As China increasingly engages in global human rights mechanisms, it has demonstrated a commitment to reforming its national curriculum. Through examining textbooks published during Xi Jinping's tenure, this study investigates how China embeds human rights issues in the English language curriculum. The findings indicate that the human rights issues…

This paper analyses the current situation of English as a foreign language (EFL) writing in basic education in mainland China with a focus on the English curriculum standards, instruction and assessment. The National English Curriculum Standards launched by China's Ministry of Education ratified a general framework for EFL writing instruction and…

Since the 1990s, the emphasis on intelligibility as a goal in pronunciation teaching rather than near-native or nativelike competence has been reinforced by the increasing use of English as a lingua franca. The insight of the intelligibility principle has greatly impressed researchers in China's English education, but has "very limited and…

Curriculum material use is an agentive, reciprocal and innovative practice, involving multiple stakeholders such as teacher, students and assessments that mutually shape one another. While it is generally acknowledged that teachers' knowledge and skills deeply shape the way they use materials, little is known about how material use can possibly…

National curriculum standards for different countries mean some International Baccalaureate (IB) schools must often balance IB and national standards. Literature on how schools find this balance is limited. Using a qualitative case study design, we examined the perspectives of teachers of English in a Chinese IB school that recently employed a…

This chapter discusses two important learning contexts that make and remake the Chinese international graduate students: first, as foreign language learners back in China, then as second language users and learners at Blue Fountain University in the United States. After reviewing the sociocultural context in which the students prepared to study…

The study investigates the vocabulary profile of a set of English textbooks "New Senior English for China," which is widely used for senior secondary education in China. It examines how the words required by the 2017 National English Curriculum Standard for General Senior Secondary Education in China are covered, repeated and distributed…

China's impressive growth over the last three decades warrants the need to re-evaluate the position and positioning of English in the country's educational system. For long, English has been taught and learned compulsorily alongside Chinese and maths in primary and secondary schools in the mainland of China. It was not until recent years that the…

China's National English Curriculum Standard, launched in 2001, clearly reflects a philosophy and characteristics of learner-centeredness. However, limited evidence is available as to how far the learner-centred philosophy has, through interacting with the local contexts, influenced teachers' beliefs, which will translate into a core philosophy…

This paper reports on an emerging type of international school, which we refer to as the Chinese internationalized school. This school caters to Chinese citizens and aspires to offer a fusion of national and international curricula. The majority of internationalized schools in China are to be found in large metropolitan centers. Accordingly, the…

The hidden curriculum is an important part of curriculums, and constructing the primary school English hidden curriculum is helpful for the implementation of the new National English Curriculums, the development of students' key competencies and the reform of basic English teaching in China. However, according to the survey conducted with 40…

In China, developing students' overall communicative competence was set as the central goal of the current college English curriculum requirements since 2004. However, this goal has remained largely unfulfilled, particularly with regard to writing competence. This study proposes that the genre-based pedagogy in systemic functional linguistics may…

The scale of English language education in China is astounding, but recent research has shown that the latest national English education policy for Chinese schools has not been implemented successfully due to various reasons. One reason given for the lack of success is the impracticability of the top-down policy itself excluding teachers'…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the changing pedagogic discourses in China today, using the current wave of English curriculum innovation as a focused case. Given the cross-cultural nature of foreign language education, the change in the English as a foreign language curriculum in China has served as a fertile ground for different pedagogical…

This paper, drawing on the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis, examines the general goals and objectives of the national curriculum reform launched by the Ministry of Education in 2001 for Chinese primary schools. Four policy documents relevant to the curriculum reform are analyzed, including Chinese curriculum and English…