![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
In this paper, I narrate highlights of my long process of learning and teaching English as a foreign language in mainland China and Australia, presenting a picture of the practices of learning and teaching English in mainland China from the bottom up. Over the past 50 years, English learners in mainland China, as Gao Yihong has written, have demonstrated four different identity prototypes – faithful imitator, legitimate speaker, playful creator and dialogical communicator. Framed by Gao’s classification, this autoethnographic narrative responds to these identity prototypes and reflects on how the process of learning and teaching English interacts with the identity of a Chinese learner of English. I then propose a pedagogy for teaching English effectively and invite university teachers of English in mainland China to consider whether and how this could be applied in their future practice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (the central university basic research fund) [grant number 31541410204].
Notes on contributor
Bin Ai is a lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China. He has worked as an English lecturer for more than 10 years at several universities in mainland China. In 2014 he fulfilled his doctoral thesis in the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia. His research interests include identity, TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages), intercultural communication and internationalised higher education.
Acknowledgement
The researcher thanks the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.