Rugosidad en la resistividad de la bicapa La 2/3 Ca 1/3 MnO 3 / La 1/3 Ca 2/3 MnO 3

Based on the policy document analysis in previous chapter, the findings indicate that the national and regional policies (XUAR) with regard to language and language education are, in official documents, supportive for multilingual education. During the implementation of these policies, they rigorously promote Mandarin Chinese first of all, although preservation of local minority languages and culture is also written in the official policy documents. Meanwhile, foreign language courses are mentioned in policy documents to be added into the school curriculum from Year 3 onwards in primary schools. However, during the implementation of these policies in practice, the autonomous government in XUAR listed two models of bilingual education for ethnic minority students, which are (i) mainly adopting their minority language (L1) as medium of instruction (MoI) to teach school subjects (Model 1) and (ii) focusing on teaching all the subjects in Mandarin Chinese except for minority language literacy (Model 2). Model 2 is stated explicitly as the preferred and aimed-for model, where Mandarin Chinese and minority languages are not on an equal stage. Mandarin Chinese is the priority in Model 2, although the minority language is not entirely ignored in the policy documents.

English language courses were offered in schools where Mandarin Chinese is the medium language for instruction; however, for most of the schools where the Minority language is used as the medium of instruction, English language courses were not listed in their curriculum. According to the findings of this research, when implementing these policies at university level, the focus was exclusively on Mandarin Chinese; no minority language was included as a course in the curriculum for minority students. With regard to Han students, although it was indicated that a minority language course was included following the two curriculum modifications, there was no specific requirement either for assessing the teachers’ teaching or for students’ learning outcome regarding this course.

The findings of this study, first of all, have some implications for language policies in China. The policies at both national and regional levels regarding language education in China show on paper, that minority students would benefit from trilingualism. However, there were discrepancies among these policies at local levels in the ethnic minority regions of China (Adamson, 2015). XUAR is one of the Special Administrative Regions in China, where the minority group are supposed to have considerable autonomy in educational policy making. This autonomy would allow them to design the policies which meet the needs of ethnic minority groups, in accordance with the general principles formulated by the state. Each autonomous region will make various specific programming choices and implementation methods to take steps toward multilingual education at local level in accordance with their practical conditions, for instance, models of bilingual/ trilingual education, the curriculum contents and medium of instruction for teaching subjects, etc. (Ma, 2009; Adamson and Feng, 2009). The autonomous power can serves to provide linguistic strength to minority groups, empower non-Han members, preserve the group’s cultural integrity and help boost China’s global competence, meanwhile, it can lead to impose the national language on a minority group at the expense of the minority language, and result in a depreciative or subtractive model of trilingual education as well (Feng and Adamson, 2015), if not implemented properly in practice.

The process of implementing trilingual education in reality does not necessarily lead to beneficial outcomes in that regard. These three languages in relation to each other were not dealt with properly during the process of implementing trilingual education, in order to benefit the students. On the one hand, the importance of Mandarin Chinese can never be overstated during the process of learning languages in XUAR. All students, including ethnic minorities, have to learn Mandarin Chinese not only because it is advocated as an inter-group language in China for the purpose of communication among all ethnic groups, but also because it is a prerequisite for university study and for future opportunities. It is the main language for teaching and learning in the universities. Besides its predominant in the educational settings, Mandarin Chinese is regarded as a facilitator for economic development through commercial interaction with the other ethnic groups and the other regions in China, according to the view of many leaders in ethnic minority regions (Adamson and Feng, 2009). Therefore, Mandarin Chinese carries high political, cultural and economic capital. On the other hand, although Minority languages seem to be treated equally as Mandarin Chinese on paper in the national and regional documents, the situation is different during the process of the implementation. It is shown clearly in this study that none of the minority languages were included, as were Mandarin Chinese and English, in the curriculum for ethnic minority students in trilingual teacher training in TTU.

Before discussing how the language policies involving English are implemented, it is necessary to note some of the educational challenges arising from the point of view of typological distance, which was introduced in the Literature Review chapter. As a general rule, languages that belong to the same language family have greater similarities with each other than those that are in different families. In the case of the former, there is more chance of positive language transfer which potentially facilitates the target language acquisition for the learners (Ytsma, 2001). As Grimes and Grimes (1993) stated that linguistic distance between Chinese and English is exceeded only by the distance between Japanese and English. Chinese is a logographic and tonal language; it has little in common with English with regards to vocabulary and grammar aspect (Adamson, 2015). The vast difference between the structures of Chinese and English may well be a major causal factor for the difficulty and challenge that Chinese learners are facing during their English language learning. The Uyghur language, which was most participants’ mother tongue in this study, is part of the Turkic language family and is closer to English than Mandarin Chinese, as Sunuodula and Feng (2011) pointed out. However, according to the survey results in the present study, these ethnic minority students had to learn English through Mandarin Chinese. Thus, we see two factors that clearly hinder the third language acquisition for the minority students. First, as discussed in the Literature Review chapter, it is very likely that huge typological distance between Mandarin Chinese (MoI) and English as the target language, causes difficulty in language transfer. Second, worse still, Mandarin Chinese is their weaker language.

The English language, as an international language, was promoted through various initiatives and institutionalized forces. Competence in English becomes one of the requirements for accessing to higher levels of education and getting promotion (Adamson, 2015). In some universities, passing an English proficiency test is one of the requirements for students in order to graduate, irrespective of their subject (Adamson and Xia, 2011). According to the present study, in XUAR, English language courses were offered in Mandarin Chinese medium schools, which Han and Min kao Han minority students attended. Nonetheless, in schools where minority languages were used as the medium of instruction, English was provided only where resources permitted. Unfortunately, according to the situation as presented in the findings of the present study, most of the minority language medium schools were in the Southern part of XUAR, where it is known that the resources, such as qualified teachers, teaching materials and equipment for language teaching and learning, are in short supply. This means that ethnic minority students attending schools in that region were less likely to have an opportunity to learn English, as was reported in their interviews in this research. Although less or limited opportunity was offered for the ethnic minority students to gain access to English language learning compared to Han students, it remains a requirement

that they have to demonstrate certain levels of English language ability (e.g. CET 4 and CET 6 certificate) in order to continue with their postgraduate studies, to gain promotion or even to acquire jobs in the first instance. It is apparent that this “one-size-fits-all” model may cause barriers for minority students during both language learning process and future career development.

Issues surrounding language in education are crucial. As Edwards (2004) stated, language policies can serve to provide minority groups with enhanced access to mainstream opportunities; at an equal chance, they can result in social disadvantage and marginalisation as well. The minority languages could be well supported in the formal education system if the regional government made a genuine effort to encourage the ethnic minority groups to sustain their linguistic and cultural heritage, which is desirable for social harmony. Meanwhile, competence in the national language, Mandarin Chinese, could also be developed because the ethnic minorities want to have access to the opportunities raised by China’s development. Added to the mix is English, which is supposed to be included in the school curriculum from Grade 3 in Primary schools since 2002. When implemented appropriately, a strong model such as the Accretive or Balanced model of trilingual education (see Feng and Adamson, 2015) may well be set up and to help the students become trilingual; this is a strong model which would lead to additive trilingualism.

As discussed in the Literature Review chapter, additive trilingualism in ethnic minority dominated regions in China should aim for students’ development of very strong competences in both minority languages and Mandarin Chinese, and peer appropriate competence in English comparing to that of the peers of the majority Han group (Feng and Adamson, 2015). Meanwhile, opportunities of wide usage and importance for life opportunities should be given to both minority language and Mandarin Chinese, not only for one language, Mandarin Chinese. Furthermore, the new language proficiency could be built upon the proficiency of the existing languages (Feng and Adamson, 2015), which, in the context of this study means that English language (L3) learning should be built upon students’ mother tongue - Uyghur (L1) - and/or Mandarin Chinese (L2) if the latter is adequately developed. Sufficient evidence (Zhang, et al., 2015; Finifrock, 2015) shows that the three languages or more can be well developed subsequently or in a more balanced approach without leading to the development of one language at the expense of another. As Feng and Adamson (2015) pointed out that strong models would lead to effective educational outcomes, with the potential social, political and economic benefits for students. According to the results of the present study and the theory reviewed, we could confidently argue that current policies at the regional/ prefectural levels make and adopted in schools and universities in XUAR are inadequate and there is an urgent need for policy adjustment.