Emerging Trilingualism among the Dong Minority in Guizhou Province

Abstract

Statistically the poorest province in China in terms of monthly per capita income, Guizhou is overwhelmingly rural with many minority groups such as Miao, Bouyei and Dong living in remote, mountainous areas. Traditionally, the transition model is used in minority dominated schools in which children’s mother tongue is used unsystematically at the initial stage to support primary schooling, to shift to using Mandarin Chinese as the sole medium of instruction. This chapter reports the findings of a longitudinal research project that was conducted in a Dong village school over 10 years from 2000 to 2010, with a focus on the effectiveness of a trilingual experiment carried out in 2005 and 2007. Both statistical and qualitative data give clear evidence that a model that aims to develop additive bilingualism in Dong and Chinese is far more effective than the traditional transition model with regard to children’s overall school performance, including third language acquisition. Furthermore, the former enabled the children to have more confidence to aim high and more self-esteem to claim their ethnic identity.