System 53 (2015) 60e72

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System
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/system

Teaching English as an international language in China:

Investigating university teachers' and students' attitudes
towards China English
Weihong Wang a, b, *
a
China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China
b
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study investigated the attitudes of Chinese university students and teachers towards
Received 8 December 2014 China English (CE), an emerging variety in China and the ideological underpinnings
Received in revised form 7 June 2015 beneath their attitudinal responses. In the study, 1589 university students and 193 English
Accepted 12 June 2015
teachers were asked to evaluate the understandability and acceptability of some potential
Available online 26 July 2015
features of CE with a questionnaire survey. Among them, 31 students and 33 teachers were
also invited to provide reasons for their survey answers. The study revealed that both the
Keywords:
student and teacher participants were reluctant to accept CE as a pedagogical model but
China English
English learners
their attitudes diverge as specific CE features were involved. The in-depth exploration of
English teachers their justifications identified that the widespread native speaker English ideology and
Language attitudes Chinglish stigma were more important reasons leading to their negative evaluations of CE
than concerns for the communicativeness of CE to the outside world. Findings of the study
may have important implications for English education in contexts where local varieties of
English are emerging.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The global spread of English has been reshaping the sociolinguistic realities of the language. It has led to the emergence of
a number of local English varieties in different places of the world (Bolton, 2012; Kachru, 1985). The rise of English for in-
ternational communication among people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds has also challenged the domi-
nance of native speaker English in English language education (Jenkins, 2006; Ke & Cahyani, 2014). Proposals have been made
to include more localised English varieties in the teaching and learning English enterprises alongside the conventionally
adopted standards of British and American English (Kirkpatrick, 2006; Sharifian, 2009). Nevertheless, attitude research has
persistently noted language learners' preference for native speaker English instead of other choices (Timmis, 2002; Young &
Walsh, 2010). Language learners were even found to be reluctant to accept the variety emerged in their own contexts (Chan,
2013). Therefore, it is necessary to find out what specific about these varieties impairs peoples' willingness to accept them as
alternative pedagogical models. To this end, China English (CE) was taken as a case in this mixed-method study to explore
university English learners' and teachers' perceptions of it in the context of China. Given that the number of English learners

* RM#109, Hui Oi Chow Science Building, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. Tel.: þ852 59839753.
E-mail address: wangwhw@connect.hku.hk.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.06.008
0346-251X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72 61

and/or users has well exceeded 400 million in mainland China (hereafter China, Wei & Su, 2012), the investigation may have
important implications for the localisation of English education in China and similar contexts.

2. Literature review

2.1. Problematising native speakerism in English language education

Native speaker English, typically British and/or American English, and their speakers have often been endorsed as target
models in English teaching and learning practices in many contexts (Cook, 2007; Yoo, 2014). The indiscriminate privilege of
native speakers and their English contributes to the creation of a pervasive culture of native speakerism in such contexts
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Waters, 2007). As Holliday (2005) argued, the over-representation of the native-speaker point of
view at the expense of non-native-speaker ones (native speakerism) had “a massive influence and exists to a greater or lesser
degree in the thinking of all ESOL [English to Speakers of Other Languages] educators” (p. 7). It produced “realities of
exclusion, discrimination and rationalizations for intervention and ‘cultural correction’” (Kabel, 2009, p. 17). With the
development of English in global contexts, the dominance of native English in education has been critically contested in
recent years. It has been argued that the adoption of native English as pedagogical models privileges native speakers as
sanctioned English owners and norm providers, whereas non-native speakers as underachieving learners and emulators
(Kirkpatrick, 2006). Power imbalance of such may create considerable inequities between those who haves and those who
have-nots (Nunan, 2003). What's more, to teach English as a native language also goes against the reality that many indig-
enous English varieties have already developed to express meanings in locally relevant ways and as identity markers for their
own speakers (Alsagoff, 2010). A native English model fails to attend the diversified realities of English in the global context.
Besides, for most learners who are living outside of Anglo-American countries, it is also impossible for them to achieve native-
like proficiency by learning English mainly through macroacquisition (Brutt-Griffler, 2002). A native speaker model actually
sets up an unattainable goal for them (McKay, 2010). More critically, a native speaker model does not necessarily guarantee
successful communication in the international arena with the increased participation of speakers from different linguistic and
cultural backgrounds (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011).
To address the dominance of native speaker English in language education, a variety of pedagogical proposals have been
made. Some suggest enhancing learners' linguistic flexibility by exposing them to various English varieties (Morrison &
White, 2005; Suzuki, 2011). Others recommend the teaching of international communication strategies to English learners
(Seidlhofer, 2011; Sifakis, 2009). Among them, one frequently discussed proposal is to integrate the variety generated in
learners' own local context into education. It is argued that a localised model is culturally, politically and linguistically more
relevant to teachers and learners in that context than a native speaker model (Kirkpatrick, 2006, 2007). It has the potential to
increase learners' ownership of English for it is closer to their own life and can enable them to communicate the culture and
values of their own country to international audience (McKay, 2010). In spite of such enthusiasm in promoting local English
varieties, there are still concerns about the appropriateness of having local varieties as pedagogical models in contexts where
English has restricted presence and has not yet developed into a legitimate variety (Bruthiaux, 2010). However, in countries
such as Japan, scholars have started calling for “the teaching of [Japanese] English as a de-Anglo-Americanised international
language” (Hino, 2009, p. 107). They argue that although standardised local varieties are not yet formed in many contexts,
“nativization indeed takes place […] in a way that both reflects and allows users to express their indigenous values” (Matsuda
& Friedrich, 2012, p. 20). Attitudinal studies, though have continually documented frontline teachers' and learners' preference
to native English, have also begun to notice participants' emerging appreciation and attachment to English developing in their
own context (McKenzie, 2008; Sasayama, 2013). More studies are needed to probe into the subtleties and nuances involved in
these attitudinal responses to local English varieties in different contexts.

2.2. China English and English language education in China

In China, English proficiency has long been promoted as indispensable for the nation's modernisation and internation-
alisation though English is seldom used for daily communication (Gao, 2012). English language education has been a
compulsory course in mainstream education from secondary schools to universities ever since 1978 and further expanded to
primary schools in the new millennium (Lam, 2005). At present, English has enjoyed the largest population of learners in
comparison with other foreign languages taught in China (Xu, 2010). Nevertheless, it is mainly native speaker English,
particularly American or British English, that has been advocated under the name of ‘standard English’ in the educational
system (Gil & Adamson, 2011).
In recent years, China English has been promoted as a developing English variety emerging in the context of China and a
possible pedagogical choice for Chinese English learners to challenge the dominance of native speaker English in China
(Deterding, 2006; Gao, Liao, & Li, 2014; Hu, 2004; Kirkpatrick, 2007; Xu, 2010). The term China English (CE) was initially put
forward by Ge (1980) in translation to refer to English expressions unique to the Chinese culture. However, it had not aroused
much attention at that time because with the dominance of native speaker English in education, English usages with Chinese
characteristics but deviating from native speaker norms had been pervasively taken as Chinese English or Chinglishdan
interlanguage that was produced by language learners in their learning process and was somewhere in-between their mother
tongue and the target language (Hu, 2004; Wei & Fei, 2003). For reasons of such, the two terms, Chinese English and Chinglish,
62 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72

have strong pejorative implications in China (He & Li, 2009; Henry, 2010). But for advocators of CE, English expressions with
Chinese characteristics are natural results when English encounters Chinese (Fang, 2008). As Kirkpatrick (2007) argued, with
the fast development of English in China, CE might be an inevitable outcome in the future and the very variety that could
genuinely empower Chinese learners and users of English:
I argue that although China was an expanding circle country following Kachru's classification, a Chinese variety of
English was developing there and developing faster than has been the case in outer circle countries. In such contexts, it
seems inevitable that the local endonormative model will become the one used in classrooms (Kirkpatrick, 2007, p.
192).
Xu (2010) joined Kirkpatrick (2007) and elaborated four possible benefits of teaching CE in China: 1) it better addresses the
future needs of Chinese English learners; 2) it contextualises the learning and teaching experiences of Chinese speakers; 3) it
maximises mother tongue experiences during the learning process; and 4) it raises learners' awareness of their Chinese
identity. Wen (2012) further proposed to reshape English education in China towards the teaching English as an international
language framework and put forward a three-dimensional pedagogic model to improve Chinese students' linguistic, cultural
and pragmatic competences within the framework. The learning of local English features and the ability to express local
values and cultures in English were included as indispensable components in her multi-competence developing model:
For linguistic component, learners are expected to be exposed to native varieties, non-native varieties, and those
localized features, which are needed to express the learner's own culture…they are encouraged to learn how to
describe and explain their own cultures in English to speakers from other countries (Wen, 2012, p. 86).
However, one has to admit that by emphasising the Chineseness of CE, it, in essence, acknowledges the influence of
Chinese language and culture in the development of CE, just like Chinese English/Chinglish. As a result, the three concepts may
not be neatly separated as explained in Hu (2004):
[T]here is no clear boundary between Chinglish and Chinese English on the one side and China English on the other: it
is not possible to place them neatly into two categories. Instead, they are situated on a continuum and progressively
merge (Hu, 2004, p. 27).
Because of the inseparability of CE, Chinese English and Chinglish, scholars tend to take CE as an emerging variety, or directly
call it Chinese English to highlight the developing nature of English in China (Kirkpatrick, 2007; Xu, 2006, 2010). In this study,
China English (CE) is adopted instead of Chinese English, considering the ‘stigma’ attached to the latter. However, these efforts
to conceptualise CE point to the potentiality to study the development of CE by investigating people's willingness to align with
Chinglish/Chinese English or CE in the continuum, and their desire to express Chinese cultures and identities while speaking
English. As primary English learners and/or users in China, classroom students' and teachers' attitudes deserve attention.
The few attitudinal investigations currently available seem to have revealed a progress in teachers' and students' evalu-
ation of CE. Both of the two earlier studies of Kirkpatrick and Xu (2002) and Hu (2004) found university students' over-
whelming support of native English, in particular American English, as pedagogical models in language education, and poor
identification with CE. Teachers in Hu (2005) seemed to be relevantly positive. She reported that although nearly 80% of the
teachers investigated preferred American English, CE was also accepted by 53% of them. The later study of He and Li (2009) on
both teachers and students identified their ascended support (62.6%) for the incorporation of “select features” of CE in the
classroom (He & Li, 2009, p. 79). But they did not specify what these ‘selected features’ would be. Built upon He and Li (2009),
He and Zhang (2010) explored possible ‘select features’ by examining CE pronunciation and grammar. They found that over
half of the participants (55.4%) had no problem with the Chinese accent in speaking English, but 71% of them insisted on
strictly following native speaker English norms of grammar. To conclude, it seems that Chinese university teachers and
learners do not reject CE as a whole.
Since a series of linguistic features of CE have been identified at phonological, lexical, syntactic, and discourse pragmatic
levels in literature (e.g. Bolton, 2003; Deterding, 2006; Kirkpatrick, 2007; Wei & Fei, 2003; Xu, 2006, 2010; Yang, 2005; Zhang,
2002), it is possible to expand the investigation of ‘select features’ from CE pronunciation and grammar in He and Zhang
(2010) to lexis and discourse pragmatics as well. What's more, Hu's (2004, 2005) separate investigations on students and
teachers seem to reveal that the two groups have different attitudes towards CE. There is a very recent study probing teachers'
attitudes towards concrete CE features (Yang & Zhang (2015) and revealing their pervasive dislignment with CE, but no
similar study on students has been available yet. Further research differentiating the two populations is necessary to pin
down the attitudinal progress identified in He and Li (2009) and He and Zhang (2010). In addition, previous studies are mainly
item-response surveys, which could collect data on participants' surface-level responses, but fail to explore the in-depth
reasons underpinning their attitudinal responses. To integrate CE in education, a deeper understanding on issues such as
why participants hold this or that attitude towards CE and how such attitudes are formed might be more enlightening.
Therefore, for pedagogical considerations, I framed the study in the following three questions:

(1) How do university teachers and students in China evaluate CE? What are their attitudinal responses towards CE
features in the area of phonology, lexis, syntax, and discourse pragmatics respectively?
(2) Are there any differences between teachers and students in their evaluation of CE?
 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72 63

(3) What are the reasons underlying teachers and students' attitudinal responses toward CE?

3. The inquiry

To address these questions, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted in the design. First, a survey in-
strument based on CE features identified in the literature (see the Appendix) was developed to gather quantitative data on the
acceptability of CE to the two major populations in educational settings, that is, teachers and students. The questionnaire used
18 language examples to elicit university English teachers and learners' attitudes towards CE and the examples covered four
major aspects of CE features discussed in the literature (i.e. features in phonology, lexes, syntax and discourse pragmatics). All
of the 18 examples were selected from previous studies as listed in the literature review section, but were revised slightly to
make sure that each example illustrated only one category of CE features. Specific to the 18 examples selected, Item 1 was
designed to elicit participants' attitudes towards phonological features of CE, Items 2e7 were lexical features, Items 8e13
syntactic features and Items 14e18 discourse pragmatic features. A list of language examples used in the study is also
enclosed in the Appendix. Phonological features of CE were presented together in one example for that was closer to real
communication situations where a series of phonological features usually occurred as a whole in a speech stream instead of
separately presented in different streams.
The questionnaire was administered to 1589 university students (785 males, 802 females, and 2 unspecified) and 193
university English teachers (38 males, 154 females, and 1 unspecified) through QQ d an instant messaging software widely
used among people in mainland China. The software provided participants easy access to the audio file needed to evaluate the
phonological features of CE in Item 1. The 1782 participants were from 12 universities in Hubei, Shan'xi, Sichuan, Hebei,
Shanxi and Henan provinces, two universities from each. The 1589 student participants were from a wide range disciplines
including Arts and Designing, Journalism and Communication, Business Management, Economics, Engineering, Computer
Sciences, Geology, Medicine, and Biology. Their length of formal English learning ranges from 6 to 15 years, with an average of
10.7 years. For the 193 teacher participants, their length of English teaching ranges from 2 to 37 years with an average of 8.6
years. The participants were invited to evaluate CE by making choices for the 18 language items in the questionnaire. For each
item, two dimensions of attitudes were to make: understandability (1 ¼ Yes, I understand it, 2 ¼ No, I don't understand it) and
acceptability (1 ¼ It is unacceptable to me, 2 ¼ I am not sure whether it is acceptable, 3 ¼ It is acceptable to me). Under-
standability was included for it could tell whether English with Chinese features causes understanding problems for its own
speakers. To make sure nothing else in the examples interrupting participants' judgment except those features investigated,
Chinese explanations were added to some difficult words that appeared in the questionnaire and necessary background
information was also given before the presentation of some conversation examples in the questionnaire.
To investigate reasons underpinning participants' attitudinal responses, 31 students (15 males, 16 females) and 33 teachers
(7 males, 26 females) from the 1782 participants (5e6 teachers and students from each university) were further asked to give
reasons to justify their choices to each questionnaire item while they were doing the item-response survey. At the end of the
survey, they were also required to comment on an open-ended question probing their opinions about having the English used
in the questionnaire in their college English classrooms.
For data analysis, the numerical data recording participants' choices for the 18 questionnaire items were analysed with the
statistical data processing software of SPSS18.0. Both mean scores and the percentages information about different choices in
the understandability and acceptability dimensions were calculated first by items, and then by categories (i.e. phonology,
lexis, syntax and discourse pragmatics) for teachers and students respectively. Considering the disproportion of students
(1589) and teachers (193) in the survey, data about the overall acceptability of CE were arrived by averaging the two sets of
scores from teachers and students respectively instead of treating all participants as an indiscriminate whole. To further
identify any attitudinal differences of participants to the four categories of CE features and the differences of participants'
attitudes to individual items within each category (within subjects differences), repeated measures ANOVA were conducted.
To examine the attitudinal differences between teachers and students (between subjects differences), independent samples t-
tests were conducted. For the qualitative data exploring reasons for participants' attitudinal responses to CE, the steps
proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994) for qualitative data analysis were employed to first outline an initial analytic cat-
egories, then develop and refine them into a coherent scheme and apply it to analyse all the data, and finally read and
compare the coding results reiteratively to generate any connections within/across categories. To be specific, I first analysed
all the reasons given by the participants in justifying their positive/ambiguous/negative evaluations of CE item by item, and
participant by participant. Then, I grouped all the reasons given by the participants into categories according to the teachers/
students divide and the positive/ambiguous/negative attitudes divide respectively. Last, I read and compared the categories
repeatedly to find out the underlying criteria participants adopted in their attitudinal responses to CE and the similarities or
differences between teachers and students in their judging of CE.

4. Findings

4.1. The participants' attitudinal responses to CE features in categories

The quantitative data in the study revealed low acceptability of CE to university teachers and students even though it was
understandable to most of them. As Table 1 demonstrates, an overwhelming majority of participants (exceeding 96%) had no
64 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72

Table 1
The acceptability of the four categories of CE features to university teachers and students.

Category Understandability Acceptability M SD F dfs p

1 (%) 2 (%) 1 (%) 2 (%) 3 (%)

Phonology 2.2 97.8 47.5 17.8 34.7 1.87 .80 56.16 2.01/3369.77 .000**
Lexis 3.9 96.1 47.7 22.2 30.2 1.83 .45
Syntax 2.6 97.4 50.2 17.5 32.3 1.82 .51
Discourse pragmatics 3.5 96.5 50.3 23.8 25.9 1.76 .53
Total 3.0 97.0 48.9 20.3 30.8 1.82 .41

Notes: 1, 2 in Understandability refer to Don't understand & Understand respectively; 1, 2, 3 in Acceptability refer to Reject, Uncertain, and Accept respectively;
**p < .001.

problem in understanding expressions with CE features, but only 30.8% chose to accept them. Nearly half of the participants
(48.9%) regarded them as unacceptable and another 20.3% were ambivalent towards them.
A repeated measures ANOVA, with Greenhouse-Geisser correction, was conducted to assess possible differences between
the average ratings of the four CE categories. Statistical results indicated that participants did rate the four categories of CE
features differently, F(2.01, 3369.77) ¼ 56.16, p ¼ .000 < .001, eta2 ¼ .09. The percentages, means and standard deviations for
the acceptability of CE are presented in Table 1 in order from the most acceptable to the least. The statistics suggested that
participants rated the phonological features of CE more highly than features in other categories. Polynomial contrasts
indicated, in support of this, there was a significant linear trend, F(1, 1678) ¼ 133.86, p ¼ .000 < .001, eta2 ¼ .07. In brief,
participants' attitudes towards CE varied across CE categories. Comparatively speaking, CE accents enjoyed higher accept-
ability (34.7%) than other features at the lexical (30.2%), syntactic (32.3%), and discourse pragmatic levels (25.9%). What's
more, understandability may not be a determining factor in the evaluation of CE, given a large proportion of participants
understood CE expressions in the questionnaire but still chose to reject them.
Table 2 demonstrates that participants not only evaluated the four CE categories differently, but also features within each
category. Results of repeated measures ANOVA with Greenhouse-Geisser correction indicated that the differences among
participants' responses to individual CE features reached statistical significance in all three CE categories, that is, the lexical
category F(4.72, 8294.48) ¼ 380.22, p ¼ .000 < .001, eta2 ¼ .46, the syntactic category, F(4.81, 8448.36) ¼ 299.49,
p ¼ .000 < .001, eta2 ¼ .45, and the discourse pragmatic category F(3.87, 6818.39) ¼ 169.12, p ¼ .000 < .001, eta2 ¼ .29.
Generally speaking, high percentages of participants rejected most CE features in syntactical and discourse pragmatic
categories, but their attitudes towards features in the lexical category vacillated. In the survey, three features of CE lexes were
examined with six questionnaire items. The first feature was the transliteration of Chinese pinyin into English. Two Chinese
transliterations were examineddone was Putonghua (Item 2), the other was Ganbei (Item 3). The two were selected because
they represented two different developing stages of Chinese transliterations. According to Xu (2010), Putonghua has been

Table 2
The acceptability of individual CE features in categories.

Item N Reject Uncertain Accept M SD Fa dfsa p

1 (%) 2 (%) 3 (%)

I2 1778 29.0 17.4 53.6 2.25 .88 380.22 4.72/8294.48 .000**
I3 1776 57.0 24.5 18.6 1.62 .77
I4 1778 31.8 28.8 39.5 2.08 .84
I5 1780 68.5 20.0 11.6 1.43 .69
I6 1778 39.2 18.3 42.6 1.55 .74
I7 1774 60.1 24.6 15.3 2.03 .85
I8 1775 63.5 17.5 19.1 1.56 .79 299.49 4.81/8448.36 .000**
I9 1778 71.2 16.9 12.0 1.41 .69
I10 1778 51.3 14.1 34.8 1.84 .91
I11 1777 44.7 21.6 33.8 1.89 .88
I12 1775 27.0 18.9 54.2 2.27 .86
I13 1777 43.3 16.2 40.6 1.97 .90
I14 1777 54.7 16.0 29.4 1.75 .87 169.12 3.87/6818.39 .000**
I15 1776 57.1 23.5 19.5 1.62 .79
I16 1776 32.4 28.4 39.2 2.07 .84
I17 1772 42.1 27.8 30.2 1.88 .84
I18 1772 64.6 23.8 11.6 1.47 .69

Notes:
**p < .001.
a
The F and dfs were adjusted according to the Greenhouse-Geisser correction.
 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72 65

comparatively established in English for some time and has gained popularity in literature. Besides, the concept or the thing it
refers to has no corresponding substitute in native English. Ganbei is still in the developing stage and has an English
equivalent Cheers. The statistical results demonstrated that more than half of the respondents (53.6%) accepted the estab-
lished transliteration of Chinese word Putonghua, but only 18.6% accepted the developing one Ganbei. A paired-samples t test
indicated that the differences between the two ratings (Item 2, M ¼ 2.24, SD ¼ .86; Item 3, M ¼ 1.53, SD ¼ .74) were sta-
tistically significant, t(1772) ¼ 28.97, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .89. The second lexical feature included was Chinese loan translation
or calque, that is, literal translation of Chinese concepts or idioms into English. One China-specific term (one country, two
systems in Item 4) and one Chinese-culture-bounded idiom (wear the same pair of trousers and breathe through one nostril in
Item 5) were examined in the questionnaire. For these two items, the paired-samples t test indicated that participants were
more open to English expressions specific to Chinese concepts or ideas (Item 4, M ¼ 2.09, SD ¼ .83) than the literarily
translated Chinese idioms or metaphors (Item 5, M ¼ 1.47, SD ¼ .71), t(1776) ¼ 26.93, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .80. The ratings in
Table 2 reveal that 39.5% of the participants accepted Item 4, while only 11.6% accepted Item 5. The third group of Chinese
English lexes was English words taking on semantic shifts in the process of nativisation in China, for example, save one's face in
Item 6 and back door in Item 7. In the study, 42.6% participants accepted the use of save one's face, but only 15.3% accepted back
door and the paired-samples t test indicated that the differences between the two (Item 6, M ¼ 1.53, SD ¼ .74; Item 7, M ¼ 1.79,
SD ¼ .87) were statistically significant, t(1770) ¼ 12.14, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .32. The findings seem to suggest that as a
developing variety, the acceptability of CE needs to be considered case by case. Some usages of CE are more established and
have the potential to be incorporated in classrooms, but others are still under development and not ready to be taught. It may
not be easy to generalise.

4.2. Teachers' and students' attitudes towards CE features in comparison

Table 3 lists the respective ratings of teachers and students to the four categories of CE features in the survey. On the whole,
both the mean scores of teacher participants' ratings and the percentages of teacher participants accepting CE were higher
than those of student participants'. Independent t tests indicated that these two groups differed significantly in their eval-
uation of CE in general, t(1679) ¼ 7.81, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .58, and the differences were particularly salient at the phono-
logical level, t(227.5) ¼ 12.89, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ 1.04; the lexical level, t(1731) ¼ 3.92, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .29, and the
syntactic level, t(1751) ¼ 2.22, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .18. Differences at the pragmatic level were also found but they did not
reach statistical significance, t(1751) ¼ 2.22, p ¼ .06 > .05, d ¼ .18.
The descriptive data further demonstrated that teachers (M ¼ 2.28, SD ¼ .86) evaluated CE phonology much more
positively than students (M ¼ 1.46, SD ¼ .74). This finding is slightly different from that in the previous study of He and Zhang
(2010). Both studies found that CE accents were more acceptable than other features of CE, but their study reported higher
student acceptability of Chinese accents than teachers (58.2% vs 43.4%). This study, on the contrary, revealed higher per-
centages of teachers accepting CE accents than those of students (54.9% vs 14.5%). Besides, this study also found that teacher
participants seemed to be more positive about CE features at the lexical level than their student counterparts. 33.9% teachers
in the survey accepted CE features in the lexical category, but the accepting rate of students was only 22.6%. However, student
participants were found to be less resistant to CE features at the syntactic and discourse pragmatic levels than teacher
participants. 48.4% students rejected CE features at the syntactic level, while the percentages of teachers rejecting CE syntax
reached 51.9%. For CE features at the pragmatic level, 45.6% students rejected and again the percentages of teachers rejecting
them were 54.7%, higher than those of students.
This pattern was largely verified by teachers' and students' respective ratings to almost all CE features examined in the
survey (Table 4).

Table 3
Teachers' and students' attitudes towards CE features in comparison.

Category Reject Uncertain Accept M SD t df p

1 (%) 2 (%) 3 (%)

Phonology Ts 26.6 18.8 54.7 2.28 .86 12.89a 227.5a .000**
Ss 68.6 16.9 14.5 1.46 .74
Lexis Ts 45.1 21.0 33.9 1.87 .44 3.92 1731 .000**
Ss 50.1 23.5 26.5 1.74 .45
Syntax Ts 51.9 12.9 35.3 1.88 .50 2.22 1751 .027*
Ss 48.4 22.2 29.5 1.79 .49
Discourse pragmatics Ts 54.7 18.6 26.7 1.72 .55 1.90 1759 .058
Ss 45.6 29.2 25.2 1.80 .51
Total Ts 44.6 17.8 37.6 1.94 .43 7.81 1676 .000**
Ss 53.2 22.9 23.9 1.70 .40

Notes:
Ts ¼ Teacher participants, Ss ¼ Student participants.
*p < .05, **p < .001.
a
The t and df were adjusted because variances were not equal.
66 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72

Table 4
Comparisons of teachers' and students' attitudes towards individual CE features.

Category Reject Uncertain Accept M SD t df p

1 (%) 2 (%) 3 (%)

I1 Ts 26.6 18.8 54.7 2.29 .86 12.89a 227.5a .000**
Ss 68.6 16.9 14.5 1.46 .74
a a
I2 Ts 30.4 14.1 55.5 2.06 .90 6.42 231.5 .000**
Ss 27.6 20.7 51.7 1.62 .83
I3 Ts 50.5 26.6 22.9 2.23 .89 1.98 1776 .048*
Ss 63.4 22.3 14.3 2.10 .88
I4 Ts 33.3 27.1 39.6 1.69 .82 1.31 1774 .191
Ss 30.3 30.4 39.3 1.61 .80
I5 Ts 72.9 16.7 10.4 1.97 .85 .34 1776 .735
Ss 64.0 23.2 12.8 2.00 .83
a a
I6 Ts 25.0 15.6 59.4 1.76 .87 2.94 227.9 .004*
Ss 53.3 21.0 25.7 1.57 .76
I7 Ts 58.3 26.0 15.6 1.52 .74 .185 1775 .854
Ss 61.9 23.2 14.9 1.51 .73
I8 Ts 70.3 10.9 18.8 1.98 .93 4.20a 229.6a .000**
Ss 56.6 24.0 19.4 1.69 .83
I9 Ts 71.4 16.1 12.5 1.51 .80 1.11 1772 .266
Ss 70.9 17.7 11.4 1.58 .77
I10 Ts 56.3 8.9 34.9 1.47 .77 1.37 1775 .172
Ss 46.2 19.2 34.6 1.55 .78
I11 Ts 46.9 14.1 39.1 1.91 .94 .71a 228.76a .481
Ss 42.5 29.1 28.5 1.86 .83
I12 Ts 29.7 15.1 55.2 2.26 .89 .52 1773 .601
Ss 24.3 22.6 53.1 2.29 .83
a a
I13 Ts 37.0 12.0 51.0 2.14 .93 4.74 233.5 .000**
Ss 49.6 20.3 30.2 1.81 .87
I14 Ts 62.0 13.0 25.0 1.63 .86 3.46 1775 .001**
Ss 47.3 18.9 33.8 1.87 .89
I15 Ts 60.9 19.3 19.8 1.59 .80 1.16 1774 .246
Ss 53.3 27.7 19.1 1.66 .78
a a
I16 Ts 36.1 23.0 40.8 2.05 .88 .62 230.58 .537
Ss 28.7 33.8 37.5 2.09 .81
I17 Ts 42.2 21.4 36.5 1.94 .89 1.85a 229.45a .065
Ss 42.0 34.1 23.9 1.82 .79
I18 Ts 72.4 16.1 11.5 1.39 .69 3.00 1770 .003*
Ss 56.8 31.5 11.7 1.55 .69

Notes:
Ts ¼ Teacher participants, Ss ¼ Student participants.
*p < .05, **p < .001.
a
The t and df were adjusted because variances were not equal.

The Table revealed that, to most items in the phonological and lexical categories (six to seven), the percentages of teachers
who accepted these expressions were higher than those of students. And the differences were particularly salient in their
attitudes towards CE pronunciation (Item 1), t(227.5) ¼ 12.89, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ 1.04, Putonghua (Item 2, a CE expression
translated literarily from Chinese), t(231.5) ¼ 6.42, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .51, Ganbei (Item 3, a transliterated CE expression with
an English equivalent), t(1776) ¼ 1.98, p ¼ .048 < .05, d ¼ .51, and save one's face (Item 6, an English expression with meaning
expansion in the Chinese context), t(231.5) ¼ 6.42, p ¼ .004 < .05, d ¼ .51. On the contrary, to most CE expressions in the
syntactic and discourse pragmatic categories, the percentages of teachers who rejected them were higher than those of
students. And the differences were particularly significant in Item 8, t(229.6) ¼ 4.20, p ¼ .000 < .001, d ¼ .33, Item 14,
t(1775) ¼ 3.46, p ¼ .001 < .001, d ¼ .26, and Item 18, t(1770) ¼ 3.00, p ¼ .003 < .05, d ¼ .23. Item 8 explored participants'
attitudes towards using yes in a negative reply such as the yes in A: You mean your hometown is not so crowded? B: Yes, not so
crowded. 70.3% teachers rejected such uses, but only 56.6% students rejected them. Item 14 examined participants' percep-
tions of CE expressions following Chinese pragmatics, such as addressing people by their professional titles in Teacher Zhang.
62% teachers rejected it whereas the percentages of students rejecting this expression were 56.6%. Item 18 investigated CE
expressions juxtaposed in the Chinese contextual schema, such as introducing the arrangement of Chinese university stu-
dents' dormitory in a way like Item 18. 72.4% teachers and 56.8% students rejected it. The descriptive data in Table 4 also
demonstrated that students had persistently higher degrees of uncertainties than their teacher counterparts towards most CE
features, particularly features at syntactic and discourse pragmatic levels. Findings of such seemed to reveal that the two
cohorts held different views towards CE, though both were in educational settings. Teachers were comparatively more
positive about CE pronunciations and lexes, whereas students were less resistant to English constructed in CE syntax and
discourse pragmatics. To incorporate CE features into classrooms, the attitudinal differences between teachers and students
need to be considered.
 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72 67

4.3. Reasons underpinning the participants' attitudinal responses to CE

Instead of having a laundry list of reasons given by participants for their attitudinal responses to CE, report in this section
focused on the underlying criteria to which participants referred in their negative/positive/ambiguous evaluations of CE. After
repeated reading and comparison of all explanations given by participants, four criteria were identified to work interactively
in their evaluations: the correctness of CE against native English standards, the Chinglish overtone, the communicativeness of
CE, and the role of CE for identity making. For those who rated CE negatively (48.9% of the whole population investigated), the
first two criteria seemed to outweigh the last two in their evaluations. But for those who rated CE positively (30.8% of the
whole population investigated), the last two seemed to be their priorities, while the first two were comparatively uncon-
cerned. As to those showing ambiguity in their evaluations (20.3% of the whole population investigated), it seemed that they
were in constant tensions in aligning with the two sets of incompatible criteria.

4.3.1. Criteria foregrounded in the participants' negative evaluation of CE

To be specific, correctness was found to be the top consideration of participants who evaluated CE negatively. Furthermore,
in their judgments of the correctness of these CE expressions, native-speaker norms were usually the de facto yardsticks. For
instance, seven participants explicitly pointed out that Ganbei was Chinese and should be replaced with Cheers, its English
counterpart. They argued that:
In Chinese we say Ganbei, but in English we should say Cheers. (I3-T201)
In this sentence, English intertwines with Chinese. For the use of Chinese Ganbei [in English], the speaker takes too
much for granted. (I3-S12)
Both excerpts expressed a strong belief that they should observe English ‘standards’ while speaking English. These par-
ticipants seemed to believe that Ganbei was Chinese whereas Cheers was English. It was undesirable to infuse Chinese pinyin
into English expressions. Another sixty-eight instances were found refusing the syntactic features of CE in Items 9, 10 and 11
for their violation of ‘standard’ English grammar.
Grammar mistake, two subjects (I9-S4)
It is not allowed to put two clauses in one sentence without a conjunction. Unacceptable to natives. (I11-T29)
As suggested in these excerpts, to judge the acceptance of CE expressions, what came first for the participants was their
agreement with the grammatical rules of native speaker English. Communicativeness seemed not to be an issue of concern.
Besides seeking linguistic norms from inner circle English, the participants were also observed to resort to Anglo-American
cultures and value systems when evaluating the appropriateness of English usages. For instance, the participants explained
why it was improper to address people Teacher Zhang or respond to others' compliments in a self-depreciating manner in the
following:
In English speaking countries, Teacher Zhang should be Ms or Mr. Zhang (I14-S16)
It is Chinese tradition to deliberately grade down oneself in response to others' compliments. But in English, we should
observe English-speaking countries' customs and express thanks for others' compliments. (I15-T31)
These comments on Teacher Zhang again revealed a native speaker oriented view of English. It seemed to say that whether
certain practices of speaking English were proper needed to be gauged against native English cultures and conventions, but not
the appropriateness of them to the actual communicating situations. Furthermore, these comments also implied that the
participants did not sense the need to present the Chinese reality in English. It seemed that the participants knew Teacher Zhang
was a conventional way to address teachers in Chinese, but to speak English, one needed to do as those English speakers did and
forgot their native culture of being a Chinese. Given a large proportion of the participants in the survey evaluated CE ex-
pressions negatively, one may infer that native speaker English was still the dominant ideology in the educational settings of
China, and was also the determining factor against which teachers and students' English practices were judged.
The second frequently referred criterion in the participants' negative evaluation of CE was whether the expressions took
on any Chinglish overtones. In the survey, expressions with CE features had often been taken as Chinglish and rejected. For
example, five participants simply chose 1 while rating the acceptability of CE expressions and wrote Chinglish as their ex-
planations for all items in the questionnaire. Another large proportion of participants (nearly half of them) were found to
implicitly relate the expressions in the survey with Chinglish or Chinese English. To them, expressions taking on Chinese
characteristics were deviations from native speaker English, and thus, were Chinglish, were half-products generated by
English learners for their poor control of the Chinese interferences. The two criteria seemed to go hand in hand. They did not
seem to recognise the potentiality of CE in communicating local cultures and values.

1
I3-T20 refers to the 20th teacher participant's response to Item 3 in the survey. All tags after quotations are numbered in the same way in this paper.
Besides, all quotations originally in Chinese were translated into English when presented in this paper.
68 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72

These are simple Chinglish. The speaker uses English in a totally Chinese way without taking into account English
culture and conventions. If we speak English this way, we could only get ourselves despised. When we are learning a
language, we should also know the culture of the country which speaks that language. Only in this way, can we learn a
language well. (I19-S19)
The sentences in this questionnaire are full of grammatical mistakes and expressions seriously interfered by Chinese
culture or Chinese language. It is natural for English learners to produce such flawed English. But we teachers should
help students correct them and teach them some English learning skills for them to improve their English. (I19-T7)
It seemed that the Chinglish stigma had been deeply rooted in the minds of these participants. Just as revealed in I19-
S19, ‘speaking in a Chinese way’ was simply equated as Chinglish, That was serious for him, because just as he argued, “If we
speak English this way, we could only get ourselves despised”. We may see from his statement that the essence for their
concern of deviating from native English norms or cultures was nothing else but the serious social consequence accom-
panied with Chinglishdgetting insulted in the society. Due to such serious impacts of speaking Chinglish, they would avoid
expressions carrying any Chinglish overtone. Therefore, the participants in the survey would rather take English with
Chinese features as learner language under improvement instead of as powerful means for self-expression. If this was the
case, it might be desirable to move them out of the Chinglish mindset before any Chinese English feature was introduced in
classrooms.
Communicativeness was also a criterion leading to participants' negative evaluation of CE, but it was less frequently
mentioned as the previous two. Even in most cases where communicativeness was concerned, native speaker English was
often indirectly indexed as shown in the following examples. These were comments on the literal translation of a Chinese
idiom wear the same pair of trousers and breathe through one nostril in Item 5:
Oh, my gosh! The expression is too Chinese. How could you expect a foreigner to understand this?! If the Americans
could, you don't need to speak English. Go direct with our Chinese. They are sure to understand! (I5-S19)
It is fine to speak like this between the Chinese. But to the westerners, I guess they will not understand it. (I5-T20)
In these comments, understandability of CE constituted participants' major concern. But with further reading, one may
find that the projected communities of English users in these comments were primarily native speakers. Even with necessary
background information reminding them the communicating situations in the questionnaire survey, the presumed in-
teractants in these conversations were still ‘foreigners’, or more explicitly ‘westerners’, or even narrower, ‘the Americans’din a
word, native speakers. They rejected the literal translation of Chinese idioms in English for the concern that the natives might
not understand them if these English expressions were too Chinese-specific. By implication, the above comments seemed to
indicate that Chinese characteristics were only supposed to be appropriate within Chinese communities. There was no need
to communicate the Chineseness to the global audience.

4.3.2. Criteria foregrounded in the participants' positive evaluation of CE

Contrary to participants who took negative views of CE, those who perceived CE positively seemed to apply different
criteria in evaluating CE. They value the capability of CE in fulfilling communication purposes and the role of CE for identity
making more than following native speaker English correctness and avoiding any Chinglish overtone while speaking English.
As can be seen from the following explanations:
Although it is not standard English, it does not affect our communication. (I1-T16)
To be understood is enough. In daily communication, it is unnecessary to focus solely on grammatical rules and native
expressions. (I19-S16)
These comments revealed that for participants who were concerned mainly about communication rather than standards,
CE was not a problem. In other words, CE would be acceptable if it could fulfil the communicative purpose, but not necessarily
its meeting of native English standards as emphasised by those negative evaluators.
The other criterion foregrounded in the participants' positive evaluation of CE was the role of CE in expressing Chinese
identity. For example, a dozen of the participants explicitly aligned the use of CE with their Chinese culture and identity,
contending that it was exactly the way the Chinese speak English. Three even talked about the potential contributions of CE to
the future development of English:
As a Chinese speaker of English, I think it is acceptable. (I1-T18)
We often say in that way. Personally, this expression is very idiomatic. It is quite appropriate to be used to express
Chinese culture. (I13-S10)
Back door, though a Chinese expression, should be acceptable as a good metaphor to westerners, just like behind the
table. (I7-S15)
English culture and English language are tolerant, so you can use that language the way you like. You may enrich that
language by using it in a Chinese way. (I19-T5)
 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72 69

These comments pointed to the needs to express Chinese culture and identity in CE, as highlighted by I7-S15 in his choice
of the modal verb should. At the same time, these comments also flagged the issue of norms in speaking English. It is normally
agreed that English in outer circle countries is norm-independent or endonormative. It has increasingly derived the norms of
correctness and appropriacy from locally-relevant practices. But in expanding circle countries, English is still norm-
dependent or exonormative, that is, relying on native/standard English for correctness, for it has not been widely used in
these local contexts yet (Kachru, 1985; Matsuda & Friedrich, 2012). The comments here seemed to indicate that even in
expanding circle countries like China, people also began to break away from exonormative models of English and started
developing norms of their own. But this only happened when English was connected to the expression of local cultures and
identities.

4.3.3. Conflicting criteria in participants' ambivalent evaluation of CE

It is also noteworthy that a certain number of participants (20.3%) expressed their uncertainties toward CE. On the one
hand, they felt the English expressions in the questionnaire were close to their daily experiences. On the other hand, they
doubted whether such expressions were legitimate. Their ambiguous attitudes were reflected in the following excerpts:
Almost every student of mine speaks English this way and I am quite used to it. They have never gone abroad. You can't
expect them to speak like native speakers in an all-Chinese environment. (I19-T4)
Right now we hear a lot of young people speak that way. It is a common way to express Chinese culture. There is no
other special ways. (I5-S24)
It seems that some Chinese English users have recognised the legitimacy and rightfulness of CE for local needs. However,
they were worried about any negative value judgment laid on the Chinese way of using English in society. One student
participant expressed:
If all of us use English as described in the questionnaire, it will be terrific. Learning English will be much easier for us.
But if it is only encouraged in the classroom while the outside world doesn't accept it, I will not take my teacher's advice
[of using CE]. (I19-S28)
Such responses reflected the dilemma that the participants experienced in learning English. They wished to use the
English that was close to them but also felt the need to attain approval from the society. Their choice of preferred English was
restrained by constant tension between speaking English with local characteristics and meeting the socially recognised
standards. Participants' unwillingness to accept CE might not arise from their ignorance of the power of CE for local
expression, but because the dominant ideology at work in society was so strong that they could not penetrate it to appropriate
English at free will.

4.3.4. Teachers/students divide in CE evaluations

As to variations between teachers' and students' attitudes towards CE, there were different explanations as specific CE
features involved. For example, one teacher participant gave the following comment on CE pronunciation:
There is no language police. We should not prescribe what way can be accepted and what way cannot. In addition, I
have chatted with some people from India, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea. I know how they speak English. It is no big deal
to have a Chinese accent. (I19-T5)
This participant's exposure to other non-native English varieties seemed to influence his attitude towards CE pronunci-
ation. Another teacher accepted Ganbei, because he once heard a foreigner using it:
Ganbei is as acceptable as Zaijian for the foreigners. I once heard them use it. (I3-T14)
However, quite a few students were less tolerant towards CE pronunciation, pointing out that it did not sound British or
American. Some other students considered one country, two systems unacceptable because they assumed there was not such
an expression in English:
One country, two systems is unique to China. Foreign countries don't have. We need to explain to them but not to
translate to English literally. (I4-S29)
Another example in point is that many teachers expressed their refusal of English expressions situated in Chinese-featured
discourse because of their poor cohesion and coherence from the ‘native’ English perspective, but students tended to accept
them because these expressions were closer to their everyday use of English.
How does the first sentence relate to the second one? And the sentence nextdpeople in America and China can talk with
each other directly, is it because of the invention of telephones? The last sentence, what does it stand for? This para-
graph is in poor coherence and cohesion. (I16-T29)
This English might not be as good as American or British English, but it is close to our life in China. We talk in the same
way in our oral English class. Our dorm is organised like this. For those who haven't seen it, no matter how hard I try,
they may have no idea of it. For those who know, they will understand the moment they hear what I say. (I18-S21)
70 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72

Generally speaking, teachers might have more exposures to the actual use of English worldwide than students and more
chances to examine the communicativeness of certain CE features like Chinese idioms and metaphors in international
communications, and thus were more open to such usages, whereas students might have more personal experiences of using
certain specific CE expressions, and thus being more tolerant to them.

5. Discussions

By examining participants' attitudinal responses towards specific CE features, this study has built up on previous ones to
elaborate specific CE features acceptable to university teachers and students and the reasons underlying their attitudinal
responses. The findings of this inquiry largely conform to previous studies that CE has not been pervasively accepted yet
(e.g., Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2002; He & Li, 2009; He & Zhang, 2010; Hu, 2004, 2005; Yang & Zhang, 2015), but some features do
gain high recognitions and have the potentiality to satisfy non-inner-circle English users' desire for local expression. For
instance, the study revealed that the participants were comparatively open to CE accents, but resistant to English mixed
with Chinese discourse pragmatics and the usages of English violating grammar rules of native speaker English. The study
also has contradictory findings in comparison with He and Zhang (2010) regarding teachers' and students' attitudes towards
CE pronunciation. They found “in terms of pronunciation, students displayed more willingness to accept CE [China English]
than their teachers” (He & Zhang, 2010, p. 784). But this study arrived at opposite conclusionsdthe percentages of teachers
(54.9%) accepting CE pronunciation was far higher than those of students (14.5%). The reasons given by the focal partici-
pants in the survey revealed that it might be because teachers had more experiences of getting contacts with different
English accents internationally and thus were more tolerant to phonological variations, whereas students usually projected
speaking English with native speakers and thus were aspiring to achieve native-like accents. Our different findings may be
attributed to the use of different research methods. This study used an authentic CE speakers' speech to elicit participants'
responses towards CE pronunciation, whereas they asked their participants to choose one speaking model they would like
to align with according to the description of two speakers, one was described as speaking native-like English and the other
as speaking English with local accents. Without real CE examples, participants might have different local English images in
mind while giving out their ratings in the survey.
Findings of this study have some important implications for the incorporation of local English varieties in English
teaching and learning practices. In agreement with previous studies, the high degree of rejection of CE features in all four
categories renders the adoption of local English varieties as pedagogical models unwise in the context of China, but the
overt recognition of some CE features among a certain amount of participants in the study lends possibility for the inclusion
of these features for pedagogical purposes (He & Li, 2009; He & Zhang, 2010; Hu, 2004, 2005). To be specific, the high
acceptability of CE pronunciation indicates that teachers should not overemphasise native-like standards in speaking En-
glish, but allow students to keep some Chinese accents if they do not impede communication. For CE at the lexical level,
some well-codified and successfully promoted Chinese transliterations such as Putonghua, translations of China-specific
concepts such as one country, two systems, and nativised English words with semantic shift such as save one's face might
be possible to be introduced into classrooms. At the syntactic level, it is better to follow the grammatical rules of ‘standard’
English as most teacher and student participants in the investigation aspired. At the discourse pragmatic level, teachers
need to consider carefully how to facilitate students to express local cultures and ideas and at the same time maintaining
international communicativeness because both of the two aspects were serious concerns for classroom practitioners as
identified in the investigation. Admittedly, this study only investigated some often discussed CE features under codification
in the literature. More studies are needed to gain a fuller understanding of the acceptability of CE features among language
teachers and learners.
The participants' explanations for their refusal of CE features further indicate that native speakerism and Chinglish remain
the predominating ideologies in the educational context of China. Native speakerism and Chinglish are actually the two sides
of a same coin. Because native speaker English is taken as standards and norms, English deviating from these norms is treated
as unacceptable Chinglish. We may derive from the widespread discourse of Chinglish that university teachers and students
in China are still at the lower end of the Chinglish/China English continuum and do not recognise the legitimacy of CE in
expressing local needs and culture. If this is the case, I argue that the simple promotion of some CE features in pedagogy may
not be enough. More importantly, it has become necessary to raise learners and teachers' awareness of the sociolinguistic
realities of English and move them out of the native English/Chinglish mindset. Only with the necessary shift in mind, will it
be possible for teachers and learners to appreciate the value of locally relevant English. However, I understand that language
ideologies are created in social, cultural and political contexts. If standard English and Chinglish are still the dominant ide-
ologies in society, it is difficult for individuals to pursue self-liberation. It is the change of the social discourse that finally
reshapes individual's language attitudes. As Sharifian (2009) argued, “[I]ssues such as identity, ideology and power are
directly relevant to and do have a determining role on the content as well as the approach in ELT” (p. 11).
The differences in teachers and students' attitudes towards CE as observed in the inquiry also imply that teachers need to
pay attention to such attitudinal gaps when promoting usages of local English varieties in classrooms. For instance, in this
study it is found that student participants were willing to use English with Chinese pragmatic and discourse features because
such English was closer to their lives. For teachers in this situation, it might be inappropriate to present a restricted set of pre-
described CE features to learners. Instead, they would better tailor English education according to learners' situational
communication needs and empower learners to appropriate possible local English resources for self-expression.
 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72 71

6. Conclusion

The study on the attitudes of university teachers and students towards CE reveal that as a developing variety, it has not yet
been widely recognised by its speakers. Most of the features in pronunciation, lexis, syntax, and discourse pragmatics dis-
cussed in literature have received low acceptability in the investigation. However, the study did find some features enjoying
comparatively high recognition by both teacher and student participants, which indicate the possibility to be included in
English language teaching. Nevertheless, to teach CE to enhance its role in expressing local cultures and ideas, more work
needs to be done to change Chinese learners' native speaker mindset besides the incorporation of some well-accepted CE
features in pedagogy. Further research is needed to monitor the evolving attitudes and perceptions of learners and teachers in
contexts like China to see whether and how local varieties are being accepted as desirable pedagogical goals before inte-
grating them into actual learning and teaching practices.

Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the Educational Bureau of Hubei, China under the Provincial Social Sciences Research
Grant [No. 13g049]. The author would like to thank all the teachers and students who had participated in the project and
the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the earlier versions of this paper. All remaining errors are
my own.

Appendix. China English Features examined in the survey

Phonology
1 (Play a recording of a Chinese speaker introducing his family in English) There are four people in my familydmy father, my mother, my
brother and me. My father is a teacher and my mother is a nurse. My brother is three
years old while I am thirteen. We love each other very much.
Lexis
2 (Transliteration) He speaks putonghua fluently.
3 (Transliteration) For a toast everybody gets up, raises their glasses and touches the others' glasses, saying Ganbei!
4 (Loan translation) The concept of one country, two systemsdpreserving two different political, social and economic systems within one nation has
no precedent.
5 (Loan translation) You mean Xiao Lan, Xiao Li and Xiao Liu? Oh, they three wear the same pair of trousers and breathe through one nostril.
6 (Semantic transfer) In order to save her face, he decided not to tell her classmates the truth.
7 (Semantic transfer) Our manager is his uncle, so he gets this position by using the back door.
Syntax
8 (Yes-no response) A: You mean your hometown is not so crowded? B: Yes. Not so crowded.
9 (Subject pronoun copying) Some of my college classmates they like to dress up very much.
10 (Adjacent default tense) When I was very young, I want to be a doctor, but now I want to be a teacher in universities.
11 (Multiple-coordinate construction) In the present society, love is not important, everyone cares about money.
12 (Modifying-modified sequencing) Because many farmers lack adequate knowledge and experience to distinguish counterfeit goods they are
generally more vulnerable.
13 (Top heavy lion style structure) For me to get up before 6 o'clock in the morning is impossible.
Discourse pragmatics
14 (Chinese pragmatic notions) Good morning, Teacher Zhang! (Greeting)
15 (Chinese pragmatic notions) A: You speak very good English! B: No, no, my English is not good at all.
16 (Inductive pattern of reasoning)
A: Is the invention of telephone a convenience or a nuisance for us?
B: With the development of science and technology, telephone can be found everywhere, especially in big cities. There are many people talking
with their friends in USA directly. We can know what is happening at one place thousands of miles away immediately. Can you imagine how long
it would take to send a letter to USA? At least two weeks. So, it brings much convenience to us, particularly in communication.
17 (Discourse in line with Chinese culture and value systems) (Jinli was a mother who left her daughter Dandan and husband Chigan in China and
went to New York alone. A few years later, she came back to see her daughter who was living with her husband's parents at that moment. Below
is a conversation between her and her mother-in-law.)
“When… when will she come home?” Jinli asked.
“This is her home,” said Chigan's mother.
“Please, let me have a look at her. Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she tried suppressing them.
“No. She doesn't want to be disturbed by you.”
“Mother, forgive me just this once, please!”
“Don't call me that. You're not my daughter-in-law anymore.”
The door was shut.
18 (Discourse in line with Chinese situational schema)
Visitor: How many people are there in your dormitory?
Student: A big room has three /ru:/…eh..a flat has three rooms. In the flat, there are ten people. In the smaller room there are three. In my room
there are four.
72 W. Wang / System 53 (2015) 60e72

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