A Study On Chinese Learning Difficulty Of Tongxiang Minority Pupils And Its Instruction Strategies

With the advancement of economy and technology, people′s subsistence, living and development have extended beyond the geographic boundary .In the history of mankind, there is never a time like today when language communications among countries, nations and individuals are so frequent. As a result, the issue of bilingualism has become a world-wide focus, which needs dealing with urgently for education enterprises of all nations. China is an united nation with multiple nationalities. "Plural Integrity" is the fundamental framework of Chinese culture and education development. Therefore, in order to push our educational cause forward to the 21st century, we must devote major efforts to developing education and improving qualities of the minorities. Experiences show that before bidding farewell to poverty, we must try to extricate from ignorance at first. And carrying out Min-Han bilingual education and teaching to minorities ,whose mother languages are not Chinese, is an efficient way to enhance their intellectual qualities and develop their economy. Tongxiang minority is one of the peculiar minorities of Gansu Province, who has the lasting tradition of learning Chinese and its culture. For the time being, elementary schools of this minority have been adopting the bilingual model,i.e. Tonxiang-Chinese. Tongxiang language is Tongxiang national minority's mother tongue, also the children first language and the major language used among the minority citizens. My education research shows that learning Chinese for Tongxiang pupils is quite difficult; that is to say, they have much difficulty in studying the second language-Chinese. Thus probing and handling the difficulty by effort has certain practical meaning. First, this thesis made some document analyses. While with references to a large number of researches and articles on elementary education of Tongxiang minority and Tongxiang language, combiding the achievements of bilinguals research both at home and abroad, I get a clear and concise concept of the essence of bilingual teaching in Tongxiang elementary schools, thus lays a theoretical foundation for further probing such difficulties in learning Chinese. Then, by using questionnaire, interview, group-discussion and individual-case, the thesis went into Chinese learning activities in Tongxiang elementary schools, I investigated students difficulties in Chinese-learning. By classifying and counting, the corpus of difficulties in learning Chinese for Tongxiang pupils was set up, and the peculiar characteristics of such difficulties was obtained. Meanwhile, taking part in the bilinguals teaching activities, making some class-observation, consulting teaching-plan and students assignments, interviewing teacher and student who has difficulty in learning Chinese as case, communicated teaching experiences with Chinese teaching staff, Igained the effectiveness and reliability of the students difficulties in learning Chinese. Third, with the obtained characteristics I undertook a thorough analysis on the causes and relative factors of Tongxiang pupils difficulty in learning Chinese, including preschool education, teachers instruction, teaching materials and methods, Chinese learning environment, traditional conventions, native speakers language complex, mother tongue and so on.Finally, combing the feedback information got by communicating with the facilities, the thesis put forward some strategies and advice which aim at improving Chinese learning effect in Tongxiang elementary schools. We hope such strategies and advice could provide theoretical references and practical instruction in raising efficiency of Chinese learning and teaching quality...