As claimed in Chapter 3 (see 3.3.3.1), the MFL educational programme in China is L2 monolingual, i.e. Mandarin (the participants‟ L2) is the only medium of instruction. This constitutes a submersion program. Only in the very beginning of the course did participants report that the lecturers made use of English for a very short time. Chinese lecturers are seldom able to speak other languages. This was unanimously confirmed in the interviews.
Different students showed different preferences in the medium of instruction. Some felt it was better to use English (and/or students‟ native languages) and Chinese in the beginning. Once students became familiar with Chinese, they welcomed its use as the medium of instruction. Huizi, a 3rd year student from Thailand with a major in tourism, is at TUST for short-term language practice. She said:
Three of them (lecturers) could not speak English, not even one word, but others used English. They used Chinese more than English in the beginning. I do not like my lecturers to speak English. I have come to study Chinese not English. So I prefer my lecturers to use Chinese so I can remember it.
Russian student, Tatiana, class representative, had a similar opinion:
I think in the beginning lecturers should use Chinese to teach us pronunciation; it lets us realise how this language sounds. The period can be six months. During complex lessons such as grammar, the lecturer may use Russian (my home language) to teach.
American classmate, Joe agreed:
I prefer the lecturer to use the target language [Chinese] to teach. But the Chinese language is really different from other European languages so it is necessary to use English, my home language, sometimes.
Swedish student, Greta had a year‟s study experience at BLCU and appreciated the use of Chinese as the medium of instruction:
I like my lecturer‟s teaching method and system very much, because she only uses the Chinese language. In the beginning she used both English and Chinese but now she only speaks in Chinese… It is better to use both English and Chinese in the beginning, but later I prefer the lecturers use only Chinese. So I can get used to the sound. I practise listening skills every day.
A contrasting opinion was given by Spanish student, Maria who commented on the difficulty experienced by new students when Chinese is used as the medium of instruction: “It is very
difficult. All my lecturers can only speak Chinese and they cannot speak English, not even one sentence. It was really very difficult for me in the beginning.”
Thai student, Huilin commenced on her studies of the Chinese language in high school in Thailand. She was able to appreciate the advantages linked to using Chinese as the medium of instruction going back to her earlier experience in her home country.
could not speak English or Thai. So she only used Chinese to teach. All my classmates did not listen to her. I still remember that I was playing cards in her class and I said to her, „I do not understand.‟ She said in English: „One day you will speak Chinese.‟ I responded: „That will be impossible.‟ But now I can speak Chinese! The Chinese I learned from her was during our natural conversations and not from formal study. She spoke in Chinese every day and I listened. When I came to Beijing in the beginning I was used to Chinese and it was the same as in Thailand.
The participants‟ experiences were confirmed by my own experience of ten years of MFL teaching in China. I never used English or any other language during teaching; Mandarin was used even during beginner‟s classes (see 1.4).
Mandarin Chinese is also the medium of social interaction between students during their class in China. The student body is international, representing a number of different countries; thus Mandarin is the lingua franca in the class. The „advanced level‟ class at NU comprises 27 students. This includes Joe from the US, Tatiana from Russia and Shana from Israel. Shana commented: “We have classmates from about ten countries: from Asia to Europe.” The postgraduate (Masters) class at NU has six students, each from a different country. Vietnamese Amei said: “Our classmates come from six different countries so we must use Chinese to
communicate with each other. We speak in Chinese in the classroom, in the student dormitory, at any time when we need to talk.” Yilang, a Japanese 4th year student from NU commented: “I
have South Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Malaysian, Russian students in my class! A total of five nationalities are in my class. I use Chinese to chat to my classmates.” Professor Z, the
director of the „high level‟ class at BLCU told me: “I have 20 students in my class; they come
from 11 different countries: South Korea, Kirghizia, Kazakstan, Peru, Japan, Thailand, Madagascar, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Indonesia, and Mongolia.”
In contrast, in South Africa English is the medium of instruction during MFL classes. This constitutes a L1 monolingual educational programme. According to Table 2.4, in L1 monolingual programmes, L1 (English or Afrikaans in this case) is the medium of instruction and L2 (Mandarin) is the subject of classroom study. Learning MFL in South Africa can be located in L1 monolingual programmes, although the teachers start to use Mandarin as medium
of instruction very gradually in the higher levels. This is confirmed by the following interview excerpts.
Linda, a student with six month‟s study experience at SU said:
My lecturer uses English. Sometime she uses some Chinese phrases but at this time we are not good enough to use Chinese. I hear that in the third year, they speak Chinese. I think we need to become good enough then the lecturer can also speak Chinese.
Third year student Tony made the same point:
They [lecturers] try to speak Mandarin but we do not know enough so they have to speak English. The other lecturer uses German. She used to live in Germany so she normally uses either English or German.
Similarly, 2nd year student, Pease at SU said:
Lecturers use English because many people do not understand Chinese well. Some students have been China in my class but some have never been China so we have different levels in one class. If the Chinese lecturer speaks in Chinese, two students understand but others do not understand completely. My lecturer used Chinese but they did not understand so she changes to English. My Chinese level is higher than other but we are in one class. So we do have a problem around language of communication.
UCT has only one lecturer; I visited his class twice and found that he also used English as the medium of instruction. Unisa is a distance teaching institution and English is used as the instructional language in the tutorial letters and textbooks for MFL courses.
Furthermore, in South Africa, social interaction in the classroom is usually in English or Afrikaans. “Most of us come from South Africa, one girl comes from Namibia. Maybe one or
two come from another country, but most of us are South African,” commented a SU student,
Linda, in her 1st year of Mandarin. A 2nd year student at SU, John, said: “We have one student
who comes from Angola. Oh and I remember another one from Libya, and most of them are South African; few are from overseas.” Another 3rd year student, Tony, confirmed: “We have
one student from Namibia. One comes from Rwanda, others are South African.” In the 2nd year class, Pease confirmed: “They are all South Africans in my class.”
Other student remarks confirmed the use of English or Afrikaans as the medium of communication for social discourse:
“We use English. We never speak Chinese after class. Sometimes we practise for oral but that is maybe once a day, so it is not a common thing.”
“English is the medium after class.”
“We use Afrikaans. Maybe we should try to speak a little bit more Chinese.” “We use English, of course. Every week we have a conversation class for Mandarin, extra. It is from 5:00 to 6:00 pm on Tuesday. It is free to come or not for students but our lecturer will be there.”
“We try to speak Chinese if we do not know something we turn to go back into English. Not necessarily a good thing.”
“Mostly it is English. Sometime we depend, like we have Chinese jokes. If something we brought it together in class, we will mention it in Chinese.”
Interestingly, participants currently studying abroad in China but who had commenced Chinese study in their home countries echoed the experience of the participants in South Africa in this regard. At overseas institutions, it is also common to use the home language of the respective country as the medium of instruction. NU student, Amei, came from Vietnam:
My teacher used mother tongue [Vietnamese] in Vietnam. Our class had more than 20 students in Vietnam. Our textbooks were in English. Most of the time teachers used Vietnamese.
Thai student, Minyue at BLCU said: “My Chinese teachers in Thailand used Thai to teach us.
as a teaching language.” Shana came from Israel and mentioned: “In Israel Chinese lecturers used Israeli to teach MFL; they are powerful!” Shana‟s choice of the word „powerful‟ was
meant to convey her admiration for the bilingual competence of the Chinese lecturers who could speak Israeli as well as Chinese.
The medium of instruction is an on-going debate among language teachers, i.e. whether or not to use the target language for foreign language teaching in the classroom (Stanley 2002:22). Some teachers resist using the home language as they are concerned that learners will not understand and will not be able to follow instructions; they themselves sometimes do not know enough of the target language to be able to be effective users. Sometimes the target language is so difficult that they must explain it in home language otherwise they will lose control of the class. In some cases, teachers may have inherited a class whose previous teacher spoke mostly in the home language (Curtain 2013:3).
On the other hand, some teachers support the use of the target language. Curtain (2013:1) recommends that the target language be used for at least 90% of the time. It is especially important that the teacher use the new language for regular classroom tasks, such as giving directions and managing behaviour, because this demonstrates to the students that the new language is useful and works for all the business of the classroom. Certainly in this study it is clear that learners benefit from as much language immersion as possible. However, the question that remains is how much Mandarin can be used fruitfully in a country like South Africa to facilitate learning without „losing‟ the students.