Article published In:
Language and DialogueVol. 14:3 (2024) ► pp.373–391
Competence-in-performance in China’s ESL teaching
This paper endeavours to explain why Weigand’s dialogic theory – the Mixed Game of human
competence-in-performance – should be considered in improving Chinese College English language teaching. This paper will review
several of Weigand’s key publications and research and analyse current Chinese College English language textbooks and teachers’
attitudes toward teaching English speaking. The results suggest that teachers refuse to be involved in teaching English speaking
because they lack adequate training and need a theory to guide them. Therefore, based on Weigand’s theory of human
competence-in-performance, the paper proposes several suggestions for improving oral English teaching. This article hopes to
contribute to the further study of dialogic pragmatics in Chinese English language-speaking teaching.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Brief overview of the theory of competence-in-performance
- 3.An overview of the current situation of Chinese college English teaching
- 3.1College English teaching guidelines for non-English majors
- 3.2College English curriculum for English major
- 3.3Discussion
- 4.Competence-in-performance in foreign language teaching
- 4.1Teaching materials
- 4.2Teachers’ perspective
- 4.3Guidelines
- 5.Conclusion
-
References
References (26)
Chang, Yunyue. 2006. “Globalization and English in Chinese Higher Education.” World Englishes 25(3/4): 513–525. 
Chen, Zan and Christine Chuen Meng Goh. 2011. “Teaching oral English in higher education: Challenges to EFL teachers.” Teaching in Higher Education 16(3): 333–345.
Cunningsworth, Alan. 1995. Choosing Your Coursebook. Oxford: Heinemann.
Ge, Xiaoyu. “Oriental Wisdom for Interpersonal Life: Confucian Ideal Personality Traits (Junzi Personality) Predict Positive Interpersonal Relationships.” Journal of Research in Personality 89(1): 104034.
Gilmore, Alex. 2007. “Authentic Materials and Authenticity in Foreign Language Learning.” Language Teaching 40(2): 97–118.
Grein, Marion. 2007. “The Speech Act of Refusals within the Minimal Action Game: A Comparative Study of German and Japanese.” In Dialogue Studies, ed. by Marion Grein and Edda Weigand, 95–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hellermann, John. 2003. “The Interactive Work of Prosody in the IRF Exchange: Teacher Repetition in Feedback Moves.” Language in Society 32(1): 79–104.
“The INCA Project: Intercultural Competence Assessment.” European Website on Integration, August 31, 2009. [URL]
Koike, Dale A. 2017. “Theory and Practice.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 251–263. New York: Routledge.
Li, Jiao and Xuehai Cui. 2020. “Evaluating College English Textbooks for Chinese Students’ English Academic Writing: Voices of Students and Teachers’.” Asia-Pacific Education Researcher 30(1): 47–58.
Miao, Pei and Audrey L. Heining-Boynton. 2011. “Initiation/Response/Follow-up, and Response to Intervention: Combining Two Models to Improve Teacher and Student Performance.” Foreign Language Annals 44(1): 65–79.
Ministry of Education. 2020. “Daxue yingyu jiaoxue zhinan” [Guidelines on College English Teaching]. Available at [URL]
Savignon, Sandra J. 1987. “Communicative Language Teaching.” Theory into Practice 26(4): 235–242.
Si, Peng. 2019. “A Study of the Differences between EFL and ESL for English Classroom Teaching in China.” IRA International Journal of Education and Multidisciplinary Studies 15(1): 32–35.
Smaoui, Anouar. 2021. “The Development of a Language-and-Culture Course Incorporating Intercultural Teaching Materials in the Tunisian Higher Education EFL Context: Challenges and Opportunities.” Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 11(1): 1–23.
Smith, Megan and Shawn Loewen. 2018. “Situational Language Teaching.” In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, ed. by John I. Liontas, 1–6. Hoboken: John Wiley.
Wang, Wenyu. 2022. “批评话语分析视角下中美新闻报道中的文化差异对比研究 [Cultural Differences in Chinese and American News Reports from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis: A Case Study of China Daily and The New York Times Reports on TikTok].” MA thesis, Tianjin University of Commerce.
Weigand, Edda. 2004. “Possibilities and Limitations of Corpus Linguistics.” In Dialogue Analysis VIII: Understanding and Misunderstanding in Dialogue, ed. by Karin Aijmer, 301–315. Berlin, New York: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
. 2007. “The Sociobiology of Language.” In Dialogue and Culture, ed. by Marion Grein and Edda Weigand, 27–49. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
. 2009. “Teaching a Foreign Language: A Tentative Enterprise.” Language Teaching 011: 128–147.
. 2010a. “Language as Dialogue.” Intercultural Pragmatics 7(3): 505–515.
. 2010b. Dialogue. The Mixed Game. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2015. “Dialogue in the Stream of Life.” Language and Dialogue 5(2): 197–223.
. 2017. “The Mixed Game Model – A Holistic Theory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 174–194. New York: Taylor and Francis.
Xu, Jinfen and Yumei Fan. 2016. “The Evolution of the College English Curriculum in China (1985–2015): Changes, Trends and Conflicts.” Language Policy 16(3): 267–89.
Zhang, Xuezhu. 2020. “Evaluation of Suitability of a Listening Textbook for English Majors in Universities of China.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies 11(4): 87–94.