inclusive. Chinese culture is also a melting pot of different cultures that have been absorbed over thousands of years

Also, the best thinkers and scholars of Chinese culture are mostly multilingual talents. And some first-class writers in Chinese language are also multilingual.

Hua's concerns have no basis in facts.