Research On Mandarin Learning Status Of The Yi Nationality Normal Students Majoring In Pre-school Education

At present,the overall level of Mandarin speaking among the people living in ethnic areas is comparatively poor.But with the advancement of society and the convenience of transportation,the exchanges between various ethnic groups are becoming increasingly close,under which circumstance the ability to use the official and common language,Mandarin,is quite necessary.As we know,age from 3 to 6 is a critical period for language learning,creating a good Mandarin speaking environment from kindergarten period would immensely help Yi people with their Mandarin learning,in which case the language competence of kindergarten teachers is of great importance.The pre-school education major set up in Xichang Ethnic normal school for kindergarten teachers is the main training base for pre-school teachers in Liangshan district,however,there has always been a low rate of Mandarin proficiency among Yi students,which brought down the students’ passing rate on Putonghua testing grade certification,thus obstructing them obtaining their kindergarten teacher certificates.In view of this,exams and questionnaires of 365 students of grade 2015 majored in pre-school education were conducted to investigate their Chinese Mandarin using status.Together with interviews with their language teachers,the difficulties Yi students may encounter when learning and speaking Mandarin were spotted,and solutions were proposed.This paper consists of three parts.First of all,the current status of students’ cognition,curriculum provision and trainers’ qualification of Mandarin in Xichang Ethnic normal school for kindergarten teachers is acquainted with by analyzing the results of questionnaire survey.Problems exist and their causes are then discussed.According to the analysis,while the students majored in pre-school education studying mandarin,in terms of subjective factors,senses of national identity,negative transfer of native language and lacking of mandarin using environment make the students learning mandarin with poor enthusiasm,unwilling to participate and having not enough confidence.To put that in perspective,due to the managers’ solidified thinking,unreasonable courses setting and improper use of teaching materials,the courses targets are not accurate enough,the courses evaluation is too arbitrary and the teaching contents are in short of pertinence.In addition,insufficiency of mandarin teachers,high pressure in Mandarin level Test,and no enough understanding of Yi language and pre-school education,effective training for Yi normal students cannot be carried out and professionalism of pre-school education is inadequate.Finally,to solve these problems,it is suggested that school should reform with the subjectively existing problems in Yi students,curriculums optimization and vocational quality improvement of teachers taken into consideration,and therefore improve the mandarin level of pre-school education Yi students.