Business English Teaching In Late Qing Dynasty: Its Origin And Evolution

After years of unremitting efforts, business English (BE) has formally become anundergraduate major in universities and BE teaching develops from a spontaneousstate to a conscious stage. Nevertheless, no systematic research has ever been made intothe historical development of business English teaching in China. Some historical factsregarding BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty have been mentioned by researchers ofvarious fields in their historical studies of the English teaching in modern China. Whilethe sporadic historical facts, to some extent, fill the gaps of providing some facts aboutthe history of BE teaching, yet no systematic study with the history of BE teaching as theresearch focus has ever been conducted. This reflects to a certain extent the lack of theconsciousness of studying the history of BE teaching, and is disadvantageous to theformation of the intact history of China’s BE teaching. For this reason, this research, withthe main purpose of finding the “real” history from historical ashes by accessing tohistorical facts, studies the origin and evolution of business English teaching in China.This research, with the social needs of late Qing Dynasty as the research context,with the BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty as the starting point, and with the history ofBE teaching, evolution of business English language and BE materials development oflate Qing Dynasty as the focuses, offers a macro development and a micro study of theBE teaching in late Qing Dynasty, explores the evolution of business English languageand the social and cultural impacts of BE teaching, and studies the evolution,characteristics, principles and styles of BE teaching materials. The main researchquestions addressed are as follows:1. How did the BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty evolve and what were its mainfeatures?This research question may be subdivided into the following questions: Whatschools offered BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty? And what were their respectivemotives for offering BE teaching? What features did their respective course designs have?What roles did the BE teaching play and what weaknesses did it have? What teachingapproaches were adopted? What properties did the BE courses have? Was there anyeducation planning in the BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty? If yes, in which ways wasthe education planning reflected?2. How did the Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) as the business English language mainly for non-governmental business transaction originate and evolve in late QingDynasty? What were its linguistic features and socio-cultural impacts?3. How did the BE teaching materials evolve in late Qing Dynasty? Whatcharacteristics, principles and styles did the then BE teaching materials have? How canthe business English teaching materials be evaluated?This research involves linguistics, history and pedagogy. It takes BE teaching as themain research theme with reference to historic and pedagogical research methods. Thedissertation uses historic research method to conduct a textural research of the origin andevolution of BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty, and uses comparative method, case studyand content analysis method to analyze and evaluate the BE teaching and materialsdevelopment of late Qing Dynasty. The research has mainly got the following results.1. About the evolution and features of BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty(1) BE teaching schools and their respective motives of late Qing Dynasty. The BEteaching in public schools exhibited an initiative in the forced opening-up context; the BEteaching in the missionary schools was an interests-oriented secular and utilitarian choice;and the BE teaching in private schools was a needs-driven non-formal teaching. Thedifference in the motives of BE teaching reflected the difference of the needs for BEtalents.(2) BE course design and teaching of late Qing Dynasty.(a) Public schools offeredcontent-based BE courses and English language courses with some business knowledge,and the business translation practice in public schools became the pioneer of translatingwestern business works into Chinese.(b) The BE course design in missionary schoolsevolved from content-based ESP courses to skill-based and content-based BE courseswhich were further expanded and deepened with the development of missionaryschools and were finally developed into modern BE teaching based on professionaleducation.(c) The BE teaching in private schools centered around English languageskills and business and trade knowledge, and was skill-based, vocation-oriented andhence very practical.(d) The educational system reform of late Qing Dynastycontributed to the gradual decline of BE teaching in public schools, and also made theBE vocational education possible.(3) The BE teaching properties, teaching approaches, and education planning oflate Qing Dynasty.(a) BE teaching evolved from pre-institutional education toinstitutional education, there existing formal and non-formal BE education andinformal BE learning.(b) BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty included skill-based andcontent-based BE courses.(c) Such teaching approaches as Grammar-translation method, Gouin Series Method, content-based instruction (CBI) and the pidgin Englishteaching method were adopted in the BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty and had theirspecific historicity, appropriateness and communication-orientation.(d) The educationplanning in the BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty evolved from spontaneity toconsciousness, and was reflected in the educational administrative organization, coursedesign, and textbook editing, choosing and examining management.(4) The roles and weaknesses of the BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty. Thehistorical significance:(a) The BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty offering stronglyneeds-oriented skill-based and content-based BE courses pioneered the BE teaching inChina;(b) The BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty cultivated a good number of talentsbadly needed by the then society, and witnessed and accelerated to a certain extent themodernization process;(c) The BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty was the earliestpractice in China to cultivate interdisciplinary talents;(d) The BE teaching of late QingDynasty was a barometer and manifestation of the gradually open social mentality.However, due to the historical limitations, there were some weaknesses in thethen BE teaching:(a) The BE teaching in public schools was sporadic and occurring atirregular points in time, and didn’t grow into large scale and common phenomenon.(b)The teaching in missionary schools was all the time a secular and utilitarian choice ofits missionary teaching with religious nature.(c) The BE teaching in private schoolswas of strong spontaneity, blindness and pure instrumental motive.(d) Most of the BElearners could only participate in the modernization process on the practice levelrather than lead the modernization process in the sense of ideology and value due tothe lack of teaching of the essence of the western learning and lack of culturalawareness in the BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty.2. About the business English language of late Qing Dynasty(1) The relationship between CPE and the early BE. CPE widely used in thecoastal trading ports was closely related to and obviously characteristic of businessEnglish, serving the Sino-western trade and commerce in the trading ports.(2) The evolution of the early business English.(a) Canton English and ShanghaiPidgin English were the lingua franca for Sino-western trade and commerce in theCanton System and Treaty System respectively.(b) With the gradual disappearing ofthe internal and external conditions contributing to its origin and development, theloss of the social, physical and mental basis of its existence and development resultedin CPE’s attrition and final withdrawal from Sino-western business transaction.(3) The linguistic property of the early business English.(a) In terms of social linguistics, CPE was a mixed language used in trade transaction between variouslanguage groups, and the way in which CPE came into being differed from thetraditional language family tree.(b) From the perspective of the second languageacquisition, CPE was a limited second language acquisition with its formationsomewhat similar to the fossilization of the interlanguage; the CPE evolution basicallycomplied with the Interlanguage Theory.(4) The socio-cultural implications of early business English. CPE was markedwith social stigma, witnessed the developments of early Sino-western businesstransaction and the social changes, reflected the changes in the attitudes towardforeign languages and western cultures in the trading ports, and the instrumentalism,deficiency of cross-cultural awareness, and conservative social mentality of the thensociety.3. About the BE teaching materials of late Qing Dynasty(1) The evolution of the BE teaching materials of late Qing Dynasty. The evolutionof the early BE teaching materials was characterized by “five changes”, i.e. change frombooks of mainly vocabulary and some conversation in the enlightenment period to BEtextbooks of writing and conversation in the initial development period; from books withthe English pronunciation indicated in Chinese to books with IPA pronunciation; fromword-centered to sentence-centered BE books; from materials in CPE to materials instandard English; from quasi-BE textbooks with some daily English plus some businessEnglish to business-only BE textbooks; and from advocating learning method of rotelearning to the combination of imitating, analogous inference and progressive learning.(2) The features, basis and styles of BE teaching materials of late Qing Dynasty.(a)BE teaching materials were characterized by the diverse, practical and well-targetedbusiness topics and situations, design of self-instructional textbooks written by versatileauthors, and the initial awareness of cross-cultural communication.(b) Theunderstanding of the importance of BE and the understanding of the nature of businessEnglish and BE learning became respectively the practical and theoretical bases of BEcoursebooks development.(c) BE coursebooks were designed in three ways, i.e.meaning category used for compiling books of BE vocabulary, scattered arrangementused for compiling topic-based BE conversation coursebooks, and categories used forcompiling specimen-based BE writing coursebooks.(3) Evaluation of BE teaching materials of late Qing Dynasty. The BEcoursebooks of late Qing Dynasty had great significance:(a) The BE coursebooks of lateQing Dynasty met the learner’s needs for learning BE knowledge and mastering BE communicative skills;(b) The BE coursebooks of late Qing Dynasty were the earliest BEmaterials development in China, reflecting the earliest appeal for the early BE materialsdevelopment and indicating the long history of BE teaching and materials development;(c) The BE coursebooks of late Qing Dynasty witnessed the rise and fall of thepidgin-like business English in late Qing Dynasty, and recorded actual CPE data;(d) TheBE coursebooks of late Qing Dynasty reflected the history and culture of businesslanguage contact in late Qing Dynasty, and so became a very important basis for studyingSino-western language contact and the history of Sino-western business cultural exchange;(e) The BE coursebooks of late Qing Dynasty had a great impact on BE coursebooksdevelopment in Republican China (1912-1949) and thereafter.However, owing to various reasons, there existed many weaknesses in the BEcoursebooks of late Qing Dynasty.(a) Some of the then coursebooks were non-scientificand unreasonable in contents arrangement;(b) All the then coursebooks lacked theguidance of linguistic theories or English language teaching theories, and so no in-depthprocessing was made of the materials included in the BE coursesbooks;(c) The diction,sentences, styles, language and tone of the BE coursebooks were too formal and rigid;(d)Most of the BE coursebooks lacked learning supporting system;(e) The Chinese andwestern cultural differences and cross-cultural business communication were seldomintroduced in most of the BE coursebooks.This research into the origin and evolution of BE teaching of late Qing Dynastymakes a comprehensive and macro study of the overall development of BE teaching inlate Qing Dynasty, putting the sporadic historical facts together into a complete processand a superb panorama, makes a micro and more focused study of the BE course design,course types, teaching approaches, education planning, and BE teaching materialsdevelopment, etc. of late Qing Dynasty, and makes a brief evaluation of the roles, impactsand socio-cultural implications of BE teaching of late Qing Dynasty, hoping to well fleshout a complete picture of the evolution of BE teaching in late Qing Dynasty.