A Survey Of Language Use And Language Attitudes Of Kazakh Middle School Students In Changji City, Xinjiang

Xinjiang Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture is subject to the gathering region of many nations. There are different nations living in the region, which features rich language resources. The multi-linguistic environment here reflects prominent characteristics of sociolinguistics. Therefore, the article has taken the language usage and attitude of the Kazak high school students in the downtown area of Changji as the main research contents. The article has made relevant survey on the language mastering capabilities of Kazak high school students in terms of their native language and the Mandarin Chinese, as well as the language usage status of them under different occacions and respective attitude evaluation status on the two different languages.Questionnaire method, interview method and comparative research method have been adopted during the survey and research. The Kazak students from high schools that have been merged for both Han people and Ethnic people and located in downtown area of Changji have been selected on a random basis as the respondents, main contents of which include:Firstly, make a survey on various family background information associated with the tested students, including gender, age, occupation of parents, educational background of parents.Secondly, language usage status, including the language usage status, as well as the language listening, speaking, reading and writing ability status in the social environment.Thirdly, evaluation on the language attitude of Kazak high school students. The recognition degree of them towards their native language and national common language.Our main viewpoints are as follows:Kazak high school students have relatively good capabilities on mastering their native language and the Mandarin Chinese. However, their reading and writing capabilities in terms of their native language, as well as their listening and speaking capabilities in terms of the Mandarin Chinese, are comparatively weak.Under different language communication occasions, Kazak high schoolstudents are capable of selecting and using proper language based on the variation of the communication occasions.Firstly, under school occasions, Kazak school girls are more active than the school boys in terms of using the Mandarin Chinese. Moreover, occupation of parents have no influence on their language selection; however, the educational background parents have laid certain impacts on the Kazak high school students when selecting language. Kazak high school students, parents of whom have elementary and junior high school educational background, are more active than the ones with parents that have senior high and regular college education background in terms of using the Mandarin Chinese or both "Kazak language and Mandarin Chinese".Secondly, under family occasions, ratio of Kazak school girls that are intended to use Mandarin Chinese, while using both "Kazak language and Mandarin Chinese" for communication, is obviously higher than that of the Kazak school boys. The senior high school students group is more active than the junior high school students group in terms of using Mandarin Chinese. Grandparents, father and mother have constituted the "iron triangle" in terms of Kazak language usage. The loose language objects besides the relationship of the "iron triangle" has facilitate the transition from the usage ratio of Kazak language to that of "Kazak language and Mandarin Chinese"Thirdly,under social communication occasions, Kazak high school students will give priority to the mandarin Chinese for communication; secondly, the largest difference has been found on the family background between the urban and rural areas, which has been caused by the distance away from the habitation and the influence of the occupation of the parents.Under the same language environment, given that the language objects are members of the same ethic group, the Kazak high school student will select and use the Kazak language. In this case, conclusions can be drawn that it is irrelevant to the language environment factor.Through this investigation, we not only understand the kazak students of language use and language attitude, and to provide some factual basis for our language education, language policy.