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China's University Teaches Courses in English
Qinghua University has now 57 courses being taught in English, in an effort to make itself more competitive internationally.
"This is anything more than language skills; it is a method to help students cultivate a world vision and polish their ability to imitate and create," said Wang Hui, deputy director with the educational administration of Qinghua (also spelt Tsinghua), one of the most prestigious universities in China.
English is now the language medium of more than 60 percent of the courses in the department of biology and school of economics and administration at the university.
Naturally, it is a big challenge to the teaching staff, whose mother tongue is Chinese.
Yet, language will not become a barrier as more than 60 percent of the teachers in the department of biology have experience studying abroad, mainly in the US.
In fact, teaching in English is part of the university's tradition, which was once a preparatory school more than 90 years ago for students selected to go to study in the United States.
However, the teachers also find that English may not be suitable for some courses with a complicated subject matter or obscure concepts.
"Promoting English courses does not necessarily mean instruct every course in English. Teachers may choose to use English or Chinese or both sometimes for the sake of convenience and efficiency," said Wang.
For the general public, learning English is in vogue and is sweeping the country resulting in the flourish of English training programs and bilingual teaching institutes.
Chinese youngsters are enthusiastic about becoming proficient in using the English language as a tool to excel in the job market or pursue a degree abroad.
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