Lagging Behind: Regrets

Based on the stories collected from life story interviews in the research, it appeared that most of the rural student participants focused on the academic failure and frustration that they had endured in English learning for years. However, Wan and Duo emphasized their regrets about the gap between themselves and others, their university and elite universities, and their host city and the developed cities.

English in a university in Shanghai. This regret did not fade even after he attended the university in Kunming. Instead his regret was strengthened after several visits to Shanghai. Wan gave a detailed description of his impression of Shanghai.

“It is hard to relieve this regret. I traveled to Shanghai many times. When I was walking on the street, I saw street vendors on roller skate selling goods to foreigners and speaking fluent English. The waiters/waitresses … can speak fluent English. The high school students’ English was fluent too. I feel the gap between cities is very very huge. The solution is to ring us alarm by telling us how other universities do…Those first-tier and reputable universities are over there. Being content with the current state doesn’t help in our study. Feeling good about ourselves doesn’t help either.”

Wan seemed to admire the lives of the vendors, waiters/waitresses and high school students in Shanghai because they could speak fluent English. From Wan’s perspective, fluent English speaking became a symbol of citizens living in Shanghai. Shanghai was depicted as a modern and international city where there were fluent EFL speakers, foreigners and foreign business. It was a great regret for Wan that he could not make his dream of living in such a city come true. Though he could not live in Shanghai, Wan wanted to keep the pace with the fluent English speakers there. He was eager to be informed of elite students, reputable universities and megacities so that he

could keep the same pace.

Duo was regretful about lagging behind her former classmate who was studying in an elite university in Beijing.

“I have a senior high school classmate. She is a very diligent student. Now she is in Beijing University of Foreign Languages. Her posts on the social network are mostly that their dorm mates read English books till midnight, then get up at 5:30 in the morning and staring at the computer screen. Wow, our dorm mates can never do that. They watch TV series and play games on cell phones. We can never compete with the students of that university in Beijing.”

By classifying and comparing two types of students, Duo showed great admiration to her peers studying in the high-ranking university in Beijing. Through the online posts, she got information on how her former classmates studied English in Beijing. She used these posts to generalize that all students studying in that university in Beijing were diligent in learning English. Looking to her own dorm mates, Duo felt regretful about the gap in diligence between her dormitory mates and her peers in the university in Beijing.

The feeling of lagging behind was prominent in the stories of Wan and Duo. Both of them showed a “sense of crisis” for their current state of study and wanted to catch up with those who were considered ahead of them in Shanghai or Beijing. Wan

compared the reading ability between the English learners in China and the students in America:

“We haven’t read many original English books. This is a big question in learning English. When I was a freshman, the foreign teacher asked us to read some books. He said those were for the students in Grade One and Two in America. He said we hadn’t read them before and let us read. I feel if we don’t develop the habit of English reading in junior and senior high school, we will lag behind by ten years. Now we read the books that American primary students read. They are so slim books.”

In Wan’s story, his foreign teacher gave an assignment of book reading to the class. However, those books were designed for the American kids at the age of six or seven. As an eighteen-year-old freshman, Wan viewed this assignment as an opportunity to make up for the reading of original English books, though those books were for American children to read. Wan expressed a strong desire to read more English books based on his awareness of the ten-year gap between him and his American peers. Meanwhile he was extremely regretful about this awareness: Chinese students did not read as many English books as American students.

Both Wan and Duo’s stories expressed their regrets about their lagging-behind status. They aspired to catch up with their peers in Beijing and

Shanghai who were fluent English speakers and diligent English learners. Wan showed an international vision of his own status in relation to American students who read more English books. Coming from rural areas, both of them cast their eyes to economically developed cities or countries, which made them regretful of their current state of lagging behind.

Moreover, Duo had her greatest regret on the personality difference between her and her senior schoolmate who was good at making friends with foreigners.

“The regret is my timidity. I can’t make friends with foreigners. Once I attended a presentation for freshmen, a Xuejie [a female senior schoolmate] told us many of her experiences of how to communicate with foreigners. She is very active and likes making friends with foreigners. But for me, I can’t do it. This is my greatest regret. I feel I am active and outgoing enough with my friends…One problem is there is no access or event; another is I am not open-minded enough.”

Duo wanted to make friends with foreigners. She showed great interest in the senior schoolmate’s rich experiences, making friends with foreigners and wanted to learn from them. In Duo’s eyes, only those who were extremely active and open-minded were able to approach and make friends with foreigners. She regretted not having many opportunities to know foreigners and not having a more open mind. Duo

emphasized that her personality prevented her from accessing and making friends with foreigners.

Unlike Duo and Wan who compared their university with elite universities, and their host city to the developed cities, Mang stated her view of the gap between the world of English speakers and the world of Chinese people:

“Life in the world of English is free and easy, not controlled by the stuff around. Everything is directed by spirit, not bound with the surrounding conditions. Chinese people are bound by the stuff around. The spirit is bounded, while in the world of English, it is the spirit that directs conditions, such as environment, family and friends. In the world of English, I can do whatever I want. “

In Mang’s conception of the world of English, people could make free and independent choice without considering people and conditions around. However, it was the opposition in China where family, friends and surroundings had to be taken into consideration to make a decision. The key point in Mang’s comparison was that living in the world of English was better and easier than in realistic China. The gap between these two worlds drove Mang to pursue the outside world.