A Survey On English Education At Minority Bilingual Classes In Secondary Schools Of Urumqi

Language education is recorded as a core component of China’s education for ethnic minority groups. With the popularization of bilingual education in Xinjiang, bilingual classes have set up English language courses in addition to Mandarin Chinese. However,from the literature review it has been found that language research towards ethnic minorities in Xinjiang mainly focuses on bilingual education between their mother tongue and Mandarin Chinese. Yet, studies of foreign language education towards ethnic groups in this region are limited to college or MKM students level. Thus, the present study aims to investigate the overall trend of English education towards bilingual class students. This study applies qualitative and quantitative combined methodology under the theories of pedagogy and psycholinguistics to investigate English education at the secondary schools in Urumqi as research subjects, and attempts to discover the current existing issues.The present study integrates questionnaires, interviews and teaching observations to investigate 108 minority English language teachers and 3039 bilingual students in 35 secondary schools as the research subjects within 7 districts in Urumqi. The results of this study are obtained by utilizing descriptive analysis as follows:First, from the overall trend of English teaching it observes that the minority English language teachers are composed of less experienced young people, with serious shortage of qualified trilingual teaching skills and gender imbalance. Professional development shows that teachers have positive attitude for receiving continuing education, and they also regard they have less opportunities to participate in full-time institute-based in-service training and teaching-missions abroad programs. In addition, the aspects of teaching performances show that teachers have essential knowledge of teaching approaches, methods and strategies, but lack of innovative teaching performances. Moreover, It also shows minority English teachers have positive attitudes and motivations for teaching English towards bilingual students and being English language teachers.Second, from the overall trend of English learning it displays that the students of bilingual classes at secondary schools are formed mainly by the Altaic language family and the branch of Turkic language speakers. Besides, they have willingness to be multilinguals and multicultural people. In addition, the learning performances show that students are acquiring their L3 with the most traditional learning approach, method and strategies. Lastly, the bilingual students show that they have positive attitudes and motivations to learn English. And intrinsic motivation is higher than the extrinsic motivation.