Volume 45, Issue 3 - Language Education for Ethnolinguistic Minority Students in China Guest Editors: (Mark) Feng Teng & (Gabriel) Fan Fang

Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most important aspects of language development. For bilingual students, early vocabulary development often predicts their future bilingual success. This paper examines early bilingual receptive vocabulary knowledge of ethnic minority children (N=135) from two large ethnic language communities (Uyghur and Kazak) in three national-level poverty-stricken counties in Xinjiang, China. The children’s bilingual vocabulary knowledge was assessed using translated versions of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-IV (PPTV-IV) in Putonghua (PTH) and their mother tongue (MT) Uyghur or Kazak. Data were analyzed through four General Linear Models (GLM). The analyses showed that both groups scored higher in MT vocabulary knowledge than that in their PTH, although the Kazak students’ MT vocabulary scores were lower than those of the Uyghurs. While gender, age, L1, or residence location were not significant factors in differences across the two groups in PTH, among the Kazak children, the main effect of age was significant in MT; and among Uyghur children, residence location had a significant effect. The two groups also differed in patterns of acquisition in different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, and attributes) with Uyghur children performing strongest in MT and PTH verbs. The findings have important implications for ensuring the quality of early bilingual education among impoverished Chinese minority communities.

Although much is known about the benefits of providing creative writing courses to English learners, little research is available on Chinese ethnolinguistic minority learners’ creative writing in formal education. In response, this ethnographic study explored three ethnolinguistic minority learners’ engagement with a three-month elective English creative writing course at a Chinese university. Data (drafts, interviews, and reflection) were analyzed to reveal the three learners’ investment in creative writing and its impact. It was found that creative writing helped the learners to develop more confident writer identities, that they became more proficient in writing, and that their language proficiency also grew. The study suggests creative writing can serve as identity texts, which reflect back on their emergent creative writer identity, and can be a beneficial pedagogical option for ethnolinguistic minority learners.

Recent research has emphasized that attitude is key to language learners’ learning outcomes. More specifically, language learners’ feelings about languages and language learning may affect their study behavior and willingness to engage with a second or foreign language. Few studies on language attitudes have been conducted with ethnic minority groups in China. As such, influencing factors (e.g., gender, language proficiency) have not gained sufficient attention. The present study aims to explore language attitudes, especially towards multilingualism, among members of the Li minority group in Hainan, China. First, we conceptualized and validated a questionnaire on attitudes towards multilingualism. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis verified the survey’s validity. Then, we examined how selected sociodemographic variables (e. g., gender and language proficiency) influenced students’ attitudes towards multilingualism. Hierarchical regression was performed to ascertain the contribution of each predictor variable to learners’ attitudes towards multilingualism. Results revealed no significant relationship between gender and language attitudes but found a significant impact of students’ language proficiency level on their attitudes towards multilingualism. Implications for minority students’ multilingual learning were discussed based on the findings.

This paper presents a systematic review of research on Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) education for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong SAR. Using three databases and screening with specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, the study selected 38 empirical studies published in English-language peer-reviewed journals. We find that there has been a surge of publications in Hong Kong in the past decade (2010–2020), and they are mostly authored by scholars from three universities in Hong Kong. Most of the research took a phenomenological approach, using interviews as the main data collection method and focusing on underprivileged South Asian students in secondary schools. The thematic analysis showed that Hong Kong’s CSL adopted a poststructuralist paradigm for understanding and revealing social inequalities surrounding Chinese language education for ethnic minority students. The study concludes that Hong Kong must decolonise its education system to genuinely support ethnic minority students to achieve educational equality and social justice.

This quantitative-oriented study investigates junior middle school EFL teachers’ beliefs about motivational practices in the language teaching process. Grounded in self-determination theory, the study examined teachers’ beliefs in three basic psychological needs (relatedness, competence and autonomy) and the effect of their teaching experience on these beliefs. Data were obtained from 84 Chinese junior middle school English teachers through a questionnaire. Results suggested that teachers recognized motivational practices for relatedness and competence satisfaction while showing relatively low recognition of a few motivating practices for autonomy satisfaction. Teaching experience was found to have no influence on teachers’ conception of needs-related motivational practices. Findings reveal that traditional activities like collective lesson preparations may have a negative influence on teachers’ beliefs about motivational practices. They also present the necessity for adjustments on educational regulations, and for modern professional training to help teachers understand students’ basic psychological needs, and to encourage new ideas to bolster students’ intrinsic motivation for language learning.

Teachers’ beliefs toward multilingual awareness in target language learning play a significant role in shaping learners’ attitudes to language awareness, affect learners’ linguistic behavior and teachers’ teaching practice. Therefore, the present study was aimed to explore English teachers’ beliefs about Inner Mongolian university students’ multilingual awareness in L3 learning and their teaching practice in Chinese EFL context. One hundred English teachers from six universities in Inner Mongolia, China, participated in this investigation. The data was collected through a questionnaire and teacher interviews. The results indicate that English teachers hold positive attitudes to multilingual awareness in general; however, there are belief differences between Mongolian and Han teachers; there exist discrepancies between English teachers’ beliefs about multilingual awareness and their teaching practice, and social-cultural environment, family language policy, teacher identity, learning experience, teaching materials, and, more importantly, teachers’ lack of awareness of fostering learners’ multilingual awareness lead to the discrepancies. The present research highlights the necessity of raising teacher awareness of cultivating multilingual awareness in future teacher development and emphasizes the significance of exploring the potential cognitive advantages of multilingualism in promoting L3 learning and developing English learners’ multilingual competence in the EFL context in China.

With the development of world globalization, English works as a lingua franca for intercultural communication among different cultures in the world. This shift implies that introducing solely English native speaking cultures to students is not sufficient for their needs. This paper depicts the reflective teaching process of my ten years of experience of teaching intercultural communication. The paper describes how the teacher systematically reflects on the practice of teaching, continuously revises the curriculum, and finally formulates an efficient model of integrating students’ personal experiences into developing students’ intercultural communicative competence and awareness. This reflective study attempts to provide some pedagogical implications for intercultural communication education.

Set at the interface between second language acquisition and second language writing, this study examines how different types of written corrective feedback (WCF) influence the writing accuracy of Chinese college students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and whether WCF facilitates the students’ grasp of the focused linguistic knowledge. The participants (n = 60) were divided into direct correction group (n = 20), indirect error-coding group (n = 20) and metalinguistic explanation group (n = 20). The three groups wrote four essays in two months and received WCF for the first three essays on the five targeted error types, namely tense errors, confusion of different forms of a word, word (articles, prepositions, etc.) missing, errors in subject-verb agreement and inappropriate verb-noun collocations. The results show that all three types of WCF improved students’ writing accuracy but none of them had any statistical advantage, and the metalinguistic WCF was more effective than the other two forms in facilitating the acquisition of the targeted linguistic features. These results shed some light on teaching and consolidation of language points through writing in EFL contexts.

China-Africa corporate advertising is emerging as an example of the corporate advertising genre in response to the specific rhetorical context of China-Africa win-win cooperation. Drawing on Bhatia’s Critical Genre Analysis (2017), this study explores the text-internal and text-external generic features of China-Africa corporate advertising by analyzing 50 collected samples. The analysis of text-internal prominence shows that China-Africa corporate advertising is unique in its frequent use of win-win-oriented and sector-dependent technical lexicons to indicate the promotional intent. It is also found that move structures vary across different sub-types of China-Africa corporate advertising. Text-externally, the findings reveal a mixture of different discourses within the discursive space of China-Africa corporate advertising. In addition, the results suggest that Chinese companies invest more rhetorical efforts in enhancing the China-Africa community than African counterparts who tend to perceive China-Africa cooperation as the main avenue to attract worldwide partnerships. The findings have some practical implications for discourse construction in the Belt and Road Initiative context and shed light on the evolving nature of advertising discourse, particularly in the China-Africa win-win business context.