Project Leaders: Prof Bob ADAMSON (Education University of Hong Kong) & Prof Anwei FENG (University of Nottingham, Ningbo)

The research forms a major component of our research into multilingual educaiton in China. It seeks to deepen the understanding of the genesis of four distinctive models of trilingual education and their sustaining contextual factors.  

Since 2002, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has instigated various language policies in education designed to foster trilingualism in ethnic minority groups. Trilingualism, if implemented effectively, enables marginalized groups to engage in the social and political life of mainstream society and enjoy educational and economic benefits. Poorly conceived and ineffectively implemented policies, however, could exacerbate marginalization and deprivation.

The policies in the PRC were implemented in a decentralized fashion, according to local priorities and contexts. In recent years, the research teams for the proposed study investigated the implementation of trilingual (i.e., the ethnic minority language, Chinese and English) education policies in different minority regions in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Jilin, Gansu, Qinghai and Guangdong. Four major, distinctive models of trilingual education emerged.

The first model (the Accretive Model) focuses strongly on the ethnic minority language, which is used throughout the nine years of compulsory education from Grade 1 in primary schools to Grade 3 in junior secondary schools. Chinese and English are taught as subjects in the curriculum.

The second model (the Balanced Model) is a balance between Chinese and the ethnic language, with both languages used as the medium of instruction and with English taught as a school subject.

The third model (the Transitional Model) is the reverse of the first. Chinese is used as the medium of instruction and the ethnic minority language is taught as a major subject to all students in the school, irrespective of their own ethnicity or mother tongue. English is again taught as a school subject.

A fourth model (the Depreciative Model) is represented by schools that proclaim to be an ethnic minority language school but which, in reality, do not use the minority language as the medium of instruction nor even teach it as a school subject. Such schools also claim to be bilingual in the sense that Chinese and English are studied as languages in the curriculum and Chinese serves as the medium of instruction.