The teaching method for English in China is poor. The main reason for this is because the examination method is poor. Teachers teach for the exam and nothing else. The exam is based on vocabulary memorization and understanding of grammar rules. There is no need to compose sentences let alone paragraphs or longer essays. There is no need to speak, and there is no need to understand when listening, because none of those things are in the examinations of middle or high school.

I teach at a university in China. Every student must have passed the English test in the University Entrance Exam (Gaokao) at the end of high school. They must also pass the CET4 or CET6 (College English Test) which contains a very short writing task but mainly covers listening, reading and translation to a high level of proficiency and a high vocabulary. However if I go and talk to any of them, they can't understand me and they can't reply or ask me anything. Every student knows English, but few students can use English.

None of the exams require writing composition or speaking (other than English majors). They know what a large number of words mean in Chinese but they don't know how to pronounce them or used them within a sentence.

It then becomes cyclical as teachers who can't speak English but know the vocabulary then teach the next generation of students.

A few students do break out of the cycle. Typically their parents paid for private English classes after school. Often this will have included classes with a native English speaker, which would solve many problems. I still find that their writing is lacking. Even when they can speak fluently, they can't write in a structured way.

They will never learn to write properly until they decide to move abroad and have to do the IELTS or TOEFL exams. Here for the fist time they meet an exam that requires the full range of skills, reading, listening, writing and speaking. Even after studying English in primary, middle, high school, university and private classes after school for some 14 years or more, they still need extra classes on writing and speaking composition. Why? Because it had never, until now, been in any exam and so they have never, until now, had a teacher who bothered to teach it to them.

In contrast, when I was learning French in the UK, the teachers focus was on giving us a usable, working understanding of the language. Speaking was given importance right form the start and grammar only considered after a modest vocabulary had been built and could be used. Exam requirements were ignored until just a month or two before the test date.