national research centre for foreign language education, beijing foreign studies university

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National Research Centre for Foreign LanguageEducation, Beijing Foreign Studies University

Yongqi Gu

Language Teaching / Volume 45 / Issue 02 / April 2012, pp 263 - 267DOI: 10.1017/S0261444811000589, Published online: 24 February 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261444811000589

How to cite this article:Yongqi Gu (2012). National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, Beijing ForeignStudies University. Language Teaching, 45, pp 263-267 doi:10.1017/S0261444811000589

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Research in ProgressLang. Teach. (2012), 45.2, 263–267 c© Cambridge University Press 2012

doi:10.1017/S0261444811000589

National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, BeijingForeign Studies University

Strategising foreign language education in China

Introduction

The National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education (NRCFLE) attached toBeijing Foreign Studies University (www.sinotefl.ac.cn/) is a key research institute in thehumanities and social sciences in universities approved by the Ministry of Education (MOE)of the People’s Republic of China. It was formally set up and approved in September 2000.After a decade of dedicated hard work, the centre has become an applied linguistics hubof research and training unrivalled in China, and co-hosted AILA2011, the 16th WorldCongress in Applied Linguistics in August 2011. The current director of the centre, WENQiufang, currently presides over the China English Language Education Association, anotherco-host of AILA2011. The centre publishes two journals, one of them, Foreign Language Teaching

and Research, being pre-eminent in the field in every key journal index in China, as well asbeing the only journal in applied linguistics and foreign language education to feature in theMOE’s 2010 Distinguished Journals in Humanities and Social Sciences.

Within the last five years, NRCFLE has been involved in 50 research projects sponsoredat national, provincial/municipal, and university levels, and has published 453 articles. Thecentre has also hosted an array of international and national conferences, on topics rangingfrom CALL, Corpus, SLA and testing, to teacher education and language policy. As wellas carrying out research, NRCFLE is a training centre for young scholars and researchers.Sixty-five doctoral candidates and 123 MA students have either graduated or are studying atthe centre. Every year, NRCFLE staff members are involved in a number of summer-schooltype intensive training workshops for hundreds of young university lecturers from variousregions of China on a host of topics ranging from learner strategies, research methods andcorpus studies, to academic writing. The centre also welcomes more than 20 visiting scholarsevery year from both China and abroad.

1. Towards a coherent research strategy at the NRCFLE

Since its establishment in 2000, NRCFLE has gone through three stages of development interms of finding and formalising its own research strategy: an exploratory stage, a formalisedstage and a strategic stage.

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As in many real or virtual research centres around the world, the first five years or so arebest characterised as an exploratory stage, during which researchers worked on their ownand brought their own funded projects into the centre. Major research projects completedduring this stage included:

• Reform of foreign language teaching in Chinese universities• Bilingual parallel corpora, their construction and applications• University EFL teacher education and development• New models and schemes for assessing university students’ English proficiency• Application of Internet technology in English education• Compiling an English learner’s dictionary based on English–Chinese parallel corpora• Models of development for teachers of English in Chinese universities• Syntactic development of Chinese learners of English• Development of Chinese university students’ English oral ability• Modern Russian word-formation• Translation teaching and studies based on large-scale bilingual parallel corpora.

These projects, while important on their own, were not coordinated efforts: the work of theteam depended on who brought what projects into the centre. The centre was also in theprocess of exploring what expertise it could offer as a national research centre.

After 2006, individual research interests and strengths were rationalised into two groups:basic research and applied research, which in turn were later crystallised into the followingfive target areas, with a clear focus on applied research: (1) foreign language education policy;(2) curriculum and teaching resources; (3) teacher and teaching; (4) learner and learning; and(5) testing and assessment.

Major projects at this stage included:

• Foreign language teaching with Chinese characteristics: An empirical study of models forthe training of foreign language talents over the last 60 years

• Foreign language education and socioeconomic development: A multinationalcomparative study of foreign language education policies

• Routes and methods for quality-education in EFL teaching in Chinese schools• Critical thinking among university students majoring in foreign languages• Teacher development models for EFL teachers at primary and secondary levels• A teaching grammar of English• EFL proficiency standards for Chinese students• Automated rating system for subjective task-types in large-scale EFL examinations• The construction and analysis of a Chinese EFL Treebank.

Some of these projects are on-going, and a few will be described in detail in the next section.The third stage is still in its transition phase, and is becoming explicitly strategic, moving

from ‘what we do best’ to ‘what we need to do’. As one of the two government-sponsorednational research centres in foreign language education and applied linguistics, NRCFLE is



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beginning to reposition itself as a think tank, talent bank and information bank, prioritisingnational strategic interests, and targeting research that matters in both foreign languagepolicy-making and in classroom teaching. In the process, three major research orientationshave been outlined: (1) language policy and language planning in China and abroad; (2)reforming the foreign language education system; and (3) language resources and informationapplication.

The three stages of development correspond to China’s tenth, eleventh, and twelfth‘five-year plan’ periods1, which provide opportunities for NRCFLE to step back from itsindividual projects and strategically reposition itself in the country’s overall economic andsocial development as a ‘national research centre’. The patterns also parallel those of China’soverall growth during this period of time, from isolated and free development to integrated,coordinated and sustained development.

2. Major research areas and projects

2.1 Language policy and language planning in China and abroad

One major project that has just started is ‘the linguistic yellow-book’ or ‘linguistics abroadyear-book’, an annual monograph. It is intended to summarise most recent linguisticdevelopments around the world, and to provide an expert and timely account of targetedlinguistic developments for the purpose of informing policy-making in China.

Parallel to the yellow book project is a series of national language policy monographs thatdocument language policies country by country. This series will be coordinated by the NR-CFLE and will take advantage of the expertise of various departments at the Beijing ForeignStudies University. It is hoped that this and the yellow book will help put China’s own languagepolicies into perspective so that policy-makers will be able to make informed decisions.

In addition to the messenger role that introduces the world to China in terms of languagedevelopment, the NRCFLE will also take on a more proactive role in China’s linguistic sceneand embark on a national language development strategy project. It is currently coordinatinga trans-disciplinary and trans-institutional cooperation project and bidding for a Ministry ofEducation Major R&D Program in Humanities and Social Sciences. This project aims fora complete strategic review of language policies in the Chinese language, Chinese dialects,national minority languages, language issues in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and Chineseas a foreign language, as well as foreign languages in China.

The NRCFLE is aware of what it does best, and is actively involved in rethinking thecountry’s national foreign language strategy. In addition to the ‘foreign language educationand socioeconomic development’ project, which is reaching its final stage, in June 2010 thecentre started a monthly newsletter, the Global Language Strategy Monitor, which is circulated

1 China’s five-year plans for national economic and social development began in 1953. The tenth, eleventh and twelfthfive-year plans span the periods 2001–2005, 2006–2010 and 2011–2015 respectively. Before each period begins, extensivereviews of the current period and strategising for the coming period are conducted for the whole country and down tothe level of each institution, enabling adjustments and institutional re-alignments in line with the country’s macro goals ofdevelopment.



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among language-related government policy-making bodies, and in November 2010 hosted anational conference, ‘Policy and Planning in Foreign Language Education’.

2.2 Reforming the foreign language education system

As one of the top foreign language research centres in the country, the NRCFLE is striving tomake research more useful, not just for policy-making at the very top, but also for curriculumdesign, and even for teaching practice within the foreign language classroom.

The key link between macro and conceptual innovations and classroom reality is theteacher. Whether there are enough teachers, whether these teachers are ready for theinnovations proposed, and how innovations can be put into practice are issues of primaryconcern. Teacher education has therefore remained one of the key areas of research sincethe beginning of the NRCFLE. Three major types of teacher education research have beencarried out at the centre. The bulk of this effort has been exploratory and descriptive,focusing on fact-finding projects aimed at outlining targets for teacher education, chartingthe current state of teacher knowledge and teacher expertise, and determining what to donext (e.g. Liu & Dai 2004; Wu 2007). The second type of research on teacher educationexplores models of classroom-based, interventionist participatory action research. NRCFLEstaff and Ph.D. students have formed close ties with classroom teachers at both secondaryand tertiary levels, and are regularly visiting classes and conferencing with teacher groupsbefore and after classes. Despite their different themes, these on-going projects all stress thepractical usefulness of this research, and emphasise their desired outcome: that of turning in-service teachers into reflective agents for change and autonomous teaching researchers. Thethird type of teacher-development research represents a unique Chinese model, in whichlarge numbers of teachers go through short and intensive training workshops on variousnegotiated topics. These workshops started as teacher training camps during the summerholiday period, and have developed into regular training sessions, with longer sessions (threedays) for holidays and shorter sessions (two days) for weekends, and an audience of 100–350 classroom teachers for each workshop. An intensive, large-scale, high-calibre and verypopular model has been explored as a basis for the development of half a million in-serviceEnglish-language teachers (e.g., Zhang, Wu, Cao & Wang 2007). More research efforts arenow going into the fuller development and propagation of such a model.

In addition to teacher education, other major projects in this category are worthmentioning. Under the ‘teacher/teaching’ heading, the ‘English education with Chinesecharacteristics’ project tries to map out the ‘Chineseness’ of EFL teaching in China alongvertical (historical) and horizontal (international) dimensions. A case study of Beijing ForeignStudies University has produced some very revealing findings. Under the ‘learner/learning’heading, learning targets and learner language have also received research attention atthe NRCFLE. The ‘Competency Standards for Chinese EFL Learners’ project aims topin down, in theoretical terms, ideal learning targets for Chinese students. Based on theCommon European Framework of Reference, Bachman and Palmer’s latest conceptionof language competence (in press), and an analysis of the Chinese learning context, thisframework proposes a cognition-oriented approach that views language as a conduit of



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ideas. The framework has so far produced a theme-based ‘pool of descriptors’ that includesboth receptive and productive competences. Such a conceptual framework should havestrong curriculum and assessment implications. In addition, research that focuses on microacquisition issues is also actively conducted at the centre, including the ‘Chinese EFL learners’interlanguage’ project and the ‘acquisition of English syntax by Chinese learners’ project.

2.3 Language resources and information application

The NRCFLE boasts a strong team of corpus linguists. Three major project groups willbe of interest to applied linguist colleagues outside China. The first of these began withthe compilation of a 10-million-word parallel corpus of Chinese and English. Follow-upprojects include the compilation of a learner dictionary based on the parallel corpus anda standard Chinese–English dictionary for a machine translation system of organisationalcodes. The second group of projects is related to the compilation of learner corpora ofChinese EFL students, consisting of both spoken and written samples of English majors.On-going or recently completed projects based on these corpora include ‘a corpus-basedstudy of Chinese EFL speech patterns’ and ‘the developmental patterns of Chinese EFLlearners’ oral English’. The third group of projects is related to the second, but these are notexclusively dependent on learner corpora. They include the ‘large-scale automated ratingsystem of English compositions’ and the ‘large-scale automated rating system of translatedtexts’.

3. Summary

A decade after its formal establishment, research at the NRCFLE has gone from random,through formal and, finally, to strategic. Researchers at the centre are increasingly awareof their social and educational responsibilities and keen on making their applied linguisticsresearch useful at policy-making and classroom levels.

References

Bachman, L. F. & A. S. Palmer (in press). Language assessment in the real world: Developing language assessmentsand justifying their use. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Liu, R. & M. Dai (2004). Zhongguo gaoxiao waiyu jiaoxue gaige xianzhuang ji fazhan celue yanjiu [The reformstatus and development strategy of tertiary level foreign language teaching in China]. Beijing: Foreign LanguageTeaching and Research Press.

Wu, Y. (ed.) (2007). Zhongguo gaoxiao yingyu jiaoshi jiaoyu yu fazhan yanjiu [Teacher education and development oftertiary level EFL teachers in China]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

Zhang, L., Y. Wu, R. Cao & W. Wang (2007). Zhuantishi waiyu jiaoshi peixun ge’an yanjiu [A casestudy of a theme-based teacher training model]. In Y. Wu (ed.), 342–389.

Yongqi GuVictoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

[email protected]


national research centre for foreign language education, beijing foreign studies university

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