Trilingualism in Education: Models and Challenges

Abstract

This concluding chapter discusses a number of themes emerging from the book, in order to present a consolidated view of trilingualism in education in China. It presents a detailed discussion of the four models of trilingual education identified in earlier chapters—the Accretive, Balanced, Transitional and Depreciative Models, and argues that the Accretive and Balanced Models of trilingual education possess substantial potential to foster additive trilingualism in students, thereby granting numerous social, political, economic and educational advantages to students and Chinese society. In comparison, models such as the Transitional and Depreciative Models, which promote limited trilingualism or essentially aim to achieve solely bilingualism or monolingualism, are weak. However, popularising the strong models of trilingual education requires overcoming considerable challenges, such as establishing a consensus among stakeholders, setting realistic linguistic targets, and flexibly taking local contextual factors into account when implementing the strong models