6 ms·

Why China is losing interest in English

21 points by teractiveodular 2y ago

teractiveodular 2y ago
https://archive.is/E3jam https://archive.is/E3jam
yorwba 2y ago
6 comments 22 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457255
throw310822 2y ago
> According to one ranking, by EF Education First, an international language-training firm, China ranks 91st among 116 countries and regions in terms of English proficiency. Just four years ago it ranked 38th out of 100. That doesn't make much sense, unless millions of people forgot a language in 4 years.
- fifth-column 2y ago
  It could make sense if they’re looking at a cohort of students.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  EF's dataset is students who take EF tests (eg. TOEFL). What this degradation means is that TOEFL scores are much lower. This makes sense because there's less of a need to travel abroad for studies, and it has also become much more difficult for Chinese nationals to study abroad over the past 4 years (eg. Zero COVID from 2020-2023, Visa restrictions in the US). Edit: The TOEFL's methodology has also changed to actually test for speaking and writing fluency. Before, the TOEFL would overindex reading skills, but not speaking and writing.
  - kelipso 2y ago
    Always know where the data comes from! I see so many examples of people generalizing to the whole population of a country when the data comes from a specific subset.
  - yorwba 2y ago
    EF does not administer the TOEFL, but a competing English test, the EF SET, which can be taken online for free. When fewer people take a test, I would expect the average score to go up, since the people who do take it are likely more motivated. But it's all within the range of historical variation anyway. https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/regions/asia/china/ https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/regions/asia/china/
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Doh! Good callout. Confused ETS with EF! And this is even a good point as well - the EF SET isn't really used in most cases where English fluency is critical (eg. College admissions in the West, Citizenship/PR applications in much of the Commonwealth, etc), so the kinds of students taking EF specific tests might be less prepared or knowledgeable about English and Western culture compared to those preparing for TOEFL or IELTS.
- fredfoo 2y ago
  If China were to stay exactly the same it would be dropping relatively at a pretty fast rate..
- dzonga 2y ago
  easily happens in homogenous populations where people speak the same language. even if they learn english at school - and they don't have foreigners to speak it with - they will lose ability to converse in english. before video games and other popular culture things would help people learn / keep practicing a language but now china has a vibrant video games market e.g black myth wukong. saw it happen in taiwan.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  It is unlikely that they test a sample of the entire population. They likely test students of certain age only, and three years of Covid lockdowns (China held on to Zero Covid for a long time!) probably messed with the current cohort.
NemoNobody 2y ago
I don't kno how much I believe this. I think the Chinese government would love for this to be true and maybe the US government too. I interact with a fair amount of Chinese people online - always in English. Chinese people seem to be like to be everyone else and like that they can communicate with people from everywhere. It's understood by everyone that English is the Global language - this is just trying to present China as so elitist that the population expects us all to learn Mandarin now to talk to them - that hasn't been the case in my experience. Plus, I watch a fair amount of Asian media and Chinese media always has English subtitles on their shows. They are aware that I watch them - China is trying be more of a cultural power rn and that's all bc of English so... I just don't kno how much I believe this.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- stonesthrowaway 2y ago
  > I think the Chinese government would love for this to be true and maybe the US government too. Why? > Chinese people seem to be like to be everyone else and like that they can communicate with people from everywhere. Do you think that's what people want? I personally prefer the time when almost 100% of the people online were american. I've no real desire to speak with chinese or british or any others. I simply just assume I'm interacting with americans. > It's understood by everyone that English is the Global language It shouldn't be. There shouldn't be a global language. Chinese, Hindi, spanish, arabic, etc along with english should be major regional languages. Also, it's a waste of time for vast majority of people to learn english on a superficial level. Their time is better spent on learning their own languages. Especially a language with such rich history as chinese. > China is trying be more of a cultural power rn and that's all bc of English so... Language is one of the most important aspects of cultural power. If china wants to be a cultural power, then they should be focusing on spreading chinese, not "submitting" to english. America didn't become a cultural power by adopting french when french was lingua franca. > I just don't kno how much I believe this. It's an economist article on china, so much of it is probably nonsense. So don't let it bother you so much.
  - 2y ago
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
danbolt 2y ago
I’m reminded of a 2000s interview I watched with Hideo Kojima, a famous video game director. Kojima’s well-known for being influenced by western cinema, and in the interview he expressed that this is more common for people his age. He said he felt younger Japanese people tended to be more interested in Japan’s domestic media. Maybe this is also a result of China being more developed and having a domestic market for its culture? Or, like, twenty years ago, I could imagine a lot of foreign media just had bigger budgets and writing, but today that’s less of the case.
- scotty79 2y ago
  > He said he felt younger Japanese people tended to be more interested in Japan’s domestic media. It might be just regression to mean that after curious and open global oriented generation more likely comes one that's more isolationist and more easily satiated with domestic slop.
  - danbolt 2y ago
    Sturgeon's law applies everywhere, so I’d be hesitant to simply suggest that people are just satiated with slop. That said, I do think this is a domestic “regression to the mean” like you suggest. Or, if you wanted to enjoy fun video games in China in the 90s and 00s, your favourite stuff might have more likely been a pirated copy of Age of Empires II. The cream of the crop was coming from foreign powerhouses. Just this past year though, there’s a blockbuster Journey to the West action game made in China. I can imagine it’s a more accessible way of playing big-budget video games since the language and culture are more familiar. In some ways, it reminds me of the console game crash of the 80s and Japanese software being very dominant in the United States until the late 90s and 2000s. The stuff from Japan was a little more foreign, but it was very good. Now though, western AAA games make up more of your average American’s playtime than they did in the past.
- maxglute 2y ago
  I wonder if that's why weaponizing language was key plotpoint of mgsv. PRC is consuming more PRC content (i.e. HK/TW use to be sinosphere media power houses). There's also consideration that documentation from science to technical papers are in Chinese now, less need for people to need English for variety of tasks.
matrix87 2y ago
doesn't teaching english lead to more brain drain?

teractiveodular 2y ago

https://archive.is/E3jam https://archive.is/E3jam

yorwba 2y ago

6 comments 22 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457255

throw310822 2y ago

> According to one ranking, by EF Education First, an international language-training firm, China ranks 91st among 116 countries and regions in terms of English proficiency. Just four years ago it ranked 38th out of 100. That doesn't make much sense, unless millions of people forgot a language in 4 years.

fifth-column 2y ago
It could make sense if they’re looking at a cohort of students.
alephnerd 2y ago
EF's dataset is students who take EF tests (eg. TOEFL). What this degradation means is that TOEFL scores are much lower. This makes sense because there's less of a need to travel abroad for studies, and it has also become much more difficult for Chinese nationals to study abroad over the past 4 years (eg. Zero COVID from 2020-2023, Visa restrictions in the US). Edit: The TOEFL's methodology has also changed to actually test for speaking and writing fluency. Before, the TOEFL would overindex reading skills, but not speaking and writing.
- kelipso 2y ago
  Always know where the data comes from! I see so many examples of people generalizing to the whole population of a country when the data comes from a specific subset.
- yorwba 2y ago
  EF does not administer the TOEFL, but a competing English test, the EF SET, which can be taken online for free. When fewer people take a test, I would expect the average score to go up, since the people who do take it are likely more motivated. But it's all within the range of historical variation anyway. https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/regions/asia/china/ https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/regions/asia/china/
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Doh! Good callout. Confused ETS with EF! And this is even a good point as well - the EF SET isn't really used in most cases where English fluency is critical (eg. College admissions in the West, Citizenship/PR applications in much of the Commonwealth, etc), so the kinds of students taking EF specific tests might be less prepared or knowledgeable about English and Western culture compared to those preparing for TOEFL or IELTS.
fredfoo 2y ago
If China were to stay exactly the same it would be dropping relatively at a pretty fast rate..
dzonga 2y ago
easily happens in homogenous populations where people speak the same language. even if they learn english at school - and they don't have foreigners to speak it with - they will lose ability to converse in english. before video games and other popular culture things would help people learn / keep practicing a language but now china has a vibrant video games market e.g black myth wukong. saw it happen in taiwan.
inglor_cz 2y ago
It is unlikely that they test a sample of the entire population. They likely test students of certain age only, and three years of Covid lockdowns (China held on to Zero Covid for a long time!) probably messed with the current cohort.

NemoNobody 2y ago

I don't kno how much I believe this. I think the Chinese government would love for this to be true and maybe the US government too. I interact with a fair amount of Chinese people online - always in English. Chinese people seem to be like to be everyone else and like that they can communicate with people from everywhere. It's understood by everyone that English is the Global language - this is just trying to present China as so elitist that the population expects us all to learn Mandarin now to talk to them - that hasn't been the case in my experience. Plus, I watch a fair amount of Asian media and Chinese media always has English subtitles on their shows. They are aware that I watch them - China is trying be more of a cultural power rn and that's all bc of English so... I just don't kno how much I believe this.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
stonesthrowaway 2y ago
> I think the Chinese government would love for this to be true and maybe the US government too. Why? > Chinese people seem to be like to be everyone else and like that they can communicate with people from everywhere. Do you think that's what people want? I personally prefer the time when almost 100% of the people online were american. I've no real desire to speak with chinese or british or any others. I simply just assume I'm interacting with americans. > It's understood by everyone that English is the Global language It shouldn't be. There shouldn't be a global language. Chinese, Hindi, spanish, arabic, etc along with english should be major regional languages. Also, it's a waste of time for vast majority of people to learn english on a superficial level. Their time is better spent on learning their own languages. Especially a language with such rich history as chinese. > China is trying be more of a cultural power rn and that's all bc of English so... Language is one of the most important aspects of cultural power. If china wants to be a cultural power, then they should be focusing on spreading chinese, not "submitting" to english. America didn't become a cultural power by adopting french when french was lingua franca. > I just don't kno how much I believe this. It's an economist article on china, so much of it is probably nonsense. So don't let it bother you so much.
- 2y ago

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

danbolt 2y ago

I’m reminded of a 2000s interview I watched with Hideo Kojima, a famous video game director. Kojima’s well-known for being influenced by western cinema, and in the interview he expressed that this is more common for people his age. He said he felt younger Japanese people tended to be more interested in Japan’s domestic media. Maybe this is also a result of China being more developed and having a domestic market for its culture? Or, like, twenty years ago, I could imagine a lot of foreign media just had bigger budgets and writing, but today that’s less of the case.

scotty79 2y ago
> He said he felt younger Japanese people tended to be more interested in Japan’s domestic media. It might be just regression to mean that after curious and open global oriented generation more likely comes one that's more isolationist and more easily satiated with domestic slop.
- danbolt 2y ago
  Sturgeon's law applies everywhere, so I’d be hesitant to simply suggest that people are just satiated with slop. That said, I do think this is a domestic “regression to the mean” like you suggest. Or, if you wanted to enjoy fun video games in China in the 90s and 00s, your favourite stuff might have more likely been a pirated copy of Age of Empires II. The cream of the crop was coming from foreign powerhouses. Just this past year though, there’s a blockbuster Journey to the West action game made in China. I can imagine it’s a more accessible way of playing big-budget video games since the language and culture are more familiar. In some ways, it reminds me of the console game crash of the 80s and Japanese software being very dominant in the United States until the late 90s and 2000s. The stuff from Japan was a little more foreign, but it was very good. Now though, western AAA games make up more of your average American’s playtime than they did in the past.
maxglute 2y ago
I wonder if that's why weaponizing language was key plotpoint of mgsv. PRC is consuming more PRC content (i.e. HK/TW use to be sinosphere media power houses). There's also consideration that documentation from science to technical papers are in Chinese now, less need for people to need English for variety of tasks.

matrix87 2y ago

doesn't teaching english lead to more brain drain?