A Study Of Application Of Immersion Program In Mongolian High School Students' Acquisition Of Chinese

China is a country with multi-nationalities. Due to the language differences of ethnic groups, for sake of the communication among those people, the promotion of Chinese teaching and learning to people of different ethnic groups has always been the great concern of the Chinese Central Government, language teachers and learners. They are seeking ways of helping students learning Chinese while their ethnic cultures and languages can be well preserved.The facts in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region such as the reality of multinational area, the trade between different nationalities, the local education development level, and the different natures of Mongolian and Chinese determine the significance of Chinese teaching and learning and the urgency of solving current teaching problems. Language teachers in Inner Mongolia have endeavored to find ways to improve their students' competence and performance in Chinese. However, their efforts have proved to be less effective than expected. As a Mongolian student with linguistic major and a would-be teacher, I would like to do my bit to it.As a type of second language (L2) education, the immersion language education receives extensive development and recognition around the world in recent years. The present study proves the Chinese immersion program's efficacy in Mongolian students' Chinese learning. Based on the theories and practices of immersion teaching and the present situation of Chinese teaching in Mongolian area, the present study uses HSK (Elementary-Intermediate) and language background questionnaire to compare the immersion teaching with the regular second language teaching.The present study answers the following two research questions:(1) What is the Mongolian students' level of Chinese proficiency at the beginning of instruction? How does the Mongolian students' level of Chinese proficiency change after 4 months of instruction? (2) How do students in Chinese immersion program perform relative to how they would be doing if they were receiving the usual form of education? With the premise of the research questions,145 participants in the present study were chosen from two classes (Chinese immersion class and non-immersion class) of first-year senior high of Tongliao Mongolian Middle School, they were involved in the following three research steps. Firstly, the students were tested on their proficiency of Chinese with a pre-test. Secondly, a survey study in the form of questionnaire was designed to collect the information on the participants' language background. In the last step, post-test was designed to test the students' Chinese proficiency after 4 months training.The research measures the results of pre-test and post-test on Chinese proficiency. The results of the study reveal that all students in the Chinese immersion classes as well as the non-immersion class made gains in HSK (Elementary-Intermediate). Immersion students educated in the Chinese-dominant class received significantly higher gains in the test than non-immersion peers.On every sub-test, the Chinese immersion and non-immersion students' test scores are raised in four domains (listening, grammar, reading and cloze test). The immersion students score higher than the non-immersion students, the moderately higher scores in grammar, and significantly higher scores in listening, reading and close-test. In other words, immersion program has positive effect on Mongolian students'acquisition of Chinese.Based on the empirical study, the present study proves the Chinese immersion program's efficacy in Mongolian students' Chinese learning. The research also illustrates that immersion students gained higher Chinese proficiency than regular students with neither harm nor hindrance to first language (L1) development and any other academic courses. The fact that Chinese immersion program have been successfully implemented here in Inner Mongolian area should be encouraging to other ethnic minority areas seeking ways to improve upon its Chinese education as well as English language education outcomes.