becoming global citizens through bilingualism english learning in the lives of university students in china成为全球公民通过双语英语学习在中国大学生的生活.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Education Research International Volume 2011, Article ID 805160, 9 pages doi:10.1155/2011/805160 Research Article Becoming Global Citizens through Bilingualism: English Learning in the Lives of University Students in China Yangguang Chen1, 2 1 Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK 2 College of Educational Science and Technology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 35007, China Correspondence should be addressed to Yangguang Chen, yangguang@chen6279.freeserve.co.uk Received 27 December 2010; Revised 30 May 2011; Accepted 4 August 2011 Academic Editor: Eric Z. F. Liu Copyright © 2011 Yangguang Chen. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The ongoing globalisation has led to a tremendous expansion of the English language. With China striving to become part of the world economy since the late 1970’s, there has been a great emphasis placed on the education of young people to become a world citizen with fluent English. “Being a global citizen” is having strong interests in global issues, cultivating the understanding and appreciation of diverse values, and enhancing country’s competitiveness. All this however needs to be realized through communication in English, the world language. Improving communicative competence among Chinese learners of English depends on how English is learnt in the FL classroom and how it gets practiced outside the classroom. Data drawn from English corners, English clubs and English church all show that those informal learning settings have a complenta