A Study of English as a Lingua Franca in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages

By Danping Wang.

Published by The Learning Collection

Format	Price
Article: Print	$US10.00
Article: Electronic	$US5.00

“Chinese-only” indicates an exclusive use of Chinese when teaching or learning it as a target language. As an overriding principle, Chinese-only has dominated the field of teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages (TCSOL) for many decades. However, English as a lingua franca (ELF) is applied implicitly and covertly as the dynamic medium of instruction (MoI) in TCSOL. In order to investigate the attitudes of students and beliefs of teachers towards the Chinese-only principle and ELF pedagogy, this study surveyed 115 students by questionnaires and invited eight teachers to participate in one-to-one in-depth interviews in two universities in Beijing. Findings from questionnaires and interviews indicated discrepancies between theory and practice of pedagogies. In fact, students and teachers generally switched codes between Chinese and English for pedagogical and communicative purpose in learning and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. This study will conclude by suggesting teachers to establish a multilingual pedagogy in their classes by adopting the ELF pedagogy as the first step.

Keywords:	Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (TCSOL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Medium of Instruction (MoI), Codeswitching, Multilingual Pedagogy

The International Journal of Learning, Volume 17, Issue 6, pp.257-272. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 724.758KB).

Danping Wang

Senior Research Assistant, English Department, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong

Dani Wang is currently doing her doctoral study in the Hong Kong Institute of Education and working as a senior research assistant in the English Department. She graduated from the Renmin University of China in Beijing with a Master degree in Chinese Linguistics and a Bachelor degree in English Linguistics. She taught Chinese as a second language in the Beijing Foreign Studies University and worked as a marketing assistant in the Higher Education Press in Beijing before she came to Hong Kong. Her research interest is multilingual education, Chinese teaching and learning, English as a lingual franca, multiliteracy and language identity.

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