A Study On Chinese Language Preparation For Dai Children In Minority Areas Before School

In recent years,preschool preparation has been a focus of research both in China and abroad.Being a crucial part of preschool preparation,early literacy readiness has gained an increased attention.With the reform and opening up and the emergence of multiculturalism,ethnic minority groups in their regions began to accept,learn,use and even be dependent on Chinese.The Dai ethnic group,which live separately in small groups in Baoshan City,Yunnan Province is one of the representative group that use mother tongue and mandarin at the same time.Chinese has become an unreplaceable bridge for communication.This study selected 120 preschool children from both Dai ethnic group and Han ethnic group(majority group in China)as participants,meanwhile,metalinguistic abilities,pragmatic skills and written language knowledge were examined to predict early Chinese literacy development of preschool children from Dai ethnic group.This study is consist of 3 parts:Study 1:Self-adapted tests were used to examine the characteristics of 60 Dai minority preschoolers' and Han majority preschoolers' metalinguistic abilities.Analysis of Variance and Multiple Comparisons were conducted to compare phonological awareness,morphological awareness and orthographic awareness between children from Dai ethnic group and children from Han ethnic group.Characteristic of metalinguistic skills of children from Dai ethnic group is predicted.Study 2:International Children's Corpus Analysis System(CHILDES)was adopted to test pragmatic abilities of 120 preschoolers.Some rich vocabulary(TTR event),the total average sentence length(MLU),vocabulary(NTW),and other indicators were examined to predict pragmatic skills of children from Dai ethnic group.Study 3:Self-adapted materials were used to test children's Chinese characters recognition,grammar and syntax ability,and comprehension skills.Same methods from study 1 were conducted to discuss written language skills of children from Dai ethnic group.The following conclusions are drawn:(1)Metalinguistic skills(phonological awareness,morphological awareness and orthographic awareness)of children from Dai ethnic group fall behind from children from Han ethnic group,among which phonological and morphological awareness are significant predictors.(2)Preschool children of Dai ethnic group are weaker in pragmatic abilities than children from Han ethnic group,among which vocabulary stands out to be the weakest.(3)Preschool children from Dai ethnic group show obvious disadvantage in Chinese characters recognition,which strongly influence their performance on grammar,syntax and comprehension tasks.Corresponding educational suggestions were to better support early Chinese literacy development of preschoolers from Dai ethnic group:(1)carry out Metalinguistic skills education.(2)Strengthen the use of Chinese language.(3)Enhance language instruction on both mother tongue and Chinese,and carryout the whole language education.