Research On Bilingual Education Of Dongxiang Nationality

Base on the situation about the historical development of bilingual education in our country, whether an ethnic minority has their own verbal and written language has significant impact on the development of bilingual education. It is easier to carry out bilingual education for those minorities who have their own verbal and written language; this is specially the case for those written languages that have a long history. Some ethnic minorities are able to use textbooks for school curricula that are written in their own languages. This enables them to systematically pass down cultural knowledge. If the ethnic minority does not have a written language alongside their spoken language, then their language only maintains a supplementary role in the curriculum of bilingual education. In the case of the minority language as a primary language within the bilingual curriculum is incomparable in effectiveness to the curriculum in which the minority language is supplementary. Dongxiang is one of the ethnic groups that only found within the Gansu province. Their spoken language, Dongxiang does not have orthography; it is also the primary language for communication among the Dongxiang. I chose the Liang Jia Si Town for my research sampling and studied its unique features of bilingual education. The town is located at north of Hezheng County and is deeply rooted in Dongxiang tradition; the vast majority of the town’s population is Dongxiang. Although the town has been implementing the Dongxiang and Chinese bilingual education at primary education level, there are many problems that exist in the process of bilingual pedagogy as Dongxiang students struggle with learning Chinese.First, this research references a large body of literature, including books, journals, scholarly articles that are related to the studies of Dongxiang people’s primary education and language. Through this, I gained basic background knowledge and a theoretical foundation to further research about the challenges of "bilingual" education of Dongxiang students. In addition, I participated in the Chinese curriculum at the local elementary school and did field research on bilingual education in order to analyze and understand the challenges that Dongxiang students encounter in the process of learning Chinese and their causes. Finally, the research provides some direct theoretical solutions and advices to implement in the bilingual education system of Lang Jia Si Town with best wishes for promoting high educational quality.