On Teaching of Bilingual Journalism Education in China

Abstract

Bilingual journalism education (known as International Journalism Education) in China aims to train journalism professionals who can work in both English and Chinese media organizations. Having developed rapidly in the past decade, bilingual journalism education (BJE) programs are in a unique journalism education position in China by combining English-style journalistic practice and concepts with English learning. This paper first provides a review of the development of BJE in China, then explores the advantages and disadvantages of the BJE teaching model in China and offers the results of a case study of the BJE program at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), with focused discussions on students’ job orientation and overall course arrangement of the school’s BJE program. The paper also provides an analysis of the challenges that BJE programs face in China. In the end, an assessment is made of BJE development trends in China.

In the past decade, bilingual journalism education in China (known as International Journalism Education in China) has developed rapidly. The program, aimed at training future reporters and editors who command both English-language and journalistic skills and are able to work in both Chinese and English media institutions at home and abroad, enjoys a unique position in the contemporary journalism education in China.

This paper first provides a review of the development of BJE in China, then explores the advantages and disadvantages of the existing BJE teaching model of in China by referring to a case study of a BJE program at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), one of the pioneer universities in China in BJE since the 1980s, with focused discussions on students’ job orientation and overall course arrangement of its BJE program. Based on a case study, this paper also offers an analysis of the challenges BJE faces in China. Finally, an assessment is presented about the future trends of BJE in China in a Chinese environment.

Development of Bilingual Journalism Education (BJE) in China

BJE in China can be traced to the 1920s when Yanching University (now Beijing University) in Beijing, Fudan University and St. John’s University in Shanghai started U.S..-style journalism programs in which most courses were presented in English.

After 1949, BJE was terminated as universities in China abandoned the American journalism model and followed the Soviet model. In fact, BJE was not resumed in China until the early 1980s when China’s Academy of Social Science first started a graduate bilingual journalism program focusing on English news writing and editing and the Beijing Broadcasting Institute began a bilingual journalism program for undergraduates in its English Department.

However , it was only after 1983 that the BJE boom began in China when five more universities started bilingual journalism programs. The BJE programs (most of them known as International Journalism Programs) were initiated as dual-bachelor-degree programs, in which students received bachelor degrees as English majors and also BA degrees in international journalism after three years of extensive western-style journalistic training. Most English-language journalistic training was provided by journalism professors and media practitioners (known as foreign experts) from the United States, Great Britain and Australia, who were either funded by such non-profit organizations as the Fulbright Foundation and the Ford Foundation or employed by Chinese universities. China’s English-language media institutions such as Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, China Daily and Radio China International also sent reporters and editors to these campuses, to recruit more qualified future staff memebers.

In 1983 the five programs, together with the one at Beijing Broadcasting Institute, enrolled an estimated 176 BJE students. As a result, BJE was hailed as a dramatic reform in the history of journalism education in China at the time.

For the next ten years, with the withdrawal of financial support from Chinese government and media institutions, most BJE programs in China stopped the practice of enrolling dual BA students and started to recruit undergraduate and graduate students. In the past five years, more universities have started or expanded their BJE programs. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies started a BJE program in 1999 and Shangtou University in 2001. Beijing University expanded the program in their newly found School of Journalism and Communication. Other universities (such as Wuhan and Tsinghua ) are trying to include more English journalism courses in their curricula even though they do not have BJE programs.

Reasons for China to Promote BJE

The reasons for China to initiate and promote BJE in the past 20 years are multifold.

First, it is a result of the English dominance in the area of international communication. As English serves as a kind of “international language” in the current global communication, it is natural for China, a country that strives for a better national image in the international arena, to train through BJE its own reporters and editors who can work in both English and Chinese. Second, as China’s economy continues to boom at a rate of about 10%, the media industry (including English and Chinese media) has become the fourth most profitable industry in China, with more than 50 newspaper chains and radio and TV groups.

The Internet media are also developing rapidly. The 13th Annual Report of CNNIC on January 15, 2004 shows that as of December 31, 2003, total number of netizens in China is 795 million, the second largest number in the world. The fast development of China’s media industry surely calls for more international (namely BJE) reporting and editing staff members. Three specific factors are contributing to the rapid development of BJE and the increasing demand for bilingual journalists and editors in China:

(1) More and more media institutions in China are becoming bilingual (English and Chinese), even multilingual. Not only do English-language media like CCTV-9, China Daily and Shanghai Daily recruit BJE graduates, but Chinese-language media organizations are also willing to enroll bilingual journalistic staff members, who can directly interview English speaking people inside and outside China. Liu Hong, an editor-in-chief of Jobweek, a newly founded weekly newspaper in Shanghai, found that it is hard to attract BJE graduates to her newspaper as her publication is not big enough and the salary from other media organizations is more competitive. Besides, BJE students who did their internships at different newspaper agencies found that they were given more opportunities in their jobs simply because they have the ability to use the English language along with their basic journalistic skills.

(2) More Chinese universities have started journalism programs in the past decade. In 1992, China only had 52 schools of journalism and 77 journalism departments. Ten years later, in 2002, those numbers jumped to 96 and 232, respectively. From 2002 to 2003, the number of journalism programs has reached 323, an increase of 91 journalism programs in just one year.

To enhance competitiveness for their journalism graduates in the job market, journalism programs in different universities are striving to develop a distinction for their programs and they have found BJE to be a good option.

(3) Media institutions and professionals in China are eager to learn from the Western journalistic practices to enhance their international influence. For example, Southern Weekly (Nanfang Zhoumo), a popular weekly newspaper in China, advocates publicly that it is following the model of the New York Times. The newly founded School of Journalism at Tsinghua University is trying to enhance its influence by importing a series of original English textbooks on journalism and communication. BJE has surely catered to all the needs.

Case Study of BJE

To have a better understanding of the BJE teaching model in China, particularly its development in the past 20 years, this paper has selected the BJE Undergraduate Program at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) for a case study.

Three reasons are cited to have selected the BJE Undergraduate Program at SISU for the case study. First, SISU is one of the pioneers in starting its BJE program and has enjoyed a good reputation in the area throughout the country; second, despite its changes from dual BA degree holders to undergraduates as well as graduates in the past 20 years, SISU has continuously run its BJE program and kept its sequential focus on international journalism ever since its start in 1983; finally, SISU, which started as a foreign-language school, can best demonstrate and also represent the existing BJE teaching model in China because language is a key element in understanding the BJE model in China.

The case study of the BJE Undergraduate Program at SISU in this paper is going to focus on the BJE students’ first job orientation and overall course arrangement (curriculum), because job orientation can reflect its competitiveness and curriculum can demonstrate it uniqueness. Corresponding to the above reasons for China to promote BJE programs, Table One has confirmed the good job prospects for BJE students at SISU from 2001-2003. In the past three years, half of the BJE students at SISU can find jobs in large influential media organizations in China at the national and regional levels, such as Xinhua News Agency, Jiefang Daily, CCTV and Shanghai Television Station, instead of small-scale media at the community level. This explains the purpose of their BJE training, as large and influential media tend to use more of their English skills while small-size media do not need their English skills as they only focus on local Chinese communities.

Table One: BJE Students’ First Jobs at SISU (2001-2003, all in %)

This job orientation focusing on English skills is also obvious in BJE students’ selection of banks and foreign firms (less than 10%) engaged in public relations, advertising, and marketing. These are all highly paid jobs that require good command of English in communication with people from different cultures. Of course, the high salary is also the most important factor for graduates to go to banks, foreign firms and companies, where they can work without an interpreter. Of course, most others (less than 20%) still prefer to seek higher education at home and abroad, a channel for even higher personal development which may also be related to their English skills. Their high marks of TOEFL and GRE have qualified them with scholarships in countries like the United States. Even though government organs are considered prestigious jobs in China, the number of BJE students going to work in government is decreasing (from 16 % to 7%) in recent years, which may indicate a liberal trend among BJE students.

The English ability of BJE students at SISU is surely guaranteed by their extensive English training both in their English courses and journalism classes conducted in English. While other journalism students have almost all their courses in Chinese, the curriculum of the BJE program at SISU has a predominantly higher proportion of English courses for students. As is showed in Table Two, the curriculum of the BJE program at SISU can basically be divided into four categories (excluding internship, 8 credits, about 5%): general courses in Chinese (46 credits, 27.88%), required English language courses (52 credits, 31.52%), required journalism courses (in English, 22 credits, 13.33% and in Chinese, 10 credits, 6.06%) and elective journalism courses (also in English, 14 credits, 7.88% and in Chinese, 13 credits, 8.48%), for a total of 165 credits in a BJE student’s four-year study.

Except for the general courses, which are all conducted in Chinese and are required for all the Chinese students, regardless of their majors, the other three sections of courses at the BJE program of SISU consist of English courses or journalism courses conducted in English, accounting for 53% with a total of 88 credits if added together.

Table Two: Curriculum of the BJE Program at SISU

While the journalism program in English include such courses as English News Writing and Reporting, English Feature Writing, English News Editing, Theories of Mass Media and Media Management, International Communication, History of Western Journalism and Western Culture, standing for 36 credits, about 21.8% of the total, the journalism courses in Chinese include such courses as History of Chinese Journalism, Chinese News Writing and Reporting and Media Law and account for 23 credits, about 14% of the course arrangement, only about half of the English journalism courses.

Therefore, BJE students at SISU are expected to do their news writing and reporting in English upon their graduation. Besides, to demonstrate their proficiency in English, they can also participate in a national English examination known as TEM8, required for an English major undergraduate. According to Prof. ZHANG Jian who is in charge of the English training for BJE students at SISU, 98% of the BJE students at SISU passed TEM8 in the last three years. This means that the English ability of BJE students almost equals to that of an English major while they also have the training to be a reporter.

Challenges to BJE in China

However, the linguistic advantage of BJE programs in China is a two-edged sword as this linguistic advantage of BJE also had its limitation: as it resorts to the use of the English language in a Chinese-dominating society, BJE cannot get rid of its minority status in China even though English is dominating the international world. Almost all BJE programs in China are located in metropolitan cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and are only available in (in fact limited to) those universities that can, first of all, help improve the English language skills for students before they turn to learn their journalistic skills in English.