中国高校英语教育40年反思:失败与教训

Review of Chinese Tertiary English Education:Failure and Lessons

回顾自恢复高考以来,我国高校英语教育发展的40年历程,虽然有很大的成绩,但从满足国家关于培养经济、科技等领域内具有较强国际交流能力和竞争力的人才需要的角度看是不成功的。我国整整一代科技人员和工程人员既不能用英语熟练地汲取本专业的国际前沿信息,也不能在国际学术研讨会和国际期刊上进行有效的交流,也不能与国际同行进行技术工程谈判。这不是个人的失败,而是我国英语教育政策的失败,是高校英语专业和大学英语教学定位的失败。高校英语教学始终定位在打基础的通用英语上,忽视英语作为汲取和交流专业信息的有效工具,轻视大学英语教学在人才培养上的作用,国家对外语能力要求得不到有效贯彻是失败的主要原因。

The review of the development of Chinese tertiary English education since 1978 reveals that despite great achievement,we have failed to produce tertiary graduates who have competitive competence in the international arena of economy,science and technology.It is not an individual failure when a whole generation of scientists and engineers could not use English to extract disciplinary information from international literatures,nor communicate effectively in international conferences,journals and engineering activities.It is a failure of tertiary English education policies and a failure of the teaching programs for both English majors and non-English majors.The failure could be attributed to its orientation to the teaching English for general purposes rather than for specific purposes,the neglect of English as a tool to communicate in disciplinary studies,the low institutional status of college English teaching and the failure of the governments foreign language requirement to be expressed in tertiary English education policies.