Mute English is a term coined in the People's Republic of China to describe a phenomenon where people cannot speak English well and have a poor listening comprehension as a second language, typically through the traditional method of English language teaching where English is only taught as a subject. The phrase is a calque of the Chinese phrase "哑巴英语" (yǎbā yīngyǔ in pinyin). The phenomenon is sometimes referred to as Dumb English. Mute English occurs primarily due to an emphasis on literacy, grammar, and correctness in language education. Efforts to mitigate Mute English in China have resulted in numerous commercial products including TEFL schools and teach-yourself courses, international exchanges, and the eagerness with which Chinese students strive to practice their English with foreign visitors. Though any language can have its form of mute speakers (e.g. Mute Polish), the phenomenon of 'Mute English' in China, Japan and Korea is a massive, acknowledged problem, one which the school systems and students are attempting to address. A related concept is the less-common Deaf English.
Speech Patterns
In places where Mute English seems to be most prominent, the English education is often described as "a communicative language taught as if it were a dead language, like Latin". There is little to no emphasis on developing speaking abilities of the students under the system. As a result, Mute English speakers struggle with piecing together basic sentences despite having gone through roughly eight years' worth of formal English education. Their pronunciation is typically described as "choppy" with a "robotic inflection". Typically affected by Mute English are countries that use East Asian languages, which belong to various language families while English belongs to the Indo-European Language family. These language families are considered to be very far apart from one another because they all have significant phonetical, semantic and syntactic differences. Hence, to be able to master English, a great amount of effort is required from the learner. Some of the difficulties Mute English speakers have been observed to have are difficulties with the /rl/ combination of consonants. For example, when they pronounce the word "world", it comes off as sounding more like "word" or "ward". They also tend to struggle with minimal pairs such as /ɛ/ versus /æ/, because these sounds do not exist in their language, so they often have trouble differentiating and pronouncing words that only differ by a minimal pair (i.e. "bet" and "bat").
Mute English in China In spite of the rising quality and heightened efforts in English education in China, it has not translated into good English proficiency, with many fresh graduates complaining that they were unable to carry out simple communicative functions since the late 1980s even after years of studying English, resulting in 'mute english'.
Prominence of English in China Under the new post cultural revolution Chinese leadership, a large pool of English-proficient personnel was deemed to be required for China in securing its access to global scientific and technological advances in propelling towards modernisation. This resulted in a venture to expand the provision and improve the quality of English learning teaching since the 1970s, through a series of reforms carried out in areas such as curriculum development, syllabus design, textbook production, teacher training and pedagogy. Since the mid-1990s, English has become one of the three core components in China's College Entrance Examinations, known as Gaokao, alongside Chinese and Math. In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education launched Chinese-English bilingual education in tertiary institutions to meet the needs of economic globalisation and technical revolution, potentially train competent and multi-talented candidates for the new century, and to further improve the overall quality of higher education in China. Today, millions of Chinese take English proficiency tests every year to secure employment or professional promotion in lines of work that do not necessarily require substantial or any use of English. As such, English is seen to have a vital role in national and personal development and has a spreading acceptance in the country as the language of prestige, social progress, cultural refinement, and economic development, in which English proficiency is emphasised to be one of the most important and defining characteristics of talent in present-day society.
English Pedagogy in China In China, English is considered to be one of the core subjects. Students study it for eight years from elementary through high school. A typical English lesson in China would span four hours a week; three hours for intensive reading and one hour for listening. Occasionally, some teachers will allocate 30 minutes of speaking practice once every two to three weeks. However, a big factor that contributes to the rise of Mute English is the teaching pedagogy of Chinese teachers of the English language. This section will cover some of the major mistakes that teachers make in the classroom or within the Chinese education system.
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