Learning To "Speak": Educational Practice And Desire In A Speaking Training School

In the context of global education marketization,private tutoring has occupied most of Chinese students’ extracurricular time and become daily routine.The school have been unable to meet students and parents’ educational aspirations so that they turn to off-campus,including academic and non-academic training institutions.Most of literatures explored academic tutoring,but there are few of non-academic trainings,especially a specific non-academic education.This paper attempts to explore how speaking training can be selected,participated,basing a speaking training school in a second-tier city as a case.Through interviewing and observing with relevant people(students,parents,teachers,principals),the author explores the deepen reasons for the participation of students and parents,the operation and participation mechanism of speaking training school,and how do people understand the obtain of education.The study analyzes and explains the findings basing Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory,and draws the following four conclusions:First,the state of “speaking well” is needed in the context of diverse and high-frequency communication and interaction in the current society.This is an embodied cultural capital manifested by the practice of speech.Based on the desire and demand for this cultural capital,parents and students choose the legal education field,the speak training school,to produce the child’s cultural capital.Second,the speak-training schools cater to the educational expectations of students and parents by packaging the legitimacy of cultural capital.The school arranges students and parents to participate the daily practice(course teaching,stage performance,etc.).Students and parents witness the training and acquisition of speaking,and their understanding of education has also changed after participation.Third,speaking training ultimately cultivating children’s self-confidence,which allows the child to believe that he/she can produce his/her own cultural capital and present to others.Confidence can make children boldly practice discourse in the future field of life,produce cultural capital,and constantly achieve conversion and accumulation of capital,which will make children to obtain a "success" state.Fourth,there is correlation and priority between school education and speaking training.Although speaking education is considered to help children improve their self-confidence and increase their cultural capital.While students and parents who are under pressure of current Chinese education system still regard school education as the most important.Only when children get high scores,experience progression,or take the college entrance examination,can they enter the new life field.Finally,they can begin to gain practice and accumulate capital in the future.