Theoretical Basis Of Teaching Foreign Languages

Abstract

The prosperity of educational theory is deeply connected with the expansion of mass education and the elevation of teacher education when reviewing the overall history of education in the West. Similarly, the issue of educational theory has also become an exciting centre of interest for the Chinese as its enterprise of public education was carried out substantially within the past century. And this ascending quest for educational theory is far from its end, at least in current China: the prominent movement calling for realistic educational research or empirical sciences of education was just announced in January 2017, gathering around 32 related institutes of education all over China to strengthen the scientific study of education (see ECNU Manifesto of the positivist educational research), meanwhile ‘philosophy of education’ has been coined as a core course in the country’s new teacher education (see Document Teacher [2011]6, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China). Furthermore, two international educational journals—the ECNU Review of Education (ROE)¹ by the East China Normal University and the Beijing International Review of Education (BIRE) by the Beijing Normal University—have recently been established in China while published in English. It writes clearly in their scopes that both conceptual and empirical works in education are encouraged. Anyway, in an age when the practice of modern education is popular, robust educational theories, be they speculative or scientific, are certainly highly expected and will continue to be important.