On December 15th Dr. Jun Liu, associate provost of Georgia State University, USA, delivered an academic lecture on the subject of The Future of English Language Teaching for the faculties and students of the college of foreign studies at Nanjing Agricultural University. Dr. Jun Liu is in charge of international affairs at Georgia State University, USA. He was the chairman, the first one from non-English speaking countries, of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). At present, Dr. Liu works as a board member of TIRF, the vice-chairman of TCSOL, as well as the senior consultant of Hanban. Dr. Liu has produced a lot of great scholarly works in his fields of study, including Language Policy, Global Language Teaching, Intercultural Communication, Curriculum Standards Development, Teacher Learning, and Second Language Acquisition.
Through statistically analyzing the academic papers on English Language Teaching published in TESOL Quarterly from 1967 to 2011, Dr. Liu revealed the holistic picture of this field in the last decades, and insightfully saw the future trend of development. There are four things worth our attention: ESP and EAP gradually bear more importance in English Language Teaching; English Language Teaching maintains a predominant status; the defining boundary between native English speakers and non-native English speakers are broken down; and the role of English is continuously changing. Throughout the years, English has been changed from EFL/ESL to EIL (English as an International language), then to EWL (English as a World language)，EGL (English as a Global language)，ELF (English as Lingual Franca), and then to EEL (English as Everyone’s language).
What will influence the future of English language teaching? Dr. Liu pointed out that the main study focuses of future English Language Teaching will be on Language Policy and Standards, Language Learners and Language Learning, Curriculum Design and Teaching Materials, as well as Teacher Learning and Professional Development of Teachers. From now on, teachers not only teach language skills, but, more importantly, cultivate globalized students as global citizens. Under the influence of all these and more, Dr. Liu put forward the six abilities for future English teachers: make constant and effective changes; learn and speak at least one other language; teaching less to maximize learning; teach English in at least one subject area; familiarize oneself with new learning and teaching modes; ensure learning outside the classroom.
Prof. Ma Dongmei and Prof. Zhu Shanhua, associate provosts of the School of Foreign Languages of Southeast University, along with other professors from Southeast university like Prof. Tao Yun, also attended the lecture. Prof. Tao discussed with Dr. Liu the issues of English language teaching in higher education and general EAP.
(Translated by Feng Ye)
