A study of English as a lingua franca in teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages

Chinese-only indicates an exclusive use of Chinese when teaching or learning it as a target language. As an overriding principle, Chinese-only has dominated the field of teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages (TCSOL) for many decades. However, English as a lingua franca (ELF) is applied implicitly and covertly as the dynamic medium of instruction (MoI) in TCSOL. In order to investigate the attitudes of students and beliefs of teachers towards the Chinese-only principle and ELF pedagogy, this study surveyed 115 students by questionnaires and invited eight teachers to participate in one-to-one in-depth interviews in two universities in Beijing. Findings from questionnaires and interviews indicated discrepancies between theory and practice of pedagogies. In fact, students and teachers generally switched codes between Chinese and English for pedagogical and communicative purpose in learning and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. This study will conclude by suggesting teachers to establish a multilingual pedagogy in their classes by adopting the ELF pedagogy as the first step. Copyright © 2010 Common Ground, Danping Wang.