Journalism students learn about how the famous US TV news program 60 Minutes goes about its business;

Consumers Advocates applaud the avalanche of truth about the evils of smoking;

Political Science students learn about the politics of marketing a dangerous product and lying to the US Congress  about its [...]]]> This movie has something for everyone.

Journalism students learn about how the famous US TV news program 60 Minutes goes about its business;

Consumers Advocates applaud the avalanche of truth about the evils of smoking;

Political Science students learn about the politics of marketing a dangerous product and lying to the US Congress  about its danger;

Marketing students learn about the greatest marketing fraud in the history of the world;

there are even 2 love stories.

Law students can learn about courtroom tactics.

Would you allow your kid to smoke?

What did you learn from this murder mystery?

I WANT TO BE A BIKINI BABE!!!

HOLISTIC ENGLISH PERCEIVED BENEFITS

The seed of discontent with China’s current English teaching pedagogy and methodology was planted in April 2002 at a Joint Venture Business Institute at the fourth tier Railroad [...]]]> COMPARISON OF 4^TH TIER VOCATIONAL COLLEGE, 3^RD TIER COLLEGE, 2^ND TIER UNIVERSITY, 1^ST TIER UNIVERSITY AND IVY LEAGUE UNIVERSITY

HOLISTIC ENGLISH PERCEIVED BENEFITS

The seed of discontent with China’s current English teaching pedagogy and methodology was planted in April 2002 at a Joint Venture Business Institute at the fourth tier Railroad College in the Wuchang District of Wuhan, Hebei Province. Subsequent germination began later in September 2002, in a Joint Venture Business Institute at a fourth tier college in Shanghai and was simultaneously watered at a Joint Venture program at another fourth tier college across town in Shanghai. The students lacked intrinsic motivation and the English programs were dull, boring and did not apply much in the way of extrinsic motivation. It was noted that both the Wuhan and Shanghai business institutes provided a free choice movie viewing room with an English movie library and large screen TV for viewing. It appeared that those few students who took advantage of this resource were making the most progress in their English development.

In November 2002, Holistic English began its incubation at a third tier Agricultural College in Henan Province. (Teng Hai, Martin Wolff and Liu Qiang, “Can You Get a First Class Education at a Third Tier College in China?” in Progress in Education Vol. 13 (Nova Science Publishers, 2004).

Refinement of the Holistic English program started at Tong ji University, Shanghai, a first tier university, in March 2003, Shanghai Normal University, a second tier university, in March 2003 and simultaneously at a Joint Venture Business Institute at Shanghai Normal University, and a Joint Venture Business Institute at Shanghai University (Martin Wolff and Niu Qiang, Dissatisfied Customers: Chinese Business Institute Students Speak Out (Frontiers in Higher Education, Nova Science Publishers, 2007)., a second tier university, in September 2003.

Further refinement occurred in 2004 in both the business department and the English department at Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Jiangxi Province, a second tier university.

In 2005 the Holistic English program returned to its original incubator at the third tier agricultural college in Henan Province. From this base the program was initiated, on an experimental basis, at Guangxi University, a second tier university in Guangxi Province, Shenyang Normal University (Edwin Roessler and Peter Griggs, “Holistic English at a Joint Venture Institution,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). , a second tier university in Liaoning Province, Yang En University, a second tier university in Fujian Province, Xinyang Normal University, a second tier university in Henan Province, and Xinyang Vocational College, a fourth tier college in Henan Province. ( Teng Hai, Martin Wolff and Niu Qiang, “China EFL: Holistic English, the revolution has begun,” in China EFL: Curriculum Reform (Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

Implementation of Holistic English at Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province followed and subsequently also at a private language school and three IT Corporate Training Centers in Dalian, Liaoning Province. ( Martin Wolff, “Incompatibility of Holistic English with Corporate Training Centers,” in China EFL: Curriculum Reform, (Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

PetroChina, China’s largest corporation, brought the Holistic English program to its corporate training Center in Guangzhou, Guangdong in September 2007. (Martin Wolff, “Incompatibility of Corporate Training Centers and Holistic English,” in China EFL: Curriculum Reform (Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

In March 2008 the top tier Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou embraced the Holistic English program wholeheartedly. (Wang Zhe and Martin Wolff, “Holistic English: A Revolution Not An Evolution,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Martin Wolff, “Holistic English: The Revolution Continues,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Martin Wolff, “Holistic English: The Revolution Blooms in Spring 2010,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).

Prior to the time of this writing, the Holistic English program had proven its efficacy with Chinese students (undergraduate English and non-English majors and post-graduate non-English majors) in the low fourth tier colleges, Joint Venture business institutes, third tier colleges, second and top tier universities ( Teng Hai, Martin Wolff and Niu Qiang, “Can You Get a First Class Education at a Third Tier College in China?” Progress in Education Vol. 13 (Nova Science Publishers, 2004); Martin Wolff and Stacy Meeking, “Student/Consumer Satisfaction Survey,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). However, the program had not yet been tested at any of China’s top nine “Ivy League” Universities—Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Xi’an Jiao Tong University. (People’s Daily Online, “Formation of China’s Ivy League Hailed”: (accessed July 29, 2011)

Negotiations commenced in April 2010 to bring the Holistic English program to one of these universities^. (Martin Wolff, “HE Matriculates to the Ivy League” Ch. 8, “The Lowdown on China’s Higher Education” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011).. On May 12, 2010 the negotiations culminated in an onsite inspection of facilities and a sit-down meeting with the English Department leadership. But it was not until September 2011 that Holistic English matriculated to China’s Ivy League at The Harbin Institute of Technology.

The eleven year odyssey has been chronicled in four books:

(2009) Martin Wolff, China EFL: Curriculum Reform, Nova Science Publishers, New York

(2010) Martin Wolff, Of The Students, By The Students and For The Students, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London

(2011) Niu Qiang and Martin Wolff, The Lowdown on China’s Higher Education, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London

(2012) Martin Wolff, Holistic English in China’s Ivy League, Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The following charts provide a comparison of the students’ self-evaluation of perveived benefits received from the Holistic English Program from the lowest 4^th tier vocational college to China’s Ivy league.

CHART ANALYSIS

Although most of the students claim to have received great benefits in the areas of vocabulary, reading, speaking, writing, listening, (Chart 1); confidence, motivation, self-discipline, creative thinking and autonomous learning (Chart 2) and world view (Chart 3 ) there are always the unreachable and unteachable whose negative attitudes about English are simply unchangeable.

Chart 1: Vocabulary, Reading, Listening, Writing and Conversation

The discrepencies of perceived benefits received must be understood in light of the varied beginning skills levels.

Chart 2: Confidence, Motivation, Self-discipline, Creative Thinking and Autonomous Learning

The more uniform perceived benefits received are due to most students starting with the same lack of any appreciable psychological development .

Chart 3: World View

The more uniform perceived benefits received are due to most students starting with the same base line lack of any appreciable world view.

Lucky PG 4 Harbin Institute of Technology December 25, 2011

As a post graduate student, I feel ashamed about myself, since I have no idea of IMF and WB. We are occupied with our perquisites class ignoring the outside world and our country’s policy. How we become our nations master if we have no idea about our nation. It is the time to extend our span of knowledge. You know what, what I have gained from the course is that we should have a wide horizon not only limited on the text book.

Every baby is eventually weaned off its mother’s milk. Otherwise, the milk become a dependency that inhibits proper growth and development.

Chinese students of English must also be weaned off of English subtitles for English movies or they will never properly develop their complete set of English skills.

In Holistic English Sections I and [...]]]> WEANING

Every baby is eventually weaned off its mother’s milk. Otherwise, the milk become a dependency that inhibits proper growth and development.

Chinese students of English must also be weaned off of English subtitles for English movies or they will never properly develop their complete set of English skills.

In Holistic English Sections I and II this weaning process begins with a few movies containing no English subtitles. In Holistic English Sections III and IV most of the movies are lacking in English subtitles.

A minority of Chinese students will ignore the pedagogy and illegally download copies of the movies with Chinese subtitles. Then they watch the movie but never hear any English and do not see the story because they are concentrating on reading the Chinese subtitles.

Why do Chinese students ignore the professor’s warnings that Chinese subtitles are useless in developing English skills?

Their English skills are so poor that they find listening to and watching an English movie without English subtitles to be too difficult. They continue to rely on Chinese subtitles like a person with a broken leg relies upon a crutch. Their English never improves because they are not exercising their English skills.

How can a Chinese college student have such poor English skills after 12 years of mandatory English education and passing the college entrance examination that contains an English component?

Primarily it is because they sat in the back of a primary or middle school English class of 60 plus students and never applied themselves as they held the erroneous belief that they would never need English in the future. The college entrance examination does not adequately test English listening and speaking skills, if at all.

The students do not have any English acquisition based reading materials so an English acquisition Free Choice English Movie Library was developed for 24/7 access. Many of the movies have subtitles but most do not. Instead of using this resource to improve listening skills, some students routinely download Chinese subtitles to accompany the English movies.

For those students who believe that English will play no role in their future, they should stop and contemplate why the Chinese National Government requires English education in primary schools, middle schools, colleges and even for post-graduate college students.

Possibly the leaders know more about the future needs of English in China than the students?  English is the international language of commerce. Scientific advancements are published in western English journals. Cross-cultural collaborations usually occur in English.

Unfortunately, this message will never be read by the very students who need to read and understand its message. 22% of the current post-graduate students registered in Holistic English have never visited this web site. Why? They either lack self-discipline to schedule their time properly, or they are just lazy, or they do not care about improving their English skills. They lack intrinsic motivation. These students are the “unreachable and unteachable.”

Post-graduation, many of those who threw away their college opportunity to improve their English skills will have regrets. Some will even be forced into expensive private English schools to either save their jobs or qualify for promotion.

A true life story about the rigors of a contracts class in world famous Harvard University Law School.

What did you think of this movie?

What did you learn from this movie?

This kind of conduct in China may result in the corporate leaders being executed [...]]]> Bean counters determine that a product recall would be more expensive than paying for the few persons injured or killed by the defective product. The lawyers do everything and anything to reduce the company liability, even engage in unethical legal tricks.

This kind of conduct in China may result in the corporate leaders being executed by the Government such as in the Sanlu baby milk power case.

Fact or fiction?

After you have discussed this movie in class, post your comments about the movie.