Intercultural Language Education and the Challenges Chinese College English Teachers Face

Currently,intercultural language education is a topic which receives much interest due to the rise of globalization,but theories and practice in this field are on the preliminary stage of development in China.To understand ILE better,its background,theory basis,goals,related researches are reviewed and analyzed.Since ILE is relatively new in China,language teachers are facing new challenges in developing intercultural teaching competence to achieve the success of language education.Such challenges consist of understanding the language itself,the difficulty in understanding and teaching culture,designing practical classroom activities and selecting content.

An Exploratory Study of Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers' Professional Identity Construction in a Globalizing China

Employing one-to-one interviews,this study explores,from a poststructuralist view,how Chinese English Teachers(CETs)struggle to construct their professional identity within the dominant ideology and disempowering discourses of native-speakerism in a globalizing China.Twenty-five CETs were interviewed,and the results have shown that applying human agency and subjectivity,CET participants manage to counteract the disempowering discourses and reach a relatively balanced power relationship with their native speaker(NS)counterparts mainly through four ways:Othering the NSs;exploring their own unique strengths;taking special roles in ELT;and establishing their credibility through hard work.The Chinese culture of learning,specifically,Confucian values,also plays an important role in CETs’professional identity construction.

An Empirical Study on the Relationship Between Chinese Teachers' Attitudes Toward Identity and Teacher Autonomy

Teacher identity formation provides a direction for the development of autonomy(Huang&Benson,2013).However,the process of identity formation is complex and how this process influences teacher autonomy has not been sufficiently studied.To contribute to knowledge in this field,the present study investigated the relationship between teachers’attitudes toward teacher identity and teacher autonomy.We first observed 14 Chinese College English teachers’classroom teaching.Following that,we conducted stimulated recall interviews with all the teachers to pinpoint their autonomous practices.Finally,we conducted semi-structured interviews to investigate these teachers’attitudes toward their identities.One of the main findings was that the teachers who held a positive attitude toward their professional identity were more autonomous in their teaching practices than those with a negative attitude.The findings invite us to conclude that teachers’attitudes toward their professional identity are positively associated with teacher autonomy.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CLASSROOM DISCOURSE STRUCTURES IN THE COLLEGE ENGLISH CLASSES IN CHINA

The present study, using Discourse Analysis method, makes a comparative study of the interactive features of two groups of college English teaching classes, one instructed by native speakers of English, the other by Chinese teachers of English. It has been found that TST (Teacher-Student-Teacher) structure occurs more frequently in the classes taught by Chinese teachers of English. It is suggested that Chinese teachers put their classes under stricter control than native English teachers do.