Dai Bilingual Education Project

The Dai-Han bilingual education project started among the Dai Lue in Jinghong county, Xishuangbanna prefecture, Yunnan province.

SIL member Heidi Cobbey first became involved at the request of education authorities and is currently working with the research office of the Jinghong County Education Department in Jinghong City. SIL funded the training and curriculum development and printing of materials. The Jinghong county education department pays the teachers’ salaries.

Initially, the plans for this project are to start 2-year preschool programs in 5 schools within Jinghong County, in the 5 different districts: Da Menglong, Xiao Jie, Galanba, Gasa, and Jinghong. It was started at the fall 2007 and the first phase of the project is completed and now the project falls under the purview of the 10-year Zero Barrier Bilingual Education MOU which is tri-parite agreement with Yunnan Ministry of Education, Yunnan Ethnic Affairs Commission and SIL East Asia.

The first year of the preschool program is similar to the Dong program; it is 100% mother tongue, Dai. During the second year of the preschool program there is a transition time into teaching the children Chinese as a second language. This enables them to have a good foundation in oral Chinese before they begin first grade and are expected to begin using the Chinese textbooks. It is expected that during the first through sixth grades, the children will continue to have one Dai language class per week in order for them to continue to develop their mother tongue language skills.

There are adult literacy programs set up in conjunction with the children’s program, most directly aimed towards the parents of the preschoolers.