Removing English from Gaokao shows cultural confidence

According to The Beijing News, the Ministry of Education said on its official website that parts of the reform and enrollment plan for gaokao, the national college entrance examination, have been made. The overall plan and the reform plan for gaokao will be introduced in the first half of next year.

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Most interestingly, English will not be a gaokao subject in the future. Instead, students can take English tests more than once each year. "Whether considering the world trend or personal development, the situation that foreign language is just as important as Chinese and math needs to be changed."

In the reform of examination and enrollment, most people will focus on removing foreign language courses from gaokao. Chinese, Mathematics, English are always the most important three courses for secondary education. While whether a foreign language should be given the same position as Chinese is becoming a controversial topic in recent years.

Especially after the annual sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), held in Beijing, Chinese language crisis started to be discussed and a consensus has been reached: it's 2013 now, if we still put a foreign language in an equally important position with Chinese language for the basic education of a Chinese child, it is hard to say it's right.

First of all, studying English is the way to make more communication with the West and learn more advanced concepts from developed countries. However, overemphasizing the role of English studying will mislead children and make them xenocentric.

Against the above background, after they graduated, people would like to go abroad or immigrate. The result is people will question whether it's worthwhile to invest so heavily in foreign-language teaching.

Secondly, as a language, English is just a way for communication. However, gaokao makes it a required course to realize the dream of going to a better college. Parents who want kids to have a better future will take their children as young as five to learn English. Although children have good ability of learning new things, it would confuse kids when they study Chinese and English at the same time.

Besides, even after years of efforts by teachers, parents and students, the result is students could master both languages, education is aimed at meeting practical needs. In China, how many industries or jobs need English? People sacrifice a lot of time to study English and get a better score in gaokao. After graduating from colleges, English is useless in their jobs.

Some people think China's foreign exchange could face trouble for lack of foreign language education. Market could make the decision. The CET and foreign-trade-related jobs still exist. Foreign language will not disappear after it is moved from gaokao. In some sense, who can say it is not a sign of cultural self-confidence of China?