摘要
In the present paper, a comparison is made of the three formats in the history of EECU (English education in China's universities). In the first period (1904-1949), English education was conducted separately in government-managed educational institutions and in institutions sponsored by church-related organizations; English education was well-knit with both general education and specialty education; and self-motivating learning was encouraged. In the second period (1950-1966), almost everything was tinted with a shady color of politics: A halt was addressed drastically to EEC (English education in China) in 1952. In the gradual recovery that started four years later, the second format was sawed and hammered, showing the following features: All non-government-mamaged institutions vanished from the stage; English was taught solely as a language or a system of verbal parts, almost deprived of all cultural loading. The third period (1978 onwards) has witnessed a barrier-free and rapid development of over three decades, resulting in the unprecedented pervasion of EECU. Yet in the third tbrmat, learners' efforts have turned wholly test-oriented, degenerating into the saddening disintegrity of learning as a process into isolated charges to the target of a test at a time; the ignorant reduction of the learning methods to "Vocabulary Booklets Plus Collections of Test Papers". Such a comparison not only provides a multi-dimensional perspective of EECU and a better understanding of it, but also offers some important experiences and lessons for the search of an effective solution to the pervasive problem of"Time-Consumingness and Low-Efficiency".