Examining the English language policy for ethnic minority students in a Chinese university: a language ideology and language regime perspective

Chinese Ethnic Minority Students’ Investment in English Learning Empowered by Digital Multimodal Composing

“…Third, the peer support, the teacher’s recognition of cultural differences, and the collaborative learning that Tashi gained during DMC also greatly empowered her. The role of collaboration and community has been highlighted in the existing literature (Hafner, 2015; Han et al, 2016; Jiang, 2017), but this study adds that for ethnic minority students who fear embarrassing themselves when using English in class, the recognition of cultural and multilingual differences from teachers and students plays an essential role in mitigating their fear and giving them power to gradually develop confidence.…”

“…In the digital era, teachers could play an empowering role by offering alternative entry points for ethnic minority students to reposition themselves as English learners in mainstream classrooms. Such support at a pedagogic level is highly important in supplementing the top‐down preferential policies for ethnic minority students (Han et al, 2016). This empowering role necessitates teachers and educators’ rejections of the traditional deficit discourse and avoidances of labeling ethnic minority students merely as “unmotivated.” Teachers and educators need to look into ethnic minority students’ history of English learning and to understand how the larger ideological and social structures have constrained their ability to invest in English learning.…”

“…To mitigate the marginalization of ethnic minority students and to support these students’ integration into mainstream Chinese society at both state and school levels, preferential policies such as university admission or degree completion with lower English scores have been enacted by governments and universities. For instance, Han et al (2016) observed that although the minimum score for Gaokao (university entrance examination) for Han students (the mainstream) from Zhejiang province at a university in China was 631 in 2014, the minimum score for ethnic minority students was only 380. M. Yang (2017) found that many Tibetan students were admitted into Minzu University of China, the leading university for the education of ethnic minorities, despite the fact that they scored significantly lower in English than their Han classmates in the Gaokao .…”

“…Given the linguistic distance and differences among ethnic minority languages, Mandarin Chinese, and English, ethnic minority students often find it difficult to follow the English curriculum and to access or survive higher education, thereby jeopardizing their upward social mobility (Feng, 2005; Han et al, 2016). To mitigate the marginalization of ethnic minority students and to support these students’ integration into mainstream Chinese society at both state and school levels, preferential policies such as university admission or degree completion with lower English scores have been enacted by governments and universities.…”

“…To prepare ethnic minority students for investment and success in EFL learning, it is important to help them gain the abilities necessary for effective participation in classrooms, which normally function as a major venue for English communication in many non‐English‐dominant contexts (Pei, 2015). It is also essential for these students to have access to a range of resources, which include but are not limited to peer support, collaborative learning community, and guided engagement with online media, given the saturation of digital technologies in the contemporary landscape of English education (Hafner, 2015; Han et al, 2016; Jiang, 2017). However, given the inequalities in accessing the internet and digital technologies, there is also a significant “digital divide” (Fairlie, 2004) between ethnic minority and majority groups.…”