Heaven or Hell Faces English Teaching: After Chinese Gaokao Removes English
The educational reform policy that English will be removed from Gaokao (College Entrance Examination) in 2017 arouses hot concern from the society. This paper comprehensively analyzes the current situations faced by English teaching, and then comes up with strategies to deal with the existing problems. It is advised that educators should take the right attitude towards the changes in the English exam, and make efforts to improve students' English comprehensive competence. In this way, educators can gradually realize the transition from examination oriented education to quality education, and promote English teaching cause in China in the long term. KEYWORD: English teaching; Exam reform; Gaokao International Conference on Social Science, Education Management and Sports Education (SSEMSE 2015) (c) 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 105 2.2 English is a useful tool in multilateral communication. With the rapid progress of economic globalization, English has become an indispensable tool for international communication (Kumaravadivelu. 2013) After all, English is the most prevalent language throughout the world. It is well recognized that most developed economies are predominantly English speaking countries and 90% of the countries use English as the official language. Thus most of the reference database use English as the source language in mainstream scientific literature (Shi.2013) "Long term Educational Reform and Development Plan (2010 2020)" made it clear that promoting internationalization of higher education, training professionals in the field and internationally competitive talents are the purpose for language learners. Therefore, in order to reach the aim and to meet the need of international exchanges, schools should train students to make oral presentations in English, read professional English literature, and master international communication capabilities (Wang et al.2014) According to the studies by experts of foreign language, only when students' vocabulary is more than 8000, they can meet the basic requirement of professional learning and application. In China, the minimal vocabulary limit in high school graduates is set as 3500 according to the Education administration bureau. Even though, English course is needed in college to help students lay a solid foundation for accelerating further reading. Unfortunately, such minimal limit has been reduced to 3080 words in the newest policy, posing great obstacles to college freshmen because limited vocabulary cannot help their professional learning when reading English materials, and will restrict their professional development to some extent. Primary and secondary stage is the critical period of language learning. Compared with adults, students of this age group have more advantages when learning foreign languages, like prompt response, active thinking, good memory, little psychological burden, etc. which are favorable conditions for foreign language learning. Furthermore, during the process of learning, students of 8 18 years old can better understand the outside world, absorb advanced scientific and cultural knowledge, enrich cognitive forms, and promote the development of thinking at the same time. In other words, learning English provides them with precious opportunities for future development, which laid a favorable foundation for development. Once missing this special stage, these students are bound to spend more time and effort, but with less return. 3 STRATEGIES NEEDED TO ENHANCE ENGLISH TEACHING Under the baton of the Gaokao for English, high school English education emphasizes high scores instead of English proficiency. Meanwhile, it emphasizes lexical and syntactic explanation rather than the communication function of language. Take reading comprehension for example, many teachers are used to teaching like this: teach grammar, syntax, key language points one by one, but neglecting teaching the structure, main idea, the writing style, and so on. Just like the old saying goes, "be unable to see the wood for the trees." To follow the stream, more and more people in China started to learn English in recent years(Chen et al.2013) To people's surprise, although plenty of time and money are spent on English, the learning outcome is still unsatisfactory. "China has the largest population in the world to study English, but actually is the least efficient country." According to the report from " EF English Proficiency Index Report " in 2007, the scores from several BRICK countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and India, and Russia are significantly lower than that of China(Sun et al.2014) But recent report has shown that their scores have already overtaken China. This phenomenon should draw attention from educational authorities. It reveals the fact that English education of high school students cannot be weakened, on the contrary, it has to be strengthened. On the issue of "what to learn and how to learn English," the exam reform is paving a new way to solve the question. It is reported that the reform tries to solve the problem of English teaching in China from the aspect of examination. This precisely stresses the importance of learning a new language, making it change from the wrong exam oriented education to quality oriented education. In addition, it provides students with comprehensive language proficiency training to help them use English fluently and freely. 3.1 Strategies adopted by school authorities Education is the cause of the whole society. Every measure that reforms education system will lead to great concern from society, which can be described as a "butterfly effect" The ultimate goal of the reform is to build a good education mechanism for the whole nation, which can make China become an innovative country with outstanding and international talents. The reform policy is actually a huge move towards quality education. As we know, quality education is the direction and ultimate goal of educational reform, which is different from the traditional teaching model focusing on exams and grades. As a language, English learning should