CD: Welcome to In-Conversation, I am Bernice Chan, People around the world are eager to learn English and China is no exception. The British Council assists the standard of English through its examination, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and its global director of English and Examination, Bhaskar Chakravarti joins me in the studio. He will tell us more about IELS and its latest developments.
So, welcome to In-Conversation.
Chakravarti: Thank you very much. I am delighted to be here.
CD: Now, first of all, what is your assessment of level of English in China in the last few years?
Chakravarti: Things changes very rapidly in China in many aspects and I think the level of English is one aspect. English has been changing most dramatically.
It is quite interesting actually, I worked here in the late 1990s, from 1994 to 1999, and if I compare my experience now, coming to Beijing now, with what used to be then, and then it is actually like a different world.
I mean there was hardly anybody who spoke English; you had to do everything with interpreters. It was great for me, because it gave me a lot of motivation to learn Chinese. But these days it’s actually much easier to get around and do a lot of things with people with ordinary level of English over there.
I am particularly impressed by how the, if I can say “the top end of the scale”, the difficult use of language for education, for business, for communicative purposes which are not similar, has really moved along. I have been at a symposium for the last two days where there are a lot of people from companies, from universities, from schools, the entire proceeding we conducted in English without any interpretation at all, which actually seems the first I have done over here. So it is a huge progress I think there.
I think it is properly fair to say though, the spectrum or the range is quite wide, so the top end is really at an international standard. Maybe there is a quite wide range between the average users and the ones still beginning over there. And I think that’s the area where there are something that China will be advised focusing on in the years ahead in that area much than anything else. The government gives huge emphasis to English, right and hard. For example, its five-year education plan. I mean I see all over the places in terms of studying English, practicing English, having your English tested, people like to talk on jobs, immediately come out of requirement for English over there, so it is not news to anybody, it is exactly the right thing to be doing.
CD… (There will be) a majority
Chakravarti: I think that would be the normal experience anywhere in the world, actually.
CD: How does China rank in the rest of world in terms of its standard of English?
Chakravarti:I think the upper end of the scale is internationally competitive. When I am in London, I met people coming from China. They are as good, sometimes often better actually than people coming from other parts of the world, so it is absolutely internationally competitive.
I think the question again is where is the bell curve and where it is along the curve. There again, I mean, I think if just looked at from the entirely personal experience I spend some years living in other parts of East Asia and I visited other countries in East Asia. I am not sure if it is polite to name them but say one or two countries to the northeast…Well, you are well ahead of them in terms of use of English, one or two countries to the southeast as well, so I think there is real progress or something to be proud of. Compared with the rest of the world, it is pretty competitive, global now, not just East Asian region, it’s the whole world. You stop in places which have more advantages in terms of history and culture, closer engagement with English and things, obviously things will be different over there. But generally it is the very impressive performances.
CD: That’s optimistic.
Chakravarti: Well, in China, what is that to be optimistic? I have a wonderful comment from a friend of mine. He is Egyptian businessman. He is on the business trip, his first ever trip to China and came back. He said, “I am really impressed by what I saw there. And the thing impressed me most is over there is that Chinese said they believe tomorrow will be better than today, that is why I think optimism is the distinguishing feature of this wonderful place.
CD: Why is it important for you, the British council, to set a standard on English proficiency?
Chakravarti: I think there are two angles on this actually which appropriately we are just summarizing, one is to do with access, and the other is to do with standard.
Now in terms of access, we’ve given ourselves an ambition in the British council and we published this to the world. Our ambition in English is that every teacher and learner of English in the world. Every teacher and learner of English in the world should have access to the skills, the ideas and the materials they need from the UK. So our ambition is universal access for English.
Now, everybody says to me “Come on, get serious. You are just one organization, how are you possibly going to do anything like that for everybody in the world?
CD: (Exactly, how are you going to do that?)
Chakravarti: Well, we have a famous writer in English, I’m sure you know him -- he is Oscar Wilde. He is a well-known playwright. I’m going to slightly misquote him because what he said was slightly different, he used the beginning, but I’m going to steal his wonderful words. I’m going to say: “Well, for us, ambitions are like the stars, we may not be able to reach them, but we benefit by their presence.” So, whether or not we can reach our star, when we steer our ship, that’s the direction we are going in actually, to move as far and as fast as we can towards universal access for English.
With the issue of access comes the issue of standards, it always goes together actually. I mean, you probably find this actually in some of your user-generated content, even on your China Daily web facility. It’s great to have the users generating the content, it’s terrific, it has a whole new dimension of effectiveness, but without some moderation of standards, there is a risk that you can actually mislead other learners. That’s why we think standard is actually really very important as well.
The key about the standards for English, though, is the phrase we use is “fitness for purpose”. So you don’t have to use English at the same level for everything, it’s different from what you want to do, and it’s important to have an idea for the purpose you are aiming for. What is the standard you want? But you must have a good method of being really quite tough about being honest about have you got that standard or not. Because that is what helps the learner improve to where they need to and actually what helps the teacher help the learner improve to where they need to. This is one thing in common between those two.
And I’m going to say something that is very much in the heart of what we feel English is for. It’s not a theoretical subject, it’s not an academic subject, it’s actually all about one thing, which is what you and I are doing, which is using English for communication, and that is what is all about it.
CD: For those who aren’t familiar with IELTS, can you give us a basic explanation of what the exam entails?
Chakravarti: Sure, no problem. IELTS is the, if not the world-leading test of English for communication what I just said actually, it is not English for grammar, it is not English for anything, it is English for communication. We operate it as a partnership, I told you we don’t like to do things on our own, we like to work in partnership.
Here is an example, the IELTS test is actually the partnership between three organizations. One is Cambridge University, they have their own assessment, the department is called Cambridge assessment, they are just celebrating their 150th anniversary now, and last night I was having dinner at the Great Hall of the People to help them celebrate that. It was a wonderful event. The other partner we have is an Australian organization; it’s called IDP Australia which promotes education, and language skills in the testing from the Australian side. So this is a three-way partnership. We are delighted in China to be the lead partner helping work with them, candidates, with preparation schools, with the education authorities, and particular with the national education, exams administration authority, so we are doing here.
IELTS is a rounded test. It tests four skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening, and it doesn’t separate test in each of them. So, you can’t get away with it if you’re going to only do one thing or the other. You can’t communicate without those four skills, so you’re testing those four skills. It gives you a different marking, how you can get that, the speaking and listening test is done exactly like you and I are doing now actually. If you’re going to test English for communication, then you have to put the individual in the position where they are using English for communication.
I can’t do tape recording, I can’t do video, we have to actually doing it, using English, absolutely right. So our examiners are very carefully selected, very highly trained, they’re ruthlessly monitored, they can’t play it by their own side. We have the right standard over there. I mean I know, because I totally offer the candidates around the world, it’s kind of terrifying reputation I’ll say, go or defy, go for that, it’s gonna be one of those scaring things I ever done in my life, I mean believe me it’s not that, actually, we have a wonderful team here who do their best to make it a comfortable experience, of course doing an exam always is like going to a dentist, you know, you’ll never gonna enjoy it. But it can be worthwhile.
And certainly what we found is, the feedback we get from the candidates. But more particularly, actually, from the organizations who are, the education institutions, or governments, or employing institutions, is very very positive, and IELTS is now, recognized by that 6, 000 universities, governments, top-end companies around the world, and that, I think has made of its reputation.
CD: So has the program changed much in the last few years in terms of its design, or its goals?
Chakravarti: Its goals hasn’t changed at all. They are, they were, which is the world-leading test of English for communicative purposes, but I was thinking it’s a nice example of what China does so well, which is combining continuity with continued refreshment and innovation, I mean you guys are experts on this over here. I think about Beijing when I was here in the 90s, and what I experience now, hundreds, hundreds of things are changed, yet it is still the same old Beijing, it hasn’t changed in some of ways. But I’ll say IELTS is rather the same, the standard is absolutely what it is all the time, it hasn’t changed at all.
The format hasn’t changed, it still tests all four skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking, but some of the little fine tuning is altered as we go along, for example, some of the reading materials are now more workplace based while they weren’t before, because people often want to use the communication for workplace related purposes.
The interesting development will be coming up very soon, I don’t have an exact date, cause they want to get it right before we launch it. We’ll be offering candidates the choice to actually take the three of the skill tests with a computer, on the computer based format, not with a pen and paper. But the one will not change, it will not become computer based. It will remain face to face, it is the speaking and listening test that won’t change at all.
CD: What programs do you have in China to help the Chinese learn English?
Chakravarti: Well, I mean if our ambition are star by which we steer is that every English teacher and learner in the world all to be, getting what they want, then a whole bunch of them are right here in China. If you are trying to estimate, there are probably 300 million learners of English in China, we think, it depends on what you defines a learner.
And teachers, we thinks, are probably somewhere 1 million or pass rather more than that. So it’s a big constituency here in China.
We want to do what we can to be helpful for them, I think actually. Often the teachers and learners have quite different requirements. So I guess I might not to offer the same thing to everybody. Our current focus for providing the access is actually a website specifically for China. It ’s
www.englishonline.org.cn . And if you click on it, you’ll immediately see it says, if you are a teacher, go here; if you are a learner, go there. It’ll take you to various things which are very helpful to you. If you’re a learner, it’s not claiming to teach you English, because you can’t teach them English over the web. What you can do is that you can support their learning and assist them in learning.
There is a whole rich mix of material over there to help learners both improve aspects of English they want to, but particularly communicate with other people. While they are doing it, they expect English for communication. You can communicate for the purpose of improving your English. And that’s the facility over there. With teachers, it’s rather more pedagogically focused; it’s actually for the professionals and teaching.
So how do you actually put together a lesson plan for this? What are the hot topics of discussion in the professional English community around the world? They themselves can suggest topics for discussion. I’m having difficulty with my students with present continuous tense. Anybody got any ideas about just how we might do that? Not only you’ll get a professional response form the British Council, English teaching experts, but you’ll also get community response from other teachers over there. So this is looking quite exciting. We have one of those developments coming up in the near future as well, which looks quite exciting.
CD: How did you come up with the plan of gearing programs towards young professionals in finance, education, science and creative industries?
Chakravarti: It’s back to the range, or the spectrum, I was mentioning earlier. Because we are thinking particularly, if you look at the huge achievements that have been made at the top end of the range, what now are the requirements? What are people telling us? They would actually find helpful over there. And we are finding there again what plays in English is English-related workplaces becoming more and more prominent.
China is actually engaging with the world in globalized economy in those particular sectors. I have a Chinese businessman friend I was talking to, he was telling me the big difference is that before, it was foreign companies wanting to welcome China, who wanted Chinese employees could speak English, now it is Chinese corporations who want to go global, who want their employees to be able to speak English. So the direction actually gone is China is engaging with the world out there. And those particular sectors you mentioned, financing industry, education, creative arts and science, I think are very prominent in that particular engagement. So that’s why we are trying to provide with learning support materials that people will find useful there, workplace related.
And we are very excited about little pilot we are developing to see if we can back that up with one-to-one tuition using internet telephoning. It’s a new thing for us. We are still going to find out how the technology works. We are going to find out how does the English teaching, how does the pedagogy side if it works as well.
But I think it’s still very promising at the moment. So the hope would be, if you are a young Chinese working in a stock exchange in Shanghai, and you are interested in what’s going on with the index over here, you look up some materials about what happens somewhere else, such as video, articles from newspapers, clips from website, there will be structured learning support around it-look at that, think about this; work at this, relate to that. And if you get stuck, if you want to talk to someone, you could click the button, pick up your phone, talk to your tutor about what you’ve got there.
CD: So it’s not just new vocabulary list, it’s more integrated than that.
Chakravarti: Absolutely. I hope you’ll not get bored about this. It’s English about communication, so it’s not English to have more words, it’s not English to have a better grammar. You need words to communicate, you need grammar to communicate, but the point is for communication.
CD: A lot of people are using technology to learn English, and what are you doing in terms of integrating that in your learning materials?
Chakravarti: While I talked a little about the web, what we were doing there, another initiative way engaging that in China got very exciting. Actually, for us globally in the British council, not just in China, it’s the partnership. As that word again, we do not like to do things again, we would like to do things with people.
With Nokia, which is actually to use mobile telephone technology to assist to learn English, we are working with them now to make some English learning materials available which then they will put on at their platform so people will have access to use it.
If you talk me about the mobile phone, you know, here is the world the day coming as a text message. It’s in a different dimension from that people are working on now actually. The project my colleagues here in British Council telling you about is going to be called “Answer English”. And apparently anybody can phone or text any question they have with what they stuck in what they learning in English. The dream will be, the objective will be, the standard will be that the answer will come back in ten minutes. So if you are sitting there and you stuck, and you don’t know what to do, then get on your mobile phone and help would be handed in ten minutes.
It’s quite a tall order. How could we do that when I think about it. But I recognize we will get that actually because they make very convincing case. We got strong team here and have huge pride and trust in them.
Because of them, it looks feasible to use the many more dimensions the mobile phone technology offer. It’s not just voices and text, you can get on the web, you can download this material and provide some support materials in that way as well. So that’s quite a lot initiative there.
CD: Right. What’s your advice to help people who been trying to improve their English particularly in writing and speaking skills？
Chakravarti: Let’s speak the speaking one, because they are often come up. People say to me, I have no chance to practice my English, because there are no native speakers here, they would say to which I said these two problems with that, one is what does native speakers mean? The whole world speaks English now actually; they speak all over the place. So, the consent of native speaker implies people speak English to understand in many different places.
But the other thing is you don’t need people at that, you know to practice your English, you can create your environment and practice it with other students, you can get on the web and practice with students as well over there. If you take initiative make sure you would not gonna be put off. Using it is my advice. So, actually ,use it, use it, use it, use it. It is a bit like when I was learning Chinese, was only by opening my mouth and not be frightened to making mistake. And I was making progress. I will say it is the same thing to English Similarly with writing.
I think my view would be, think about the purpose of the writing, and if I’m writing a letter to my wife, it’s one writing, if I’m writing a formal report for the British council, it’s different writing. If I use same writing for both I will have some very surprise people, in the British counsel not mention my wife over there actually. So think about the purpose. Look at these examples a lot of people of yours. So that’s reading actually. But how it links. For again, practice, practice, practice, practice.
CD: Now we have two questions, one from our mobile phone readers and one from our website readers. One from the website, it says is it possible to make IELTS more flexible? So for example if they don’t do well in the oral section, is it possible to just do the oral section over again, and not the entire test over again?
Chakravarti: Well, I think this is the issue that the testing experts would be well positioned to pronounce actually. I’m not a testing expert. But what I can say is one of the…sort of patterns on the IELTS. It doesn’t claim to be a test of one particular skill, it is a test of communicative English. And you can’t test communicative English without testing all four skills. So it actually probably doesn’t make much sense to try to say I just want to do that bit again. The whole point is to actually have the experience of the IELTS test which will tell you what your standard is in using English for communicative purposes. So I think it is probably pretty unlikely that we’d ever go down that road.
CD: OK. Now, mobile reader said that they find IELTS questions more conservative than other English proficiency tests like TOFEL which they think more pragmatic. So is there any time in the future when IELTS will be changing their format of questions?
Chakravarti: If the person was here I will be wanting to ask what is in their mind, they say “conservative” and “pragmatic”, (they think moving with the times, I think that’s what they meant). Right, I mean as I don’t understand, that’s probably related to the material the test uses, so it may well be the case that sort of development I was talking about the fine tuning to make some of the reading material for the reading module relevant to the work place, will be matching that. I think it’s important to remember those, the credibility, the reputation of IELTS. That’s why it’s recognized by successes, governments, as I already tell you, around the world. Comes from its rigorous standard actually that’s what it is there for.
And I think what everybody is very much proud of is that standard will never be compromised one way or the other. We have to do it in a way that fits the requirement. We can’t change that. If you allow me one more thing, since I have got a lot of questions which boil down to “can you make IELTS easier”, both these questions are kind of headed in that direction, aren’t they? Actually, as I always say, who is the most important in IELTS? It’s not British council, Cambridge assessment, IDP Australia, it’s not the employ agency, actually it’s the individual taking the test, it’s the individual candidate.
Because if somehow, it won’t happen in IELTS, but if somehow they were to get a score which is higher than their ability, and then they went to study abroad or they went to get a job, who’s gonna suffer? They’re gonna suffer actually because they won’t be able to communicate in the way they need to in order to achieve what they want to, and that is a miserable, kind of rather destructive experience. So actually, we don’t feel like it. For the greatest protection, the greatest support we can offer the candidate is maintaining that rigorous standard scrupulously.
CD: So, on that optimistic note, thank you so much for joining me on conversation. I really enjoy the conversation.
Chakravarti: The great pleasure. Thank you very much.
CD: And thank you for watching.
