A Research On The Trilingual Usage Of Tibetan Middle School Students In Lhasa City

Tibetan-Chinese-English trilingual education is the unique educational model of Tibet Autonomous Region.TAR has made remarkable achievements in the field of scientific research of trilingual education through practical teaching and scientific research for many years.However,there is still a long way to in terms of further research in this area,especially in the research area on the foundation of trilingual education.Language usage is a complex concept,it can refer to a situation of how a certain or some language groups master and use their native and foreign language,including the listening,speaking,reading and writing level of different languages,the frequency and scope of using different languages,the range of usage and occasions,language attitude,etc.All these belong to the scope of language usage.This paper,taking the students from four middle schools of Lhasa city as the research object and using the research method of questionnaire investigation,individual interview and comparative analysis,did an integrated and longitudinal investigation and analysis on the Tibetan middle school students' use of Tibetan,Chinese and English as well as the attitude for the three languages,including the following aspects:students' ability of listening,speaking,reading and writing;the usage of the three languages in the family,school,spare time and community;the influence of gender,age,family on the use of the languages;This paper also did an comprehensive investigation on the Tibetan middle school students' attitude from affective factor,cognitive factor,behavioral tendencies and language code conversion.At the same time,it also studied the influences of different school locations,age differences on the Tibetan Middle School Students' language attitude as well as gender,age,family differences on the Tibetan Middle School Students' language use.Findings of the research are as follows:1.Tibetan middle school students' level of listening,speaking,reading and writing of the two language,Tibetan and Chinese,is basically the same and both are very high,but the students are not able to use English.2.The main communication language in the family of Tibetan middle school students is Tibetan in Lhasa and Chinese is their second choice.English user is scarce or there is no English user at all.3.The majority of Tibetan middle school students use Chinese to communicate with their teachers and classmates in formal occasions at school in Lhasa.The main language the Tibetan middle school students use in their spare time is Chinese and Tibetan is their second choice.The number of Tibetan middle school students who use Chinese is the double of the number of Tibetan middle school students who use Tibetan in big and formal public places in their community in Lhasa.4).The Tibetan middle school students gave highest comments for Tibetan language in the affective and cognitive factor in Lhasa.They think Chinese and English is the two most useful languages from the perspective of behavioral tendencies.More than half of Tibetan middle school students borrow Chinese words when they are speaking Tibetan and use some Tibetan vocabularies when they are taking in Chinese in terms of language code conversion.English has higher reputation in the mind of Tibetan middle school students from downtown than in the mind of students from county and suburb.Tibetan middle school students from junior high school gave higher comments for English than Tibetan middle school students from senior high school in Lhasa.5).There are differences in terms of age and gender difference's influence on use of languages of Tibetan middle school students in Lhasa.The number of Tibetan senior high school students who use Tibetan at school and their spare time is more than the number of Tibetan junior high school students.The number of female middle school students who use Chinese at school and their spare time is more than the number of male Tibetan middle school students.This paper also provides some suggestions based on the result of the research.Hopefully,the achievements of this research can provide scientific basic for further research on trilingual education and supply the references for making sound and practical language programmes as well as educational policy at the Lhasa City.