东西方教育Ⅱ.docVIP

东西方教育ⅡEducation: East and WestⅡ The following passage is the second of three articles which compare Eastern and Western education styles. These comparisons are made from the point of view of Paul Unwin, a student who has studied Chinese in China and the UK. Here, he tells Bilingual Time about the differences between the higher education systems in the two countries in teaching foreign languages, and the benefits and disadvantages of each, and also his decision to begin a higher education course which requires study in two different continents. he decision to begin studying Chinese was not one which I had to deliberate over for a lengthy period when the right time came. I had withdrawn from my earlier studies in Fine Art in summer 1999 after the semi-completion of a BA Honours degree which I began straight after leaving school, with a view to taking some time out of education, finding a job, and considering my future possibilities (and hopefully maturing somewhat). It was during this summer which I made my first trip to China with a school friend, ostensibly because although we had both already long held a general interest in East Asia, yet in fact our first choice destination of Japan was financially ①out of bounds to us both... After several years of manual jobs, punctuated by several more trips to China, I felt I had the desire to return to university and higher education, to study Mandarin Chinese. The course structure consisted of one year in London, a compulsory year in Beijing studying the language at a university there with other foreign students of Chinese (mainly Korean and Japanese, but including many different nationalities), and on return two more years study in London. The first year in London of studying a foreign language so different from English is an experience which some students find harrowing and some adapt to quickly. The teaching method is similar to that which can be found in language schools all over the West - the main targ