Policies&Practices Of Students' English Communicative Competence Development In China,Japan And South Korea:A Language Ideology Focus

With the speeding up of globalization and internationalization,the importance of English in today's global communication is self-evident.In studies of global English,the focus of language ideology is a significant one.which covers not only how language is understood by governments but also how it is understood locally(Ramanathan,et.al.2009).In recent decades,the objectives of English education in China,Japan and South Korea are mostly expressed as to develop students' communicative competence.This thesis aims to view policies and practices of students'English communicative competence development in China,Japan and South Korea with a language ideology focus.This thesis combines the model of LPP study formulated by Spolsky(2004)and Seargeant(2009)' s approach of language ideology study.Three levels of government,university and students are examined in this thesis to study the discourse of communicative competence development within the educational field.Based on this,two research questions are raised.Firstly,whether there are patterns of recurrence concerning the understanding of communicative competence at the levels of government,university and students in all these three countries?Secondly,if so,whether these patterns of recurrence can be explained from cultural-historical perspective?Document analysis and questionnaire are adopted in this thesis to analyze and explore the policies and practices of students' communicative competence development.Firstly,current national English teaching outlines for senior high schools in China,Japan and South Korea and English curriculum designs for non-English majors of 2016 at three universities(Zhejiang University,Osaka University and Seoul National University)of the three countries are presented and analyzed to explore their understandings of the development of communicative competence.Further,123 freshmen at ZJU,94 freshmen at OU and 117 freshmen at SNU are investigated by questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward English courses and ELF,from which students' understandings of communicative competence development can be explored.Lastly,a comparative study of three cases leads to the exploration of whether there are similar language ideologies concerning English communicative competence development in the educational fields of the three countries and possible explanations.Conclusions can be drawn that,there exist patterns of recurrence on understandings of communicative competence development at the levels of government,university and students in the three countries,and this can be explained from cultural-historical perspective.Fundamentally,the development of communicative competence is to develop students,ability to use English rather than English linguistic knowledge,while traditional English education focuses on linguistic knowledge learning(Ali 2013).China,Japan and South Korea are all in the "Confucian cultural block"(Gottlieb and Chen 2001),which pursues systematic acquisition of knowledge in learning.Together with the examination systems in history,accumulation of standardized linguistic knowledge has long been treated as the core for English learning.Meanwhile,there exists a limited understanding of "communicative competence" that equals it with the development of listening and speaking abilities,regardless of the integration of skills and knowledge which is the essence of the concept of communicative competence.Listening and speaking abilities are only a part of communicative competence,improving students' ELF awareness,then guiding students to probe into the relationship between linguistic forms and the meaning conveyed may help improve their communicative competence in real communication and can be incorporated in future English education.The study of language policies and practices of students' English communicative competence development in China,Japan and South Korea with an ideology focus has important implications to the study of language education policy making and implementation.