Compulsory subjects

At the 2019 Global English Education China Assembly in July, attended by nearly 3,000 teachers and leading experts in English-language education from China and abroad, speakers said coping with examinations, especially the gaokao (national college entrance exam), is the only reason most rural students learn the language.

"More than 90 percent, if not all, students in rural schools are only learning English to get into college," Huang Guowen, dean of the Foreign Language Department at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, Guangdong, said during the three-day assembly in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

With more than 20 years' experience of teaching English language and literature, Huang's speech centered on "the main purpose of teaching and learning English in rural areas of China".

He told China Daily, "If English was excluded as a subject from the national college entrance exam one day, most rural students might stop learning it completely."

In 1984, the Ministry of Education listed English, along with Chinese and math, as the three compulsory subjects for the gaokao.

In 2017, a nationwide survey carried out by a research team from Xingyi Normal University for Ethnic Minorities in Guizhou province produced a broader picture that echoed Huang's observations.

Polling more than 20,000 respondents, ranging from first-graders in primary schools to college students nationwide, the survey found that over 70 percent of students from rural areas said they would not spend time learning English if it was not required in the school syllabus.

In contrast, while 43 percent of students from urban areas also said that passing exams was a key incentive for learning English, all those polled gave other reasons, such as traveling abroad, watching Hollywood movies and sitcoms, or simply mastering a second language.

The survey respondents were an equal mix of students from rural and urban areas.

"Many (rural) students tell me they hardly have any opportunities to use English after leaving school," said Lu Ziwen, director of the research center and the survey leader.

Lu is an English-language teacher who has also studied pedagogy, the theory and practice of learning and how this process influences, and is influenced by, learners' psychological development.

Having devoted much of his career to some of China's remotest areas, he said the situation has barely improved over the years, despite the vast changes such areas have undergone thanks to the central government's rural revitalization program and increased investment in education.

"The gap between cities and rural areas is narrowing in many aspects, including housing conditions, income and medical care. But when it comes to education, especially English-language education, there is still a long way to go," he said.

In Beijing last year, the average score for English among students taking the gaokao was more than 100 marks out of 150, while in rural areas of Guizhou province it was about 40 out of 150, Lu added.

"It's hard to say whether the poor performances discourage students, or whether this dimmed interest restricts the potential to learn," he said.