Because of the factors of globalization and immigration, the language teaching environment becomes diversification. As the expansion of a language spreading range and the increasing number of learners, language teaching environment will be more diversified. English is the lingua franca in the whole world. In China, all kinds of English teaching and tests are one example of the diversification of teaching environment.
The diversification of language teaching is a natural result for the diversification of learners and learner’s requirement. Recent years, as the continuous development of Chinese economy and the quick increase of comprehensive national power, there are more and more people choosing to learn Chinese language or even learn Mandarin in China.
To take the UK an example, the diversification of Chinese teaching has had effect on learning Chinese language.
The UK has started Chinese teaching since 1820s. But in a quite long period, learning Chinese language was not classified into the mainstream language leaning system. Until the 21st century, especially since 2005, the scale of learning Chinese language has been broadened. Being classified into the mainstream language learning system is the main symbol of the development. In addition to this, the increasing number of people who choose to learn Mandarin in China also shows the popularity of Chinese in the UK.
In the UK, 5 years’ old children should have elementary education. After 12 years’ compulsory education, parts of people will choose to have further education. Their foreign language education starts from the elementary school. In 2007, the UK government suggests to making modern foreign language as compulsory course of students in Grade 3-Grade 6 and all of the middle schools have foreign language courses for students. Before this, modern foreign language is one of the four compulsory courses. Since 2004, it lost its position of core course, which influences the foreign language teaching, especially the learning Chinese language programs.
While in recent years, the UK government has had some survey on foreign language teaching tendency. These survey reports indicate that the Chinese teaching has the tendency of diversified development, and so do the learning Chinese language programs.
In 2006, among elementary schools which have foreign language courses, most of them set French course and there are only 3% of them set Chinese and other minor languages. Things have changed since 2007, about 39% schools have started Chinese course, among which 50% of students learn Chinese language through regular classroom teaching.
The main body of learning Chinese language is middle school students. The number of middle schools which set Chinese course ranks No. 5 among the ones which have other foreign language courses. In 2007, according to the statistics, most students who were learning Chinese language are non-native Chinese speakers, not Chinese immigrants or Chinese offspring. 31% schools have Chinese teachers with Qualified Teacher Status, while 46% schools have Chinese teachers who haven’t got QTS. Among those schools, most of them take Chinese course as a part of curriculum for students to select. As for Chinese tests, although there have been many students taking Chinese tests, the available patterns of Chinese tests are not diversified. Some schools hope that Business Chinese Test can be extra set to provide more choices for both schools and students.
Nearly 80% teachers think that the population of students who choose Chinese will be bigger and bigger, for there are more and more reports and introductions about China. Students are quite interested in learning Chinese language and cultures. In this situation, many UK universities have set Chinese bachelor’s degree and Chinese graduate degree and universities students choose Chinese as their first degree or subsidiary degree. More and more UK institutions like schools of continuing education, adult education or language training centers set Chinese training courses and more than 2000 people in Scotland District have taken part in the Chinese courses.
One authoritative research indicates that the top three of the most demanding languages were French, Spanish and German, while the demand for German was decreasing. It can be imagined that the top three demanding languages in the future will be Spanish, French and Chinese. We believe that Chinese will be one of the most prospective languages in the following days and more and more people will choose to learn Chinese in China.