Espectros de XRD para los recubrimientos depositados sobre MgO

China has a huge population consisting of 56 nationalities. The Han nationality is the dominant group, comprised of approximately 92% of the total population (Feng, 2005). Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua), which is the official language in China, or a variety of Chinese, is spoken by this majority population. Nowadays, only about 60 million people, who occupy 5-6% of China’s population, speak minority languages (Feng, 2005). These minority groups are mostly scattered in five autonomous regions, these ethnic autonomous areas are always resource-rich but economically under-developed (Adamson and Feng, 2009). There are five regions, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR hereafter), Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. These five regions are regarded as a very important part of the country for the following three reasons: (i) they cover 62% of the total area of the country; (ii) they border 90% neighbouring countries;(iii) they have a great amount of natural resources, for instance, mining, oil and gas, tropical crops and forestry (Duan, 2011). Thus, the education of these ethnic minority groups of people, who are the majority living in these regions, is vital for the government in terms of political stability and unity, and for the country’s economic development.

The concept of bilingualism in China can be dated back as far as the 3rd _{century by some}

historians (Feng, 2005). At this time, the Han majority population was beginning to populate the furthest reaches of the country, living under the rule of the Qin Dynasty. According to Feng (2005), formal bilingual schooling started when the late Qing government officially began opening bilingual schools for the higher classes of the minority groups in both major cities and minority areas by the dawning of the 20th _{century. Li and Huang (2004) defined BE}

in China in three stages according to different historical periods in the PRC era with the consideration of the policies and its implementations; it started from 1949 when the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) was founded. These three stages can be seen as the ‘start-up stage’ (1949–1965) when efforts were initially made to promote BE; the ‘stagnancy stage’ (1966–1976) in which the Cultural Revolution interrupted BE’s development and an assimilation mindset predominated. The final stage was the ‘recovery and development stage’ (late 1970s - present) when bi/trilingual education was robustly promoted once more (Feng

and Sunuodula, 2009, p. 685). Furthermore detailed divisions of the three stages, particularly the most recent stage, were also identified by other researchers in response to political and social changes (Xu, 2006).

BE has been conducted under the communist government since 1949. With the English language increasingly perceived as a crucial tool for both Chinese economic development and individual advancement in the society in China, two parallel systems of bilingual education for the majority Han and the minority groups have been differentiated clearly according to different aims and practices (Feng, 2007). For majority Han groups, a foreign language, such as English, was added into the curriculum with the aim of adding to students’ knowledge and linguistic competence. It is ‘additive bilingual teaching’, which can be described as a kind of strong models and develops bilinguals with no displacement of their mother tongue and culture (Feng, 2007). For the majority Han students, the role of a foreign language such as English is ‘just a tool’ (Orton, 2009) whereby they are speaking English, but being Chinese (Bianco, 2009). However, for minority ethnic groups, ‘transitional bilingual education’ is adopted, and that aims for transition to the mainstream educational system and the development of their ethnic identity, and more importantly, their national identities, and allegiance to the state (Feng, 2007, p.3).

There is a long history of BE for ethnic minorities in the five autonomous regions mentioned above. The implementation of BE aims, ultimately, to produce bilingual speakers with a strong competence in Mandarin Chinese, which is spoken by the majority Han nationality population. This is done so that the minority groups of people can incorporate their indigenous languages and cultures into mainstream society and cultures (Feng, 2005). The main purpose of minority education in these regions is to maintain political stability and unity of all nationalities, and is stated explicitly in official educational documents (Feng, 2005). Recently, great efforts have been made by the state in order to maintain political stability in a way of producing collaborative policies that take into account the minority groups’ identity and concerns. As the government also makes efforts to promote national cohesion through the promotion of Mandarin Chinese, a potential tension has arisen (Adamson and Feng, 2009) which is evidenced recently by continuous conflicts in XUAR (BBC News China, 2013, 2014; Palmer, 2014).

In minority dominated areas, the two predominant forms of BE among minority groups are the submersion approach and the transition model as indicated in the previous section. In the latter, the minority or home language is only used at the initial stage as the language of instruction, and gives way in a short time to Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction for all school subjects. These forms are what Baker (2006, 2011) mentioned as ‘weak forms’

of BE, with the aim of eventually assimilating minority groups into the monolingual mainstream society. Nevertheless, ‘strong forms’ such as the heritage or maintenance bilingual education models with emphasis on the minority language of the students which is their mother tongue, were found to exist in some regions, such as ‘Xinjiang (XUAR), Inner Mongolia and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture’ as Feng pointed out (2005, p.529). However, this may not be the case in most parts in XUAR nowadays, which will be discussed further in the section of XUAR context.

From Bilingual to Trilingual education

With the globalization and the recognition of the importance of the English language, the acquisition of the English language becomes a requirement in the school curriculum and also for job hunting, and it has played a prominent role in recent years in China (Sunuodula and Feng, 2011). The claim made by China of its ‘open-door’ policy, being a member of WTO (the World Trade Organisation) in 2001 as well as Beijing’s successful hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games have all helped to promote bilingual and trilingual education, and to reshape China’s education system in general (Feng, 2005). In 2001, a document entitled ‘Guidelines for Promoting English Teaching in Elementary Schools’ was issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education (Ministry of Education, 2001). It showed that the compulsory learning of English is lowered from the first year of junior high school to Grade 3 in primary school. The aims of learning English language shifted from receptive language skills, such as reading and grammar, to the productive use of English and interpersonal communication. This was a shift from the traditional ‘instrumental’ rationale to adding a ‘humanistic’ goal. For the language instruction, a document named ‘Guidelines for Improving Teaching for University Undergraduate Students’ suggested that the usage of English as an alternative medium of instruction at university-level should be imparted through 5-10% of a foreign language during all undergraduate teaching. Thus, English has shifted from a subject to an option as the medium of instruction to teach other subjects (Bianco, 2009). Bilingualism and bilingual education, referring to both English and Mandarin Chinese, is widely seen as a useful tool by the Han majority with the aim of achieving both subject learning and language proficiency simultaneously (Feng, 2005). For minority groups, English, as a third language longstanding with their home language and Mandarin Chinese, can be added into the school curriculum in the regions where there are adequate resources (Tai, 2008).

Blachford and Jones (2011) argue ‘trilingual education is problematic for minority peoples in China as a result of practical difficulties… particularly the shortage of qualified teachers of English from within the minority community’ (p.235). As Feng (2005) stated, in most autonomous regions where most of the minority groups are living in, insufficient effort is made in developing learning and teaching resources for ethnic minority students; the obstacle

which is a shortage of qualified bi/trilingual teachers often stands in the way of the development of bi/trilingual education. The situation of the shortage of qualified trilingual teachers in the northwest of China is more severe than in other regions in the country (Luo and Jiang, 2009; Duan, 2011). Poverty, lack of information, poor transportation, low social status and educational development of the minority groups in minority regions, have had a negative effect on the number of qualified teachers within the system (Lin, 1997). The shortage of qualified trilingual teachers required to meet the needs of school children presents a particular challenge for school settings, and it is also an educational problem that will profoundly influence education in schools (Aihaiti, 2008; Luo and Jiang, 2009; Duan, 2011).

To meet the challenge, the need for further attention and funding to train additional teachers is increasing (Aihaiti, 2008). Thus, two kinds of special plans for training teachers are currently underway in both national and regional level in China (Li, 2014). One plan focuses on training college students to supplement the existing teachers. The other plan aims to improve the quality of already - practicing teachers. The types of training models include: the ‘U-S’ cooperative model (U stands for University, S is for school), teacher exchanges and cooperative model, intensive training courses in the universities model, practical training based in schools model and far-distant training model (Li, 2010). These measures and types of training discussed above help to reduce the severe trilingual teacher shortage to some extent.

However, as Lassiter (1983) states, it is not sufficient to simply offer a greater number of teachers employment in order to deal with this shortage. It is vital that the quality of training programmes is also improved. Thus, the training of trilingual teachers becomes essential and attracts much attention by scholars and researchers. As Lin (1997) and Li (2012) pointed out provinces such as Guangxi, Guizhou, Tibet and XUAR, with their large minority population, still have a long way to go in respect of teacher training. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), as the largest autonomous region among the five in China, is the focus of the present research.