Name: Wang Xianzhi Student ID：b07152
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Seku Conde
Minzu University of China
2007-2008 Academic Year

Abstract:This article introduces a rapidly expanding fashion in China that is covertly supported by the government to embrace English-medium instruction (known locally as “bilingual education”). The inseparable relationship between language and culture has come to a general consensus. As the embodiment and symbol for cultural reality, language is so closely connected with society that, bilingual education with English at an early age for Chinese children will lay too much emphasis on both English language and culture. This imbalanced situation would result in a pragmatic problem, Chinese Culture Aphasia.
Key words: EFL teaching, Chinese Culture Aphasia, Bilingual education
1. Introduction
English as a Foreign Language (abbreviated as EFL) teaching in China has been drawing attention from various strata of Chinese society in recent years. In 1983, when China just began its open-door reforms, Deng Xiaoping set out his educational blueprint for the new era: “Education should be modernization-oriented, globalization-oriented, and future-oriented”. Twenty five years later, the demand becomes real. China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Beijing will be hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. China suddenly found itself in dire need of foreign language talents in order to face globalization.
In order to enhance EFL teaching, Ministry of Education has called for all-round reforms and issued some official documents, three of which are “High School English Curriculum Standards (2003)”, “College English Curriculum Objectives (2007)” and “Directives for starting English language teaching in primary schools (2001)”. The first two have been recently ratified by authorities for trial implementation. “These documents will steer the teaching of English in high schools and universities in the years ahead (Yang, 2004)”. The third one, which was issued on 18 January 2001 has the most profound influence on EFL teaching in China, since it lowered the starting age for compulsory English from 11 (junior middle school 1) to 9 (primary 3). According to “Directives on strengthening undergraduate education and promoting teaching (2001)”, “basic courses and specialty courses in undergraduate education should be conducted in English and in three years’ time the courses conducted in English should account for five to ten percent of the whole curricula”.
Spurred by the government’s emphasis on English, a “bilingual education” model that Shanghai started to explore in 2000, which was largely characterized as content-based teaching using English as the medium of instruction (MOI), quickly spread to the whole country. Suddenly, many kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary institutions started to claim to be on the cutting edge of “bilingual education”. A few local governments such as Liaoning Province explicitly directed hundreds of schools to explore the “bilingual education” approach. In Shanghai alone, 45,000 pupils in 260 schools had been involved in the English-medium instruction (EMI) experiment by 2003. The figure is to double by 2006. The Shanghai education authorities foresee half a million pupils “benefiting” from the experiment by 2010 (Guo & Kong, 2003). The enthusiasm has not just been confined to cities alone, the following scene describes what happened at a county level school in Guangdong Province:
More than 1000 people stood in a queue under the blazing sun along a street in Boluo County, Huizhou District, Guangdong Province. Police had to be brought in to keep order. This scene happened in the summer of 2003 when the county level Boluo Experimental School started to recruit students for its “Bilingual Education Experimental Class”. “Many parents had come from as far as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan one day before the admission procedures started. Some even paid people to line up for them throughout the night”, said the Principal, Mr. Zeng Qiao (J. Lin, 2003).
In implementing the MOE requirements, both the local governments and the tertiary institutions have attempted to initiate bilingual education as a policy. Shanghai Education Commission Working Plan for 2004 aims to establish bilingual education research center, bilingual education teachers training center and bilingual education teaching materials research and development center. “Bilingual education should be fully developed in Shanghai”. For a dramatic change in such a high-stakes area, debates began right from the beginning. Is it reasonable to implement bilingual education throughout the whole country at all levels? Is it beneficial or costly?
 
2. Problem identification
2.1 Bilingual education
In foreign countries, “bilingual education” is often regarded as “bilingual teaching”. As for bilingual teaching, there are many definitions. In the following, some authoritative ones are given.
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (2002), bilingual education refers to “the use of a second or foreign language in school for the teaching of content subjects”. It falls into three different types and include
a) The use of a single school language which is not the child’s home language. This is sometimes called an immersion programme.
b) The use of the child’s home language when the child enters school but later a gradual change to the use of the school language for teaching some subjects and the home language for teaching others. This is sometimes called maintenance bilingual education.
c) The partial or total use of the child’s home language when the child enters school and a later change to the use of the school language only. This is sometimes called transitional bilingual education or early exit bilingual education. 
(Richards & Schmidt, 2002: 52)
A Dictionary of Education compiled by Gu Mingyuan (1996) defines “bilingual teaching” as “the teaching that can cultivate students’ ability to use two languages proficiently”.
Cummins (1997) claimed that “bilingual teaching” is the teaching that designed with the aim to enhance students’ language proficiency. In such kind of teaching, two languages are used to teach students specific knowledge. One of the two languages is usually a foreign language.
According to Tang Caiping (2008), bilingual teaching in some countries, especially the U.S.A. and Canada, has special historical background. As we know, both the U.S.A. and Canada are immigrant countries, where the bilingual courses are usually designed for immigrants from other non-English speaking countries with the purpose of culture assimilation. The above definitions describe more or less the situations in foreign countries. As for China, bilingual teaching bears its own characteristics.
Zhang Pei (2002) explained “bilingual teachings” as “in bilingual teaching, two languages (the mother tongue and a foreign language) are used in class instruction to teach non-linguistic subjects. The foreign language is not only the learning goal, but also is the instruction medium.”
Wang Binhua (2003) defined “bilingual teaching” as “teaching non-linguistic subjects like mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, geography, etc. with English”.
Hu Zhuanglin (2004) pointed out that “bilingual teaching” is “teaching some subjects with English in schools to enable students to master specific knowledge and enhance students’ English level”. 
  Up to now, there hasn’t been a fixed definition for bilingual teaching in China. Combining the above concerns and viewpoints, the author would like to consider the present bilingual teaching in China as a kind of content-based teaching. In this teaching mode, a foreign language, especially English, is used as the teaching medium in the class to teach non-linguistic subjects. It makes students learn subject knowledge on the one hand and improve their English proficiency on the other hand.
2.2 Chinese culture aphasia
According to New Encyclopedia Britannica (the 15th edition), the term “aphasia”, (also called dysphasia in Britain), refers to a brain-generated defect in sounding words. Symptoms are associated with the location and extent of the brain tissues involved. Aphasia is of importance to neurolinguists and pathologists because it shows the relationship between language and brain.
Cao Shunqing (1996) introduces the term of “aphasia” into the field of Chinese literature. He argues that aphasia also exists in Chinese literary critics, and the loss of Chinese ancient culture and the loss of Chinese literary critics discourse should be responsible for the literary aphasia. Cao also puts forward some possible solutions for this phenomenon, such as to rebuild the Chinese literary theory and to localize the western literary critics in China. And the next 10 years has witnessed Chinese scholars concentrating on this aphasic issue (Cao Shunqing 2006).
In the year of 2000, Cong Cong published an article on Chinese Culture Aphasia in Guangming Daily. As an English teacher in Nanjing University for non-English majors of Ph.D. programs, Cong Cong observes the phenomenon existing in this academic community that a lot of students have found great difficulties in expressing themselves in English, especially when they are asked to say something about Chinese culture in the process of cross-cultural communication, despite they are fluent English speakers and have a good command of Chinese culture, some just do not know who the English name “Confucius” refers to, even misunderstand the great Chinese scholar Mencius as menxiusi (门修斯). Cong Cong considers a neglect of Chinese culture in ELT as the cause of Chinese Culture Aphasia. Since the advent of Cong’s article, many scholars and teachers have paid much attention to Chinese Culture Aphasia, and they also argue that this phenomenon not only exists among the post-graduate students, but also prevails among the undergraduate students and other academic communities, including the teaching faculty (Zhang Weimin 2002; Liu Shiwen 2003; Ji Jingtong 2005; Deng Wenying 2005).
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