A Study On Trilingual Attitude And Ethnic Identity Of Tonghai Mongolian Middle School Students In Yunnan

With the rapid development of economy and society,ethnic groups have learned their native language,Chinese and English.Meanwhile,under the background of implementing bilingual or trilingual education policy,the minority students have such issues as trilingual attitude and ethnic identity,both of which have a certain influence on each other.Yunnan,a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual province in the southwest of China,has 25 identified ethnic groups like Dai,Bai,etc...Tonghai Mongolian middle school students in Yunnan,as multilingual users,tend to choose different languages in different situations during the process of communication.Students may value the language that they have been learning,which is named language attitude.Language choice and language attitude,to a degree,will influence their ethnic identity.Also,ethnic identity exerts an effect on language attitude.Based on the context of trilingual education,this study aims at investigating the trilingual attitude and ethnic identity of 189 Tonghai Mongolian middle school students from three grades of No.15 middle school in Yunnan.The questionnaire which is the quantitative method and the interview which is the qualitative method are adopted in the process of data collecting and analysis to study the following four research questions:(1)Which language do Tonghai Mongolian middle school students use in their daily life?(2)What attitudes do Mongolian middle school students hold towards Mongolian,Chinese and English? Are there differences in gender and grade?(3)What is the current situation of ethnic identity of Tonghai Mongolian middle school students? Are there differences in gender and grade?(4)Is there any correlation between Tonghai Mongolian middle school students' language attitude and ethnic identity?The major findings are as follows:(1)On most occasions Mongolian middle school students tend to speak Mongolian to their family members at home,while Chinese or dialect to their classmates or teachers in school.In addition,they hardly speak English to their classmates or teachers.Their level of Chinese is higher than that of Mongolian and English;Most students communicate fluently in Chinese,skillfully but sometimes with obstacle in Mongolian and basically,but unskillfully in English.(2)Most students hold positive attitudes towards Mongolian,Chinese and English.Results demonstrate that scores are different in such three dimensions as beautiful-sounding,affability and usefulness of language.Students have more positive attitude towards Mongolian than the other two languages in the aspects of beautiful-sounding and affability.But,in the aspect of usefulness,students have more positive attitudes towards Chinese than the other two languages.There are no significant differences existing between male students and female students as well as three grades in terms of beautiful-sounding,affability and usefulness of Mongolian,Chinese and English;(3)Mongolian middle school students have high recognition of their ethnic identity.There are no significant differences in male and female students,but boys score higher than the girl,which indicates that male students have higher degree of their own ethnic group than female students.The students of grade 3 have higher ethnic identity than those of grade 2 and grade 1.In other words,students of grade 3 have stronger identification than the other two grades.(4)Significantly positive correlation exists in attitude towards Chinese and Mongolian and ethnic identity.However,there is no significantly positive correlation between attitudes towards English and ethnic identity.This study is of great significance for the maintenance of ethnic identity as well as the language planning and policy-making of ethnic groups in Yunnan.In addition,it can finally promote the harmonious development of different ethnic groups in Yunnan,and even in China.