this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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A top university in northwest China has scrapped English tests as a prerequisite for graduation, rekindling a heated debate about the role of the world’s lingua franca in the country’s education system after years of rising nationalist sentiment under leader Xi Jinping.

In a notice Wednesday, the Xi’an Jiaotong University in the capital city of Shaanxi province said students will no longer need to pass a nationwide standardized English test – nor any other English exams – to be able to graduate with bachelor’s degrees.

The announcement caused a stir on social media, with many praising the decision and calling for more universities to do the same.

“Very good. I hope other universities will follow suit. It’s ridiculous that Chinese people’s academic degrees need to be validated by a foreign language (test),” said a comment with more than 24,000 likes on microblogging site Weibo, where a related hashtag attracted more than 350 million views Thursday.

Passing the College English Test, a national standardized exam first held in 1987, has been a graduation requirement at the majority of Chinese universities for decades – although the government has never made it an official policy.

The common practice underlined the importance Chinese universities placed on English – the world’s predominant academic and scientific language – especially when the once-insular and impoverished country was opening up and eager to catch up with the developed world after the turbulence of the Mao Zedong era.

But in recent years, some universities have downgraded the importance of English, either by replacing the national College English Test with their own exams or – as in the case of the Xi’an Jiaotong University – dropping English qualifications altogether as a graduation criteria.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I'm learning Mandarin at a later age now (40). The keyboard stuff is okay but it NEEDS to be a smart keyboard where you typically use pinyin and it's not that bad for what it is, but my typos are crazy now.

That being said, I'm ethnically Chinese and it's really difficult to pick up. I know a lot of foreign languages are but Chinese feels rougher. Also, other Chinese people can be bloody rude when I'm trying to speak Chinese. I'm tired of hearing "stop trying to speak Chinese" ... well fuck you too, your English isn't exactly music to my ears either, but I put up with it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I studied Mandarin in college and I feel this comment. Keep it up, Mandarin is definitely a difficult language, but it can be blast to learn. There are other keyboards options on smartphone that may be better suited to learning Chinese. Feel free to dm me if u got any questions.

As for the assholes, yeah ignore them. Every language/country has assholes so the best you can do is just not give them attention. Unfortunately China is growing more nationalist and xenophobic, but there are still plenty of people that are ecstatic to speak with newbies like us in their native tongue. Don't let the worst get you down :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I learned Zhuyin (注音) in Taiwan when I was younger, but then stopped using it when I immigrated to the US. At some point, I wanted to type Chinese on smartphones, so I started to learn Pinyin and used Pinyin for a while to type Chinese. The issue with Pinyin is that it uses the alphabets and that collides with English too much, I think as a English speaker, you naturally would try to use English's way of pronunciation to try to sound out words in Chinese, and that creates problems for me because its a mismatch.

But recently, I started to use the Zhuyin system again, and it is just a lot more natural. Of course for me, I've learned it before as a kid, so it wasn't that difficult to pick it up again. But it would be a steep learning curve for someone new to Chinese. But I still recommend it, it would be like someone needing to learn Hiragana and Katakana when learning Japanese. I've also learned from some of the older Chinese people from China that Zhuyin used to be taught in China as well, which was surprising to me. I guess that was the system in use before Mao decided that China needs to "westernize" and go with roman alphabets with Pinyin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The lack of tolerance is two things, ignorance or patience. Doesnt matter what country or culture, most folks just dont have the time to try to figure out what gibberish you are trying to say. OR they simply don't have the intercultural experience to know what to do in situations where a non-native speaker is trying to communicate. It's the old "yelling doesnt help me understand your language better" scenario. I got it a lot when I lived in Taipei and I see it here in the US with my coworkers.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, okay, let me be clear the scenarios you say make sense and are understandable. However, I've had school friends and even friends now who tell me to shut up because I sound embarassing. Or even "what are you even trying to say".

It's something that really gets to me because there's a certain vulnerability when attempting new things or things you're not good at it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Dont. Get. Me. Started. You just identified one thing that really grinds my gears. Until there is acrid smoke pouring out my ears. Literally. My room reeks of burnt oil and grilled brain. What's left of it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

god imagine trying to write code in languages like Chinese