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China Eyed From 'Two Currents of Heat'
Currently, there are "two fevers" in language learning: One is the fever of Chinese learning English, the other is the fever of foreigners learning Chinese.
Let's begin with the heat of Chinese learning English. Beijing's Olympic win has quietly triggered a new round of English fever in the capital. People from children to aunts, from hotel attendants to taxi drivers and from university students to public functionaries-all have picked up English textbooks, taking advantage of various opportunities and conditions to train their listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. This current of heat has also arisen in Shanghai, Chongqing and some other cities, even in a small fishing village on the coast of Fujian Province, an English training class has been set up there. People are learning and using English, striving to achieve a new breakthrough in this respect.
Let's come to see the fever of foreigners learning the Chinese language. In recent years, there have been an increasing number of foreign students coming to China to learn Chinese, they have a soaring enthusiasm for studying Chinese. The Chinese Training Class jointly set up by the Capital Economic and Trade University of China and the Various US University Joint Centers has been run for many years. Although tuition is quite high, students from various countries have come in large numbers. In order to learn the Chinese well, all these students do not speak English during their stay in Beijing; under their teacher's guidance, they study hard and practice again and again with remarkable results. At the recent get-together, called "The Evening of Chinese Language", they announced items on the program, read aloud and sang songs and thus drew a burst of applause from the audiences.
Language is a tool for human communication. It has been for a long time that people speaking different languages learn from one another. But the radically heating up trend of Chinese learning English and foreigners learning Chinese is an encouraging phenomenon appeared only in recent years. Although the phenomenon is a matter concerning language study, through which one can see clearly that the pace of China's advance to the world arena has been visibly quickened and that China's international status has been rising rapidly.
After 20-plus years of reform and opening up, China is advancing forward with great strides. It is not only catching up with advanced international level, but also is following international practices in various aspects and merging itself into the great international stage.
To do all these well, it is necessary for the people to take a long and broad view, They should make a sharp observation, understand and grasp the world's general development trend; through reading and collecting huge amounts of foreign documents and information, they should understand the latest trends of economic, scientific and technological development. Only by doing so can they have a clear idea about the global situation in their minds and do their work well. It is thus clear that people's diligent study of English is closely linked with the general trend and great objective of China's advance toward the world arena, Learning English is a means, its aim is to give a greater boost to China's advance to the world arena.
Chinese is one of the five working languages for use as stipulated by the United Nations, but in the past, there were not many foreigners studying the Chinese language. However, a look at today shows that foreigners learning the Chinese language have not only increased in number, but they exhibit high enthusiasm for study. Why? It is due to the constant rise in China's international status. Modern China enjoys a global reputation for its steady economic advancement and coordinate social development, at the same time, people are overwhelmed by the 5,000-year-old, splendid civilization of China. In recent years, numerous foreigners have stepped into this ancient, yet vigorous loess land, they appreciate Chinese culture, cast their eyes on the Chinese market, and admire China's bright future development prospect, therefore, greatly inspiring their enthusiasm for learning the Chinese language.
China is a country opening to the outside world. Although there is a phase of history in which "China was closed to the outside world". Generally speaking, however, it has all along maintained friendly contacts with various countries around the world. It not only has the courage of merging itself into the world arena, but also has the largeness of mind to "bring all steams into the sea". This point has been deeply illustrated whether by the Chinese learning English, or by foreigners studying the Chinese language.
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