petergunn

In my opinion, compulsory English is a no-no. Chinese students are taught to pass exams, not how to speak English. These exams are often riddled with mistakes, and have one set answer for each question, although a range of answers could be right. For example, a question might ask "How do you go to school?" The correct answer might be "on foot", while an English native speaker would answer "I walk to school" This would result in the question being marked as wrong.

There are far too many examples of this fuzzy thinking.

Getting back to compulsory English. In my school there are about 6 classes of Grade 6 (it’s a primary school). In each class there are about 40 students. In each class there are about 15 students really keen to learn English, 15 struggling, and the rest don't care! They are the time wasters and the troublemakers who make it difficult for their classmates. Get them out of English classes, and let the willing ones work. It's not hard to teach (or learn) English if the desire is there.