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Introduction
In the past 30 years, China's open-door policy and rapid economic growth have been accelerating English as a foreign language (hereafter EFL) teaching in an unprecedented way. To facilitate the learning process for students, English teachers in China have switched from using traditional ways of teaching English to adopting a variety of modern English teaching methods from the West (Rao, 2002). Of all these imported methods, Communicative Language Teaching (hereafter CLT) is the most popular and widespread one in Chinese schools. However, conflicts have appeared in the process of this transformation. On the one hand, the Chinese government and education administrators are aware of the importance of English communicative competence as contact with foreigners speaking English increases. On the other hand, some problems in the current English teaching prevent teachers from getting their students involved in the communicative activities in their teaching process. They still cling to the traditional teaching methods and techniques. In this paper, I trace the development of EFL teaching in China, analyze some difficulties and challenges that EFL teachers and learners must face, and look at the prospects for EFL teaching in China in the future.
Development of EFL teaching in China
Teaching English as a foreign language in China has a history of a little more than one hundred years (Fu, 1986). There are five stages or periods in its development, namely, (1) prior to liberation (before 1949), (2) shortly after liberation (1949-1956), (3) the first renaissance (1956-1966), (4) the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1977), and (5) the second renaissance (1977-). In the following discussion, I demonstrate that each period has had an important influence on EFL teaching in China.
Prior to liberation (before 1949)
The history of EFL teaching in China can be traced to 1862, when the door to China was opened to the West (Fu, 1986). During this period of time, foreign missionaries established schools to help train the masses and foreign language study was included in their training programs. English tended to dominate this field of study because most missionaries were from English-speaking countries. In addition, English was often used as a vehicle for general education because many of the foreign missionaries did not adequately know Chinese. There was also...