Based on ethnographic and policy data collected over a ten-year span at a university in the Peoples Republic of China, this book analyses the history of English Language Teaching (ELT) polices in Chinese higher education. The book uses the university as a lens in which to investigate the creative imaginations and divergent (re)appropriations of teaching methods, learning materials, and language use in the Chinese ELT context. Book chapters move beyond mere descriptions of tensions and point to the local understandings and practices of English teachers (both local and foreign) and students. Working together, these teachers and students are constantly articulating new social and political conditions and meanings outside and inside given discourses and traditions of ELT. The books main argument is that these multiple stakeholders must be given a more prominent role in shaping policy and curriculum at universities and other English language contexts around the world.
Chapter 1: Introductions: Why study globalization and culture through English language learning and teaching in China?.- Chapter 2: Global and local citizens and the creation of a teaching community at CSU.- Chapter 3: Change, tradition, and moral education in CSU teacher roles.- Chapter 4: My name is Money: English names and creative play inside and outside the classroom.- Chapter 5: Individualism, voice, and self-assessment in the advanced academic writing course.- Chapter 6: Its like some kinds of skills like swim[ing]. You know it but you dont use it: (Dis)connections between university teaching reforms and the lives of recent graduates.- Chapter 7: Conclusions: Moving beyond the enduring dichotomies in ELT.
Paul McPherron is Associate Professor of English at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY), USA where he also coordinates the ESL program. He is a socio/applied linguist whose research interests involve questions about English language learning and teacló(