Trilingual Education

Trilingualism is a powerful fact of life in many parts of the world, including most autonomous regions inhabited by minority ethnic groups in China. Although much research has been conducted on the language attitudes of stakeholders from minority ethnic groups, the attitudinal object is usually an individual language (e.g. the ethnic language, the national language, or a foreign language). Few empirical studies have investigated 'trilingualism' as an attitudinal object. Aiming to narrow this gap, the present study examined the attitudes toward trilingualism of students from four Chinese universities and the influence of selected sociobiographical variables on their attitudes. An exploratory factor analysis showed the 'trilingualism attitudes' scale, developed for use in the present study and possibly beyond, to be unidimentional, with sufficient reliability (Cronbach alpha =.83). On this scale, the participants (N=310) achieved a mean score of 4.52 (out of five), reflecting very favourable attitudes toward trilingualism. Furthermore, regression analyses identified 'attitudes toward non-ethnic languages (viz. Putonghua and English)', 'attitudes toward the ethnic language (viz. Mongolian)', and gender as statistically significant predictors for attitudes toward trilingualism, respectively explaining 20%, 5.5%, and 1.3% of the trilingualism attitudes variance. Policy and research implications were also discussed.

ABSTRACT Trilingualism is a powerful fact of life in many parts of the world, including most autonomous regions inhabited by minority ethnic groups in China. Although much research has been conducted on the language attitudes of stakeholders from minority ethnic groups, the attitudinal object is usually an individual language (e.g. the ethnic language, the national language, or a foreign language). Few empirical studies have investigated ‘trilingualism’ as an attitudinal object. Aiming to narrow this gap, the present study examined the attitudes toward trilingualism of students from four Chinese universities and the influence of selected sociobiographical variables on their attitudes. An exploratory factor analysis showed the ‘trilingualism attitudes’ scale, developed for use in the present study and possibly beyond, to be unidimensional, with sufficient reliability (Cronbach alpha = .83). On this scale, the participants (N = 310) achieved a mean score of 4.52 (out of five), reflecting very favourable attitudes toward trilingualism. Furthermore, regression analyses identified ‘attitudes toward non-ethnic languages (viz. Putonghua and English)’, ‘attitudes toward the ethnic language (viz. Mongolian)’, and gender as statistically significant predictors for attitudes toward trilingualism, respectively explaining 20%, 5.5%, and 1.3% of the trilingualism attitudes variance. Policy and research implications were also discussed.

Existing research on multilingual acquisition indicates that learners confront
challenges not only in mastering unfamiliar linguistic forms, but also in forming new
identities, especially when the languages concerned are socially and linguistically
distant from each other. This study shows that ethnic multilingual learners (EMLs) in
China face more challenges at universities than the ethnic majority Han, when they
choose to study English as their major subject. The textbook written for the majority
Han and instructive methods for mainstream students are imposed upon them. The
environment is unfamiliar to EMLs, and they are often regarded as “strangers” to the
new language learning community. Their problems include the national examination
system, the medium of instruction, learning difficulties, psychological issues and
cultural exclusion. In a sense, the current educational policies in China are designed to
protect the educational rights of ethnic minorities, but ignore the role of education in
promoting ethnic minority cultures. The current university curricula mainly focus on
subject knowledge and patriotic education. As a result, the “cultural
self-consciousness” or wenhua zijue in Chinese and “cultural capital” in English are
less emphasized and encouraged. In this study, data are collected on two female ethnic
multilingual minority students at Yunnan University of Nationalities (YUN) through
ethnographic interviews, autobiography, oral narrative, online chatting and field
observation.
This study provides information at the micro level on how the two students have
successfully navigated the Chinese education system to the tertiary level. They have
tried their best to excel in the curricula of YUN by constructing multiple identities.
The findings suggest that the informants negotiate their multiple identities through
their active engagements, on and off the university campus, as legitimate participants
in various “communities of practice”. These identities are shaped partly by their own
cultural heritage and partly by the present sociopolitical realities in China. Drawing
iv
mainly on poststructuralist and multicultural education theories, the study also
examines the power relationships exercised in YUN and discusses the impact of these
power relationships on the identity formation of the target informants. The national
and local policies as well as the curriculum structures of YUN are analyzed to identify
the implicit power relationships that cause tensions in the education of EMLs. It is
argued that multiculturalism, as a discourse of education, may help to ease the tension
between being an ethnic minority and a Chinese national. Multiculturalism may also
help reduce the danger of assimilation and marginalization. To achieve the goal of
multilingual education based on the notion of multiculturalism, a “collaborative”
power relationship, which facilitates the empowerment of EMLs, should be the goal
of Chinese higher education. With such a goal, EMLs will be able to act as human
resources for raising the productivity of the country, as agents for social
transformation and as citizens of the cosmopolitan world.

RESUMEN

El objetivo de la presente investigación es explorar y comprender mejor el uso de las lenguas no oficiales en el aula de la escuela pública luxemburguesa. Esta escuela, así como el país, está construida a través de un discurso de multilingüismo y multiculturalismo inherente a su historia y a su actualidad. Este artículo pretende ir más allá explorando cómo profesores plurilingües afrontan la realidad del aula cuando tienen un recién llegado que solo habla portugués. Además, se explora una modificación en el trato hacia la diversidad cuando a lo largo del curso académico se produce un cambio de profesor. A partir de los datos aquí analizados, se puede inferir, entre otros, que un sistema multilingüe no tiene por qué ser un sistema abierto a las lenguas, pudiendo ser también un sistema que interpreta el trilingüismo del país como un sistema monolingüe. Una mayor apertura a las lenguas y una menor compartimentación de las mismas por parte de los profesores serían unas de las claves a considerar para el futuro en un sistema educativo como el luxemburgués.

ABSTRACT

“Idealised trilingualism and non-official language use in the Luxembourgish school”

The present research aims to explore and better understand the use of non-official languages in the Luxembourgish public school. This school, as the country, is built via a discourse of multilingualism and multiculturalism as inherent to its history and present days. This article pretends to go further and explore how plurilingual teachers confront the reality in their classrooms when they receive a newcomer who speaks only Portuguese. Furthermore, this article explores a modification in the treatment of diversity when a change of teacher takes place during the academic year. From the data here analysed it can be inferred, among others, that a multilingual system is not necessarily a language awareness one, and that it can also be a system where the country’s trilingualism is interpreted as a monolingual system. A language awareness approach and a lesser compartmentalization of languages by the teachers would be key to consider for the future of the Luxembourgish educational system.

The main objective of this investigation is to evaluate the efficacy and the quality of an early childhood program that is being developed in a pre kindergarten centre of San Sebastian (Spain) that tries to develop the physical, cognitive, social and moral capacities of children, during their first three years. The methodology of this program is characterized by linguistic immersion that will allow to the children to listen three languages: spanish, english and basque. The methodology also includes different exercises of motility (creeping and crawling, for example) and activities like bits of intelligence. The Spanish legislation suggests that during this period, educators can stimulate the capacities of all children because of the educative and assistential finality that demands this period. Furthermore, it suggests that it has to attend to the quality principle and, for this reason, the evaluation program is the only way to assure and guarantee that activities really respond to this demand. But the way to develop a quality program for children under the three year is not defined in the legislation. For this reason is really important to clarify the way to develop the capacities of children attending the principle of quality. The present evaluation program has considered the orientations of the Perez Juste evaluation model and the considerations of Glassman and Nevo theory. The agents that participated in this evaluation were the children (the pupils of two year old of this pre kindergarten), the parents, the teachers, the context, and the program per se. The moments where the evaluation was developed were before the development of the program, during the development, and after the implementation of the program, during two year. Furthermore, the dimensions, the indicators, the variables were the categories that we used to study the results of this evaluation. The result of the evaluation indicates that is possible to implement an early childhood program that develops the capacities of children attending the quality principle.