A Study On Rhetorical Education:Implications And Recommendations For Educating English Majors In China

As a subject of study devoted to the understanding and application of the power of language, rhetoric figures prominently in the evolution of western civilization, affecting practically all the social activities ranging from the generation, expression and communication of personal opinions to the shaping and sustaining of cultures. Therefore, an understanding of rhetoric is the prerequisite of truly understanding the West and its education. This is particularly the case for English majors in China, who are supposedly adept at cross-cultural communication. Unfortunately, due to historical and cultural limitations, "rhetoric" in China has traditionally been equated with figures and tropes, therefore often dismissed as lacking real value for either academic research or pedagogical practices. The present historical and cross-cultural study represents an attempt to bridge this gap by drawing on rhetorical education in the western tradition.Based on a historical survey of rhetorical education, this study outlines its main pedagogical forms as well as three prominent features, and then proceeds to establish the relation between rhetoric and the education of English majors in China. The historical survey of theoretical achievements and pedagogical practices demonstrates rhetoric's unparalleled prominence in Western education from Ancient Greece to the late 19th century (and this postmodern era). Meanwhile, it identifies the root for the predicament rhetoric had found itself trapped in since the Enlightenment. The critical review of its main features and pedagogies sheds new light on rhetoric's impact upon efforts to foster the communicative competence, imagination, critical thinking, creativity, and civic virtues. The rhetorical examination of foreign language education in China in general, and education of English majors in particular, testifies to a conceptual lag in discourse beween China and the West, which lies at the core of the chronic inefficiency of English education in China. Though rhetorical education in the western tradtion constitutes the bulk of the present study, our explicit aim is to enhance our own English education by introducing and integrating rhetorical resources into its conceptual framework.