The Academic Problems Of Being A Trilingual In China

This study is mainly concerned with ethnic minority students who have been experiencing trilingual education. Ethnic minority students’English learning is a special and an indispensable component of English education system in China. Through analyzing the problems originated from Bai students’learning English, this thesis discusses how their bilingual education experiences affect their English learning.The subjects of this study are16Bai college students who come from Southwestern China-Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province. They received the same education with their Han classmates in primary schools, where lessons are instructed in Mandarin Chinese. However, the ethnic minority students spoke their own minority languages or at least their local dialects before receiving the primary compulsory education. Thus the minority students had to learn Mandarin at primary schools. During this process, they were actually involved in bilingual education (their native language and Mandarin Chinese). Later, when they entered middle schools, English was introduced as one of the compulsive courses. Students then received trilingual education instructed in their native language, Mandarin and English. This kind of education is supposed to be efficient. According to the findings of this thesis, if taking the ethnic minority areas’ situation into consideration, the real outcomes are not as efficient as expected.In other similar studies on English learning of bilingual or trilingual students, students’self-concept stemming from one’s learning experience has been proved to has a great impact on their’ academic achievement. This thesis also attempts to find out Bai students’ self-concept related to their English learning and to examine how this factor affects their English achievement. The methodology of this thesis consists of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Questionnaires were adopted to collect data from16Bai college students among whom4more students are invited to participate in semi-structured interview. According to the data analysis, the major findings are summarized as below1) Chinese style of bilingual education is insignificant to English learning of Bai students;2) Students’ being good at L2does not necessarily lead to students’being good at L3;3) Students’formation of positive or negative English self-concepts is correlated to their English learning experiences. The research findings indicate that the students’ overall English learning outcomes have little relation to their bilingual education experiences. The main problems concerning the students’English outcomes lie in their negative self-concept.