Dongxiang County Bilingual Education Progress Report 2009

In China’s Dongxiang ethnic community, the language barrier stands out as the most fundamental problem in education. The majority of preschool-age children in concentrated Dongxiang communities can only speak Dongxiang and cannot understand Mandarin Chinese at all. This phenomenon presents several challenges to providing basic education for these children. In order to address this problem, Dongxiang experts Ma Guozhong and Chen Yuanlong recommend bilingual education and are implementing a bilingual education project themselves. This project aims to use the ethnic minority language as a bridge to help students master standard Chinese.

The first experimental bilingual education project in Dongxiang County ran from 2001 to 2006 at the central primary school in Nalesi Township, Dongxiang County, Linxia Hui Autonomous Region of Gansu Province. The advisory committee of the bilingual education experimental class invited SIL International (East Asia Group) linguist Stephen Kim to join as a consultant, and together with the County Education Department, they carried out research and development of bilingual education materials and trained bilingual teachers. The project staff first compiled and edited teaching materials using the Dongxiang language as the medium of education. The content and accompanying illustrations are all based on local culture so that the materials cater to local children’s needs and suit their interests.

In this model, the preschool stage is focused on writing and spelling in Dongxiang and starting to practice oral Chinese. Then in grades one and two, students formally start studying Chinese through the Dongxiang language and finally transition to using only Chinese in the classroom. This method of using Dongxiang as a medium to learn Chinese helps students understand their Chinese teaching materials more clearly. At the same time, the process of learning Chinese spelling, pronunciation and characters is easier and quicker because students have first studied the spelling of the language with which they are most familiar. Learning to read using the most familiar language first provides a good foundation from which students can transition to reading and writing other languages.

During the experimental project’s five years, the Dongxiang County government and the local Dongxiang people saw that bilingual education advanced students’ Chinese education. This result is seen in student achievement: students who had gone through bilingual education had distinctively higher test scores than those students who had not gone through any bilingual education. Nalesi Primary School’s Principal Ma Zhanliang described the project’s impact, saying, “Through starting bilingual education, we have not only resolved the problem of the language barrier in education, but even more importantly, students have raised their levels of participation and now take more initiative. High achievement is a natural result of these changes.” In the initial phase of implementing the project, parents did not support the education model’s “extra burden” on students, but when they later saw the project’s effects, they all expressed satisfaction and willingness for their children to study in the experimental class.

The following chart is a comparison of student achievement data from the bilingual class and the Chinese language class:

In light of these results, the County Education Department decided to continue the bilingual education project and expand it to eight schools in different parts of Dongxiang County. In July 2006, the County Education Department, Oxfam Hong Kong, and SIL International (East Asia Group) signed a cooperative agreement for a second phase focused on expanding bilingual education, which is expected to conclude in 2010. As the project continues, its main activities include: learning from new bilingual education models in China and in other countries, teacher training, and developing mother tongue reading materials. Thirty teachers have already received bilingual education training, which has benefited 200 students from different districts.

In the process of launching the project, the Dongxiang County government’s initiative and work was an important guarantee of the project’s success. However, there are still some problems to address if the project is to expand. If project leaders wish to carry out at least one year of preschool mother tongue instruction, the number of teachers and classroom buildings needs to be increased. We hope that the relevant government offices will continue to give great support to this project in order to ensure even better education for children in the Dongxiang region.