An Analysis of the Gap between Oral and Academic Writing English Proficiency among Graduate Students from Mainland China

Mainland Chinese graduate students in North America generally exhibit a common pattern of English proficiency: academic writing performance greatly exceeds oral performance. Many linguistic, cultural, and educational factors contribute to different aspects of this phenomenon. In this essay, the causalities, along with the main points of understanding and assumptions are analyzed through a literature review and generated from my own experience and observations. The performance gap appears largely to be the result of the remote phonological relationship between English and Mandarin, Chinese traditional cultural and philosophical influences on the educational approach, and constraints of the current situation in Mainland China. However, these hypotheses need to be tested and substantiated in further empirical studies. TABLE OF CONTENT Introduction.................................................................................................... 1 Theories on Variation of Language Proficiency.......................................................... 3 The Cross-linguistic Transfer of Mandarin and English.................................................. 4 The Essence of Chinese Traditional Culture and Educational Philosophy: Confucianism......... 7 The Constrained Reality in Mainland China.............................................................. 9 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 13 References...................................................................................................... 16 Appendix........................................................................................................ 20 A Contrastive Analysis of the Transfer from Mandarin to English................................... 18 A Description of EFL Class in Mainland China........................................................ 19 The Gap between Oral and Written Proficiency......................................................... 20 Introduction Many researchers have reported on general language difficulties of ethnic college students in adapting to the Canadian educational system. However, based on my observations and peer experience, perhaps because of the constraints experienced in Mainland China (from here on referred to as China) in relation to EFL (English as a foreign language) education, significant cultural and linguistic differences, etc., Chinese graduate students appear to have their own pattern. They exhibit “impressive strengths in certain reading and writing skills” (Belfiore et al., 1982:33). As compared to being relatively successful at academic writing, they seem to have particular difficulty in verbal communication/performance, such as engaging in discussions, debates, doing presentations and other oral academic activities. Fu describes this problem as follows: