SOCIOCULTURAL ASPECTS OF LEARNING ENGLISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE: PERSPECTIVES OF FEMALE MINORITY STUDENTS
Ruth Bubalo
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
August 2014
Committee:
Christopher Frey, Advisor
Hyeyoung Bang
Sheri Wells-Jensen
ii ABSTRACT
Christopher Frey, Advisor
As the People’s Republic of China works to integrate a larger percentage of their minority population into higher education opportunities the number of minorities in university will continue to grow. Additionally, the necessity for these students to know English will also increase. This research uses a case study to examine ten minority women students in a Han majority university environment. Through extensive interviews, this research attempts to investigate the socio-cultural elements that influence their English classroom experience to better understand the pertinent challenges these women have to overcome. While this study has a narrow focus, these findings are relevant to the experiences of minority students in classrooms all over the world.
iii
For my husband, my friend and my huge support.
iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I am very grateful to Dr. Frey. Thank you for all your insight throughout the process and for the ways you adjusted your schedule to help me finish this project. I am extremely grateful for all your help as I finished this project while living overseas.
Thank you for helping me complete some of the paperwork that I was unable to do in person and our Skype calls to discuss my progress will be some of my fond memories from this project.
I am also grateful to Dr. Bang and Dr. Well-Jensen. Thank you for serving on my committee. I appreciated your quick responses, encouragement in the process and insight in your specific areas of expertise. And I will always be grateful for your gracious flexibility and the sacrifices you both made in order for me to do my defense on Skype while living overseas.
I am also extremely grateful to all the students who gave me a portion of their time and who shared many thoughts with me about their experiences as English language learners. Some of you travelled more than an hour on the bus, sacrificing your own precious time in the midst of your studies to aid me in mine. I am so grateful for the honesty with which you shared your lives and for opening a little window into your experiences as a minority people surrounded by a wary culture. I also want to thank my translator. You have been a great window into the Uyghur world and I have appreciated your gentle coaxing in how I should relate to the students I interviewed and for helping me make connection with many of them.
Finally, I want to thank my family. Lindsey and Sarah, I hope one day you have fun reading this paper and remembering the women we met on different campuses as I did a few follow-up interviews. These women have fought hard and their stories matter. Finally, to my husband and best friend, Kurt. This project could not have been completed without your help and encouragement.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION...... 1
Brief Outline of the Thesis ………………………………………………………… 3
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 6
Introduction to Xinjiang and the Uyghur People...... 6
Education Policies …………………...…………………………………………….. 11
Uyghur Identity and Education …………………………………………………….. 20
Third Language Acquisition………………………………………………………… 25
Uyghur Women……………………………………………………..………………. 34
CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY ...... 39
Qualitative Case Study Research ...... 39
Research Location……………………………………………………………….…. 41
Data Collection Procedures ………………………………………………...………. 42
Participant Recruitment ...…………………………………………………………… 43
Participants ……………………………………………………………..…….…….. 44
Data Collection Process ………………………………………...…………………… 49
Data Analysis ……………………………………………………………………….. 50
Limitations ……………..……………………………………………………...……. 51
Delimitations ……………………………………………………………………….. 52
CHAPTER IV. FINDINGS………………………………………………………….……… 53
Impact of Education and Family Background on English Acquisition……………… 54
University Environment ……………………………………………………………... 73
Attitudes Towards Language………………………………………………….….…. 90
vi Out of Class Opportunities …………………………………………………………. 95
CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION…………….………..…....…………. 99
Gender ……………………………………………………………………………… 99
Learning English Through a Second Language …………………………...……….. 101
Ethnicity of Classmates and Teacher……………………………………………….. 105
Practical Applications for the Classroom ….……………………………………..... 108
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………. 109
REFERENCES ...... 111
APPENDIX A. HSRB CONSENT ……………………………………………………….. 116
APPENDIX B. INSTRUMENT ...... 118
vii LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1 The Research Participants ………………………………………………………… 44-45
1
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
This is a case study of a minority population in a majority classroom acquiring the
English language in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The minority population are the
Uyghur people, one of the 55 officially recognized minorities in the PRC. The specific focus of this study is the English classroom experiences of female Uyghur university students who are studying in a Han majority city.
This study is important because of its relevance right now. Since the fall of the Soviet
Union, and particularly since 2009, China has seen an increase in the levels of violent protest by the Uyghur people against the PRC. The PRC is attempting to curb this violence and create greater national unity. One of the large pushes to create national unity is through providing greater educational opportunities for the Uyghur people. Uyghur university students have historically had much lower university entrance exam results both in Mandarin and in English
(Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009). The lack of language competency is one of the contributing factors to the Uyghur population’s lower wages and higher unemployment rates compared to the
Han population. These economic imbalances have been emphasized as more Han have migrated to Xinjiang and found employment in jobs with companies making use of the natural resources in Xinjiang (Dillon, 2004). Therefore, the successful education of Uyghur people is viewed as imperative to their successful integration into the PRC and its economy.
A greater understanding of Uyghur students’ experiences as a minority in a majority classroom will enable educators to understand how to provide a better education to Uyghur students and increase their performance and results in the classroom. The experience of Uyghur students in China is not necessarily unique. US educators have grappled with how to best serve 2 minority students for many decades. Some of this specific case does set itself apart but additionally there are many aspects of the Uyghur situation that can be generalized to minority classrooms everywhere. Some of these findings are even more pertinent for parts of the world where ethnic conflict is a current reality.
One of the key elements in Uyghur students achieving a voice and entrance into the world economy is dependent on their acquisition of the English language (Tsung & Clarke,
2010; Yang, 2005). The English language has grown in importance originally through forms of colonial rule from British and American world influence (McCrum, 2010). In recent years, many peoples of the world have adopted the English language and adapted it for their own purposes. The English language has provided many peoples of the world with a voice in the increasingly interconnected world and enabled them to be a part of a growing world economy
(McCrum, 2010). Therefore because of the prominent rise of the English language a proficient grasp of the language has become more important for individuals to become a part of this world community and reap the economic benefits (Tsung & Clarke, 2010).
This research is also important to help fill two existing research gaps. The first gap is in the area of Uyghur minority students in the majority university classroom. Some studies have been carried out on the minority Uyghur student at the elementary level, but there is limited research at the post-secondary level. This research can contribute to an understanding of the challenges in the Han majority classroom in the PRC and enrich the educational experience for minority students. Second, there is also a lack of research on the minority English classroom in
China and this includes the Uyghur English classroom (Yang, 2005). A greater understanding of these issues is important for the current educational policy to reach their goals of creating greater equality in the work place. 3
Brief Outline of the Thesis
Chapter One clarifies the focus of this study and the pertinence of this study. The focus of this study is the socio-cultural elements influencing the English language acquisition process for female Uyghur university students. The first chapter explains how the Uyghur population is representative of many minority populations studying in a classroom surrounded by a majority population. Additionally, this research clarifies the importance of Uyghurs having access to
English, a language in which they often have less opportunities to learn, but a language that has grown in importance in order to have a voice and in the world and its’ economy.
Chapter Two is a review of the literature pertinent to the focus of this research. This study focused on participants’ perceptions of the impact of the following three areas in their language acquisition: 1) the gender of the subjects, 2) the ways in which their language of instruction influences their language acquisition, and 3) the students perception of the ways in which the ethnic identity of other classmate and instructor impacts language acquisition. In order to gain a greater background and understanding of these three factors Chapter Two first introduces the people of Xinjiang and explains their cultural, historical and political background.
The next section explains the educational opportunities and policies that have been implemented to provide the Uyghur people with an education. The third section examines Uyghur identity and education and the experiences of Uyghur minorities in the elementary classroom. The fourth section introduces literature associated with third language acquisition and its relevance to the
Uyghur people. The final section explains the role of women in Uyghur society from the available literature.
Chapter Three explains the the methodology used for this research and the ways it was implemented. Case study was the type of qualitative methodology used for this study. The case 4 was the English acqusition experiences of ten Uyghur women enrolled as university students at a Han majority university in a Han majority city. These participants were eager to share their education backgrounds and experiences studying English. This chapter is broken down into nine specific sections: 1) qualitative case study research, 2) the research location, 3) the data collection procedures, 4) participant recruitment, 5) description of the participants, 6) the data collection process, 7) data analysis, 8) the limitations of this study and 9) the delimitations of this study.
Chapter Four details the findings of this research. There were four major areas that emerged as participants emphasized their perspectives on the elements that impacted their language learning. The first area was the impact the individual family and educational background of the participant had on their English acquisition. This included: 1) the families’ roles in decisions made for the early education of their children impacting their identity in
Uyghur society, 2) the education the participants received and 3) the role of gender in Uyghur society. The second finding was that the minority status of the participants in the classroom had an impactful relationship to language acquisition. This finding included four areas: 1) the general stress of the university living environment on the participant, 2) the attitudes of the majority students and the minority participants towards one another, 3) the attitudes of the teacher and the participants towards one another and 4) the impact of the usage of the second language Mandarin (L2) as a medium of instruction for learning their third English (L3). The third area of the findings examines language attitudes, focusing on 1) the participant attitudes towards English, 2) the participants’ attitudes towards Mandarin and 3) the perceived proximity of the Uyghur and English language. The fourth area of the findings was the opportunities provided to pursue English outside of class activities. 5
Chapter Five includes a discussion on these findings and a conclusion in light of these findings. This study found: 1) a limited impact on the role of gender among female Uyghur university students, 2) there are many difficulties attached to learning English through a second language, particularly when second language is a difficult language to learn, 3) the ethnicity and attitudes of classmates and teachers had the potential to deeply impact the comfort level of the students, but did not necessarily impact students attitudes towards learning English. Finally, this chapter ends with some concluding suggestions for teaching Uyghurs English in the university classroom, suggestions that could be applicable to teachers teaching minority students in many different parts of the world.
6
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction to Xinjiang and the Uyghur People
China is in many ways a homogenous society with the majority Han population comprising 91.5 % of its people. However in a population of 1.35 billion this remaining 8.5% of the population comprise a very significant number of people. The Uyghur people are one of the minorities that make up this 8.5%. There are 9.5 million Uyghurs living in Mainland China, which means their population alone is larger than the population of Bolivia and about the same as that of Sweden (The World Factbook, 2013). This minority group predominantly lives in the province of Xinjiang, in the northwest of People’s Republic of China, officially known as the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This province comprises one sixth of China’s landmass
(Rong, 2009) and borders eight different countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Mongolia,
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (Rudelson, 1997). These borders and the position of Xinjiang make this add to the importance of this region. Historically it was a key portion of the Silk Road. It marked the place where East Asia connected with Central Asia and also created ties between Europe, the Middle East and Asia (Rong, 2009).
The Uyghur people are a Turkic people and differ culturally, linguistically and ethnically from the majority Han population. Their language is from the Altaic language group, a Turkic language that currently uses a slightly modified Persian-Arabic script (Dillon, 2004). There are officially 8, 400, 000 speakers of the Uyghur language in the PRC according to the 2000 census
(Ethnologue, 2014). Historically the Uyghur people have had close connections to Central Asia because of a shared language family, cultural ties and their religious heritage (Rudelson, 1997).
Many of the nearby Central Asian peoples are connected ethnically to the Turkish people, use 7 languages in the Turkic family group and identify themselves as Muslim people, like the
Uyghurs. The Uyghurs, as a minority in an atheistic society, hold this religious identification tightly even though many are not devout Muslims. This religious identification also deepens the existing ethnic divisions.
Historically, the Uyghur people and the government of China have had a rocky relationship and this difficult relationship has continued on to this day. As this paper is being written there are reports of Uyghurs killing 29 innocent bystanders in a train station in Kunming and injuring 143 others with large knives and clubs. There are many reasons that could be given for this attack on Kunming. One of the most likely reasons for this attack is that it stems from some Uyghur peoples’ desire to separate from the PRC and be free from its political control.
Some Uyghurs’ resent the PRC’s control of their province and therefore some Uyghurs see violence as their only means to protest this control. This violence and frustration erupted significantly in the 1990s as other central Asian states gained their independence from the Soviet
Union (Dillon, 2004). They Uyghurs saw their neighboring Turkic people achieving nation status, although many unwillingly, and it lead to a similar desire for Uyghurs to achieve nation status for their people.
Some of the policies that create tension between the Uyghurs and the PRC include the amount of religious freedom that the Uyghurs are permitted. Religious freedom policies, just as the minority education policies that will soon be explained, have ebbed and flowed dependent on internal and external political factors. When Mao Zedong came to power in 1949 he was trying to consolidate his hold over the PRC so he granted Uyghurs wide-ranging religious freedoms.
However during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when all religion was persecuted many mosques were destroyed in Xinjiang and those who practiced Islam in their homes were 8 persecuted (Waite, 2006). Presently in China people are able to worship in mosques and listen to the teaching of the imams, but the imams need to insert government-influenced ideas at least monthly into their messages (Waite, 2006). Additionally legislation introduced by the Xinjiang
Regional Government in September 1990 requires that all “religious leaders must be ‘licensed’ by the China Islamic Association and they must ‘support the leadership of the CCP . . . and oppose national separatism’”(as cited in Waite, 2006, p. 255). Therefore some Uyghurs feel that even in the mosque they are not being exposed to true Islamic ideas and teachings.
Another source of strain on the Chinese government and Uyghur relationship is the Han migration into the Xinjiang region, which has either eradicated hope of a future political independence or at minimum created an almost insurmountable obstacle to some Uyghurs dreams for future political independence. The Han migration west was initially a forced program known as the “Go West Development Plan” introduced in the 1960s (Bewicke, 2009).
The government implemented this program in order to bring greater unity to the nation. This migration has continued on a more voluntary basis, but this has not reduced the numbers of Han migrating. For many Han migrating west offers new opportunities and jobs with good salaries.
From 1990 to 2000 alone the Han population in Xinjiang increased by 32 percent (Millward,
2007). There is resentment from most Uyghurs over the growing number of Han in their living space. This migration has increased the use and need for Mandarin in many urban areas. Once again this brings another sense of invasion since Uyghurs are not able to use their own language in daily life and need to communicate through Mandarin in order to get certain business tasks accomplished.
The lack of economic parity between the Uyghurs and the Han also generates frustration from the Uyghur minority. There exists in the PRC economic disparity between the wealthy 9 eastern coastal areas and western provinces (Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009; Yang, 2005). Yang explains “in 1998, the average GDP per capita was 4159 RMB in western provinces compared with 11,533 RMB in the east” (2005 p. 555). In the 1990s 93% of foreign investment took place in the coastal regions compared to less than 3% taking place in the Western regions of
China (Tsung and Cruikshank, 2009).
However an even greater source of tension is the economic discrepancy that exists between Han and Uyghur living in Xinjiang because this inequality is faced daily by the Uyghurs
(Yang, 2005; Zang, 2011). Xinjiang’s natural resources, such as gold, jade and oil, are being developed by companies predominantly using Han laborers. Karamay, an oil city in Xinjiang helps demonstrates these realities. It is a city built on oil wealth, making it is one of the wealthiest cities in all of China demonstrated by one of the on average highest individual salaries in China. However, Karamay’s population is 75% Han and only 15% Uyghur (Rong, 2009).
Therefore Uyghurs, often poor and experiencing higher unemployment rates, are faced with Han gaining great wealth through their use of Xinjiang’s natural resources. Often Uyghurs have not had the education, language skills or training to work in these companies set up to develop the resources in Xinjiang. Even if they have the training there is much evidence of discrimination against Uyghurs by Han managers or Uyghurs do not have enough Mandarin language competency to work at these jobs (Dillon, 2004).
Dillon (2004) additionally found that there is somewhat less job discrimination against
Uyghurs who had received their education in Chinese affirmed also by Taynen (2006).
Therefore Mandarin language competency is one of the means for creating economic and educational parity between Uyghurs and Han. Rong, a Chinese scholar explains that a common language, Mandarin, is necessary for “interaction, production, trade, science, culture health and 10 education” (Rong, 2007, p.11). Mandarin competency is vital for success in the work place and for achieving a college education, which is also critical for better-paid jobs (Feng, 2009).
Mandarin is the official language of the PRC and the mother tongue of the majority Han people.
However Mandarin is a second language for the majority of Uyghurs, and a language that is spoken infrequently in everyday life in Xinjiang, particularly in rural areas. Because all universities in China use the Mandarin language, as a medium of instruction, Mandarin language competency often creates a disadvantage for Uyghur students in both applying for and attending university. Uyghur students have lower levels of Mandarin and lower college entrance exam results compared to the Han population (Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009). These discrepancies between Han and Uyghur students in their educational achievement begin at the early stages of education.
Many reasons for these lower Uyghur education outcomes have been cited. Often
Uyghur schools are underfunded and lack resources including teachers. Before 2004 many
Uyghurs attended school in their mother tongue, and were introduced to the Mandarin language in the third grade (Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009). The poor Mandarin language competency is often attributed to the Uyghur students’ late start in learning Mandarin and the lack of language competency of Mandarin teachers at Uyghur schools.
Some researchers state the importance of not only Mandarin competency, but emphasize the importance of English competency if Uyghurs are going to compete with Han in the job market (Yang, 2005). English is part of the college entrance exam, English reading competency is crucial for many graduate study programs and indicating some type of English proficiency is often seen as important for job applications. However English is a third language for Uyghurs.
In schools where Uyghur is the medium of instruction it is challenging for students to learn 11
Mandarin and often the resources to learn English are even fewer. Therefore most Uyghur students’ English skills are lower compared to that of Han students. Yang (2005) points out that the lack of English skills could be a contributing factor for some of the economic inequality.
Yang (2005) and Tsung & Clark (2010) view developing the English language ability within the minority populations as being vital in helping create greater economic equality. Therefore addressing language education issues is one avenue of helping address some of the inequalities existing between the Uyghur and Han population.
Education Policies
This study is focused on understanding the process of and challenges for Uyghur women who are acquiring the English language at University. Consequently it is important to understand the historical context and present-day realities that are impacting these students’ education. China’s changing political landscape and the success and failures of various educational strategies have all played a role in influencing the development of the many and diverse policies that have existed for the education of minority peoples. Since 1949 the Chinese government has allowed and at times supported mother tongue education for a number of minority languages in China. Mother tongue education is provided in the following six languages: Kazakh, Kirgiz, Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian and Korean (Tsung & Clark, 2010;
Yang, 2005). Therefore the government allows you to be educated and tested for exams in all of these languages. If you are accepted into university the government provides a two-year program to supplement the education level of these students and increase their opportunity gain
Mandarin language proficiency. There is a second grouping of languages in which you can receive bilingual education, but you cannot take a university entrance exam in these languages. 12
These include Dai, Jingpo, Lisu, Lahu and Miao (Tsung & Clark, 2010). There are 42 other officially recognized languages for which no education system exists but which are used in homes in parts of the PRC.
Previous to Mao Zedong coming to power in 1949, limited educational opportunities existed for Uyghur students. When the Qing dynasty fell in 1911 the warlord Yang Zengxin came to power. He feared a “Turkic uprising inspired by the Russians” and therefore attempted to squelch all Uyghur language education or education of the Uyghur people in general
(Rudelson, 1997, p. 54). At this time few schools existed in Xinjiang except for mullah run
Islamic schools (Schluessel, 2009; Rudelson, 1997). His successor Sheng Shicai also attempted to thwart some Uyghur educational opportunities. However, despite their efforts a wealthy merchant from the city of Turpan, named Makhsut Muhiti, was able to establish schools and fund Uyghur students travel to Central Asia to be educated. Initially Muhiti focused his efforts on creating a teacher-training center. He brought in two scholars, an Uzbek and a Tatar to teach at school in Turpan. These educated students were then sent out to rural areas as teachers to educate others. Additionally Muhiti mobilized and helped fund efforts that resulted in up to
10,000 Uyghurs being sent to universities throughout the USSR, Turkey and Egypt. However this growth of an intellectual community was severely hampered when Sheng Shicai tortured, killed and imprisoned many of these returning scholars. When the PRC took over governance of
Xinjiang in 1949, only 28 Uyghur schools with 102 teachers and 1,638 students existed in the province of Xinjiang (Rudelson, 1997).
In 1949 as Mao Zedong was establishing his control over the country his minority education policy’s goal, like that of his religious policies, was to accommodate the minority populations. He accomplished this through encouraging and implementing mother tongue and 13 bilingual education (Bewicke, 2009; Schluessel, 2007). Dwyer (2005) explains that this policy was “responsive to local conditions and arguably one of the more flexible in the world” (p. 13).
This is considered the first pluralistic stage of minority education policy. These education policies ranged from measures to ensure the development of writing systems for minority languages that did not yet have their own scripts and the goal of public education for all minority populations (Rong, 2007). The Uyghurs who already had their own writing systems benefitted specifically from the policies that lead to better infrastructure for Xinjiang schools. Many schools were built and a more systematic education system implemented (Tsung & Cruikshank,
2009).
These pluralistic education goals changed in 1957 as Mao Zedong implemented education policies to fit with the “Great Leap Forward”. This time period was characterized by a focus on industrialization by every segment of society, which left fewer resources for minority education (Spence, 1990). The Great Leap Forward failed in many ways as many rural people had been moved from farming to industry, resulting in widespread famine (Spence, 1990). This famine impacted the people all over the China from Shanghai to western Xinjiang (Huang,
2009). Some party officials and others member of society started to question some of Mao
Zedong’s policies. In order to retain power during this period of dissension towards his policies,
Mao Zedong initiated the Cultural Revolution to regain control of the nation and eradicate corruption (1966-1976).
The Cultural Revolution disrupted education all over the PRC. It was also a time in which any individual or group that deviated from the Communist Party in religious or cultural systems were persecuted (Spence, 1990). This resulted in a “contempt for the languages and writing systems of minority peoples, and bilingual education was rejected” (Rong, 2007, p. 14). 14
All schools, elementary through the university level, shut down all over China. Xinjiang was no different and it was not until 1976 that Uyghur schools started to re-open in 1976, Xinjiang
Universities did not re-open until 1978 (Grose, 2010). The irony was that "the great effort to erase differences among nationalities resulted in heightening minorities awareness of these differences and seemed to induce a stubborn desire to retain them" (Barabantseva, 2008, p. 580).
Uyghur people themselves were very discontent both due to the growing economic inequalities and the harsh measures taken against Islam and their language through this period of the Cultural
Revolution. Additionally illiteracy remained high by the end of this period (Grose, 2010).
The Uyghur script reflected these years of political upheaval. Uyghur script changed three times between 1956 and 1984 (Grose, 2010). Pre 1956 the Uyghur language had been written using an Arabic script. During the industrial revolution it was changed to a Cyrillic one, when ties with Russia were strong in the 1950s. The government moved to a Latin script to create some distance from Russian connections as relations with the USSR became strained in
1960. This Latin script was based on the Latin phonetic system that is used for Chinese characters, called pinyin (Zhou, 2004). This script, like many of the other changes occurring during the Cultural Revolution, was not well received by the Uyghur population. The PRC finally landed on a Persian-Arabic script during the next stage of openness and multicultural education period beginning in 1978. This is the script that is still in use today (Bewicke, 2009;
Grose, 2010).
Deng Xiaoping became Premier in 1978 and ushered in this new period of openness, which impacted many aspects of society including foreign trade, relations with other countries and minority education policy. This is considered the second pluralistic stage of education policy because it was a time when support for minority education was re-established (Pippin, 15
2009; Grose, 2010). Each province was given greater autonomy over their education policies and this resulted in diverse and varied education organization systems (Tsung & Cruikshank,
2009). In support of this minority education China’s constitution declared in 1982 that all citizens are guaranteed the “right and duty” to be educated and additionally it protected minority languages as the medium of instruction for the classroom (Grose, 2010, p. 2). These reforms increased student retention and increased the number of students receiving a basic elementary education. Among Uyghurs illiteracy decreased from 45 to 26.6% of the population and enrollment in university increased from 0.1 to 2.1% (Grose, 2010, p.99). However both due to the glaring inequalities that continued to exist between Han and minority students in educational levels and socio-economic disparity between the Han and Uyghur populations the educational focus was increased Mandarin fluency for minority students. This was also seen as a means to keep national unity as some Uyghur population protests became more violent against the Han and the PRC.
The reason some scholars attribute to the heightening of violent protest against the PRC is the independence that Central Asian nations achieved in 1991 as they broke off from the
Soviet Union. The independence of these other Turkish related nations, although often reluctant on their part, led to a greater hope and desire by many Uyghurs for Xinjiang to become an independent nation state. These growing hopes and desire lead to the Uyghur political movements becoming more loud and forceful (Pippin, 2009; Dillon, 2004). However since
Beijing, like many governments, values protecting the countries’ unity the government strove to stifle separatists’ ideas and create greater agreement (Berlie, 2004). One of the means to achieving this unity was a unifying language and greater economic equality leading to new bilingual educational policies that promote Mandarin fluency implemented in 2004 (Schluessel, 16
2007; Rong, 2007). According to government officials’ mastery of the Chinese language is essential for the modernization future economic prosperity of minority peoples (Rong, 2007).
The Chinese government felt that economic parity would decrease tensions, and defuse splitists or separatists’ tendencies of some Uyghurs. Therefore educational policy has been viewed as key in creating better opportunities for Uyghurs to achieve economic success.
In 2004 China introduced a new policy calling for all minorities to attend bilingual rather than mother tongue schools (Schluessel, 2007). Proponents of this government policy expressed their hope that these bilingual schools would increase equity between the education achievements of minority and Han students in all subjects including English. Despite the standardization of bilingual education throughout Xinjiang, differences remain between the types of education that are available to Uyghur and other minority students, and the languages of instruction. The implementation of the new bilingual education policy is uneven. Some schools use the mother tongue, mostly the Uyghur language; in the first few years of school then in third grade the Mandarin language is introduce in Mandarin language class and through using
Mandarin as the medium of instruction in math classes. At the high school level English classes might be offered (Tsung & Cruickshank, 2009). Other schools introduce students to Mandarin through Mandarin class and math class in the first grade. There are also many schools where mother tongue education is offered through high school. Some previously Uyghur only schools were combined with Mandarin only schools that were mainly Han in population. These schools sought to combine Uyghur and Han students early on in their classes (Tsung & Cruikshank,
2009).
The resources needed to implement these policies are limited and therefore schools have struggled to adequately meet the policy requirements. For example an admirable but challenging 17 goal of the bilingual education policy of 2004 included provisions that educators must have achieved a specific level of Mandarin fluency and if they had not achieved this level they were terminated from their jobs. This provision, although created in an effort to help provide schools with teachers with better Mandarin fluency, resulted in an increased shortage of teachers in rural areas where Mandarin speakers are few in number (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009). Therefore, the result is that many schools that had already struggled to hire enough educators lacked even more teachers.
Another challenge to the bilingual schools is that some schools introduce Mandarin in the third grade however other schools are starting to teach Mandarin in the first grade. This is a simultaneous bilingual education system. Some research would suggest that this system presents a challenge to students who have not yet mastered their mother tongue. Vygotsky explains that,
“success in learning a foreign language is contingent on a certain degree of maturity in the native language” (as cited in Wink & Putney, 2002, p. 49). Another researcher, Stern in his work with second language acquisition additionally states, “Learning two languages at the same time can add complexity to the learning task” (as cited in Yang, 2005, p. 563). Therefore some linguists question the effectiveness of this bilingual strategy.
Bilingual schools not only desired to increase the Mandarin levels of minority students, but also aimed to foster better relationships between Han and Uyghur students. This was important for fostering national harmony and for improving the Mandarin levels of the Uyghur students. Unfortunately, this goal was not being achieved. In a study conducted by Tsung &
Cruickshank (2009), in bilingual schools the study found that there was little interaction between
Han and Uyghur students in class or during play times. The government’s goal was that by 2008 all schools would be mixed minority Han schools (min han hexiao). The government has 18 decided to slow down the implementation of this policy; I have interviewed many students who had attended schools in which the medium of instruction was Uyghur.
Students from bilingual schools have not improved their Mandarin levels and still ranked behind the Han students who they are studying with at the University level (Tsung &
Cruikshank, 2009). Minority students were still arriving at university far behind other students in their English and Mandarin levels. At Shandong University two Uyghur students began the year in a “normal” English classroom, but they could not keep up with the English level of the other Han students so they were moved into a special classroom for minority students.
Therefore, middle class parents who wanted their children to “succeed” and have a better chance for a good job in the future looked to both send their children to Mandarin only schools or looked for opportunities further afield. Some parents sent their children to friends in “inner”
China (simply implying eastern areas of China) to be educated (Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009).
As a result of some of the lack of results of the bilingual education and the challenges to the implementation of these policies the government, in an effort to continue the development of
Xinjiang’s education system, made this dislocation of high school students to the inland into a more systemized government program. They introduced a new type of high school in the
Eastern provinces of China for Uyghur students. These are known as Inland Xinjiang senior secondary school classes (neidi Xinjiang gaozhong) (Chen, 2010; Grose, 2010). This program was first implemented in September 2000 in thirteen high schools within the Eastern cities of
China. The goal of these boarding schools is to educate the elite minority students for the development of Xinjiang and to promote “interethnic integration, and, thereby political stability”
(Chen, 2010, p. 47). This program appears to be effective in increasing the educational level of
Mandarin for the Chinese students. However, the second goal does not seem to have been 19 fulfilled (Grose, 2010). A group of high school students moved far from home are more likely to find close camaraderie among one another. These Uyghur students live together and then attend a Han high school but all their classes are conducted separately from the Han students.
Although they are living in Han cities it seems that their interaction with the Han are not necessarily increased however as mentioned their Mandarin fluency does increase greatly through the help of Han teachers fluent in Mandarin (Chen, 2010).
There is also another method used by the PRC to help students achieve Mandarin and
English proficiency before university. Many students attend a two-year preparatory program for high-school graduates. These classes are specifically set up for all minority students who are accepted into university, but have not received a high enough grade on the university entrance exam to qualify directly into university. Minorities are granted entrance into university with lower grades than Han students (Taynen, 2006). These classes focus predominantly on the
Chinese language and also offer some English courses. After participation in these courses students can then attend university. Some students appear to go through this process and achieve great proficiency in the Mandarin language. Others participate, but do not become proficient in
English or Chinese as a result of these classes yet teachers still let them pass and become students at a university after this program. There is little scholarly research on these preparatory classes.
The area of Xinjiang that students live is an additional factor that impacts the education and language ability of the students (Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009). Students who live in Urumqi, the largest city in Xinjiang, are in a language environment that is 80% Han. However, those from Hotan in southern Xinjiang are in an environment that is 90% Uyghur. The author’s husband, who recently was in Hotan, struggled to communicate with people because he only 20 speaks English and some Mandarin. Therefore, depending on where the student is from, differences exist in the exposure level to and the necessity of the Mandarin language in students’ every day lives. This is a factor that also has an interesting influence on students’ attitudes towards learning the English or Chinese language that will be mentioned in the third language acquisition portion.
Uyghur Identity and Education
Min Kao Han vs. Min Kao Min. Another important both linguistic and socio-cultural identification is the difference between “min kao han” and “min kao min”. Min kao min can literally be translated as minorities taking exams in minority language and min kao han as minorities taking exams in Mandarin. The decision to be min kao han or min kao min student is determined when students are sent to primary schools. Those students enrolled in schools where
Uyghur is the medium of instruction are min kao min, students enrolled in schools where
Mandarin is the language of instruction are min kao han. This family decision, on what language to educate their children, has huge implications attached to it. Those who choose the min kao han path for their children are choosing a specific socio-cultural identification, one that is arguably as strong as their ethnic, Uyghur identification (Taynen, 2006). Research has shown that those who have chosen the min kao han identity may have greater job opportunities and their
Mandarin and English language skills are normally at a higher level, yet they face discrimination from both Uyghur and Han peers (Tsung & Clarke, 2010; Taynen, 2006). Both min kao han and min kao min see huge personal value differences that originate from these categories. Little research has taken place to explain the cultural identification of students who have been sent to 21 bi-lingual schools. All the participants in this study were able to define themselves as min kao min or min kao han.
Tsung & Clarke (2010) discovered that min kao min individuals felt that the min kao han
“behaved like the Han and wore clothes like them” (p. 65). Another participant in Tsung &
Clarke’s research explains the difficulties of min kao han and min kao min being in relationships:
They cannot live together. Even when they do marry, they end up divorcing.
They cannot live together because they have different values and customs in life. The
cultural differences between min kao han and real Uyghur are very striking. This is not
always visible on the surface (p. 65).
This participant explains the perception of the depth of value differences between min kao han and min kao min. The min kao min perception is that when the min kao han people chose to be educated in the Mandarin language they also chose to take on the values of the Han people
(Taynen, 2006).
Min kao han seem to experience a crisis of identity as they are neither accepted fully by the Han or their own Uyghur population. Taynen (2006) in her studies found that many min kao han were bitter about their place in the work place and lacked hope for the future of the Uyghur people in the PRC. This was often because min kao han, despite the sacrifices they had made culturally, still felt discriminated against in the work place and overlooked for promotions that
Han colleagues received (Taynen, 2006). Tsung and Clark (2010) found that min kao han adults sometimes did not want to subject their children to the same experiences they had had as children and therefore were choosing to send their children to min kao min schools even though they acknowledged the advantages they had in finding work. Tsung & Clark (2010) explain: 22
Many of the min kao han academics, especially those with only one child, indicated that
they have decided to send their children to min kao min schools. They feel that they
should allow their children to have a happy childhood and that this is more important
than worrying about them suffering early hardship at school (p. 65).
There is both an economic edge for the min kao han but also an identity dilemma for many min kao han (Taynen, 2006; Tsung & Clark, 2010).
Minority Status. Educators point out that the “learner’s motivation, anxiety, confidence, apitude and level of proficiency” in the L2 impacts the way a learner performs language tasks in the classroom (Crookes & Chaudron, 2001, p. 36). This includes the background of the student and the type of exposure they have had to in this case the L2 and L3, the students comfort level as a minority in their classroom, and this also includes their perceived attitudes of the teacher and the classmates as these could either increase or decrease anxiety and confidence. The individual background and identity of the individuals going into the classroom will then impact the environment they perceive in the classroom and their ability to be successful in that environment.
The classroom environment itself then either seems to add greater challenges or provide ways of overcoming existing individual disadvantages in studying English.
Most Uyghurs studying at the university in this city are minorities in the classroom. Little research has been done on Uyghurs responses to being a minority in a majority classroom at the
University level. However Taynen (2006) did carry out some research on minority Uyghur students in a majority Han elementary class as she explored the identity of min kao han and min kao min students. She found these students min kao han students were overwhelmed with the workload in the classroom. They difficulty of the Mandarin language was overwhelming to them particularly the characters in the Mandarin language posed many difficulties. McCrum 23
(2010) points out that due to the number of characters in the Mandarin language it could take a lifetime for a Han person to master their language. Feng (2009) in her research on minority students in Chinese classroom found the minority students often “suffer from ‘ cultural discontinuity’, bewilderment and fear of learning due to absence of a familiar home culture in the national textbooks minority children have to use (Feng, 2009, p.289). Feng feels this is commonality for minority students within the world.
Taynen (2006) also found that students were hesitant to talk in class, they did not want any attention focused on them. It also seemed that this experience was psychologically wounding for many students who feel isolated as they struggle to understand the language and culture of their classmates. Taynen (2006) describes the experience of one student who had started in a Han elementary school, but whose parents had transferred him to a Uyghur school by age 7. “ In the
Chinese class he had become morose and uncommunicative, had not made friends and was terrified of his teachers” (p.54). Then according to his parents and himself “after only one semester in the Uyghur class, he had undergone a social metamorphosis” (p. 54). In high school he was class monitor and captained a few sports teams and though his Mandarin is “only fair”
Taynen (2006) described him as “outgoing and confident” (p.54). This experience also was corroborated by Taynen explains that many min kao han experienced great sense of isolation in the classroom as they struggled with mastering the Chinese language and were the brunt of jokes from Han classmates. One Uyghur man “confided that it had taken him years to feel secure and capable, and was convinced that the Chinese classroom was soul-destroying for nearly all Uighur children who entered it” (Taynen, p.54). Therefore he, like many of the participants in Tsung &
Clark’s study, although a min kao han was sending his child to a min kao min school.
Additionally Feng in his examination of the minority classroom in China found that some 24 teacher attitudes exhibit some prejudice. Feng (2009) explains that many teacher label minority students as “poor learners”. This fit with Tsung & Clark (200) findings for Xinjiang that found that education officials explained the reasons that English was not taught in the Uyghur classroom because these students were not able to learn Mandarin, so how it would it be possible for them to learn an additional language.
There are some themes from White (2011) research on minorities in American classrooms that might additionally relate to the Uyghur people. Often minorities feel the need and are given the burden to represent their people to the majority students in the class (White,
2011). Uyghurs seems to be burdened by classmates and the teacher by stereotypes found of all of their people. Often times both minorities need to overcome cultural barriers in order to communicate ideas in the classroom. White (2011) reseraching minorities on American university discovered that:
each student expressed a common fear that, by speaking in class using his or her
own native voice/discursive style, he or she would be judged in a negative manner.
Rather than face judgment from a group of people they already distrusted (based on
cultural differences and a history of racial oppression), these students chose to remain
silent (p. 256).
Students chose not to participate even though class participation was part of their grade. Their insecurities about how to effectively express themselves in a cross-cultural environment and sometimes a feeling of academic and linguistic incompetence kept them from fully engaging in the class. Additionally past experiences of prejudice had kept them from fully engaging in the class. Uyghur students would face similar challenges in a Han majority classroom. Experiences of past prejudice may create similar sentiment. For Uyghur students there is not even an option 25 of using their own native voice, as none of their classmates would understand their language.
However, because they need to use Mandarin, their second language, Uyghur students could relate to feeling judged in a negative manner because of the way they communicated.
The present day Uyghur university student could have had a myriad of different educational experiences from elementary through high school. This study will focus on the experiences of female students learning English at University and therefore it will be key to understand their language exposure and educational background as there exists very little standardization in education except for standardization of syllabus.
Third Language Acquisition
Uyghur students are faced with the challenge of learning the Mandarin language and learning this language through a teacher who may or may not be proficient in the Mandarin language. If their families choose for them to pursue a Mandarin education for them beginning at the primary level they are often perceived as betrayers of their own people and often are unable to achieve proficiency in their own language. Then, in order to create a level playing ground with Han students and further enable them to achieve economic success, the study of the
English language is added. As already mentioned, Uyghurs can benefit from the study of
English in a couple of different ways. First, it increases their chances of entering university and achieving success at University (Tsung & Clark, 2010). Many graduate level textbooks are in
English. Second, and more importantly, English can provide greater job opportunities. If students have not passed the CET (College English Test) they are not able to graduate with a full degree and it impacts most job opportunities because it is often required even if the English language will not be used in the workplace. Uyghur students are faced with the challenge of 26 studying English as a third language. Standardized examinations consistently reveal that
Uyghur students’ English abilities are well below those of Han speakers. For example Uyghur college students in general show low performance on English college entrance exams (Yang,
2005; Tsung & Cruikshank, 2009). The government also desires to increase minority students’
English abilities (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009). There are educational challenges that Uyghur students’ face that have already been explained. However, linguistic research consistently claims,
“all background languages have a positive effect on the acquisition of subsequent languages”
(Falk and Bardel, 2010). Therefore it is beneficial to understand the research that has taken place on third language acquisition and attempt to understand its’ relationship to English language acquisition for Uyghur students.
Most of the research on third language acquisition are studies that have taken place on students learning three languages from language groups with limited linguistic distance, such as
European languages (Yang, 2005; Falk and Bardel, 2010). Therefore, when examining this research it is relevant to understand that Uyghurs in China are faced with the challenge of acquiring languages from three different language groups that are considered linguistically distant; Altaic (Uyghur), Indo-European (English) and Sino-Tibetan (Chinese) (Yang, 2005).
Meta-linguistic Advantage. As mentioned above, research on third language acquisition demonstrates that bilinguals are able to learn a third language with greater ease than those learning their first language (Yang, 2005, Falk and Bardel, 2010). One of the advantages that some bilinguals and multi-linguals have is greater meta-linguistic awareness (Hoffman &
Stavans, 2007). Pratt & Grieve describe meta-linguistic awareness as “the ability to think about and reflect upon the nature and functions of language” (as cited in Rauch, Nauman & Jude, 2011, p. 402-403). This includes phonology, the ability to pronounce words and syntax, the 27 grammatical structure of sentences. Studies show that this meta-linguistic advantage predominantly holds for students who have learned their second language in a formal setting, where they are learning language rules and being made aware of patterns even within their own language (Falk and Bardel, 2010). Their language is being stored as part of their declarative knowledge, information that is a part of their consciousness. Bilinguals who have gained their
L1 and L2 simultaneously or in informal settings have both of their languages stored in their procedural memory. The procedural memory normally exists just below our consciousness with tasks that have been repeated successively overtime. Therefore some research indicates that languages that exist in this procedural memory do not help produce the meta-linguistic advantages of a bilingual who has acquired a language in a formal environment.
Uyghurs for the most part are learning Mandarin in a formal environment and therefore may be able to gain some of these meta-linguistic skills giving them an advantage for the study of English. However, Yang (2005), who examined the bilingual programs in China, argues that
English education might actually start too early for minority students. Yang’s (2005) concern is that the 2004 bilingual education law mandates that English education start at the fourth grade level. Yang feels that students would still be attempting to become literate in Chinese, and therefore would not have mastered the necessary language level in order to develop the benefit of greater linguistic sensitivity and meta-linguistic awareness. Cenoz (2003) reached similar conclusions finding that students who did not reach proficiency in their L1 nullified their advantages in learning an L3 through their L2 (Rauch et al., 2011).
In contrast Falk & Bardel (2010) disagree with Yang, arguing second language competency is not as important as the environment where the L2 is being learned. In their examination of current research Falk & Bardel (2010) emphasize the necessity of L2 being 28 learned in a formalized environment where students are required to learn language structure and rules and thereby increasing their meta-linguistic proficiency. They saw this as the necessary requirements for L2 to impact the learning of L3.
Yang (2005) points out that in some schools minority students are simultaneously learning L2 and L3 by grade three. Yang states that research demonstrates that this language environment once again negates any ability to add meta-linguistic awareness to their knowledge of a third language. Therefore Yang argues that the education system is part of the reason that
Uyghurs do not enjoy the benefits most bilinguals experience in the L3 language learning process. As a result their English test results are low.
Other research on bilingualism questions Yang’s conclusions that the present method of language education prevents all meta-linguistic advantage. Wattendorf, Festman, Westermann,
Keil, Zappatore, Franceschini & Rager (2014) divided the field of meta-linguistics into two areas. One is the understood language patterns and context that are learned in a formal language- learning environment. The other is the control functions that occur in the cortical region in bilingual children. They claim that all bilinguals have these control functions that are non- dependent on the language-learning environment. The control functions can help students learn to automatically switch to another language and enhance focus of attention. This type of meta- linguistic awareness enhances all bilinguals’ abilities to learn a new language regardless of learning environment and literacy level of L1 and L2.
Language distance. Language distance is another key component that influences the ways L2 impacts L3 learning. De Angelis defines language distance as "the distance that a linguist can objectively and formally define and identify between languages and language families" (as cited in Falk and Bardel, 2010, p.132). The language distance can have many 29 different facets including language structure, syntax, phonology, and morphology. When learning an L3, students rely on their previous languages to help them study their new language.
Studies have specifically demonstrated the impact of the L2 on grammatical understanding and the vocabulary of the L3 (Falk and Bardel, 2010). So the question becomes, how much does linguistic similarity impact the acquiring of a new language?
As referenced earlier, most language L3 studies have taken place on languages with close linguistic distance, leading Yang (2005) to question the validity of these studies in China where language distance is much greater. The Uyghur language is from the Altaic language group, with similarities to the Turkish language. Mandarin is a Sino-Tibetan language and English is from the Indo-European language group (Yang, 2005). Yang points out that when learning non
Indo-European languages, native English speakers can take up to four times as much time to get to the same level of fluency than the time it takes them when studying Indo-European languages
(2005). This fact seems to indicate that the linguistic distance could serve as a challenge for students. Wattendorf et al. (2014) also claim that language distance has little impact on the acquisition process. In their work on the influences of early bilingualism and its influence on third languages, they state that other than on reading strategies and speech sounds processing there is no impact from linguistic distance on other tasks necessary for language production.
Some scholars (Falk & Bardel, 2010; Lindqvist & Bardel, 2010) suggest that the language distance needs to be defined not in light of closeness of families but rather through typology. This typology, although a component of language distance, does not only rely on linguists grouping of language families. Languages that could have great distance between their linguistic families i.e. German and Turkish, could have types of language structure that enable the learner to have greater ease in studying them. For example both German and Turkish have 30 the verb final property. Therefore this research emphasizes the importance of typology of language rather than linguistic distance between language families. For example, Mandarin and
English are distant linguistic families but both share similar syntax. Both use the subject verb object structure in basic sentence structure. However in flow of language both Uyghur and
English have greater flexibility in the complexity of syllables and both allow more consonants in syllable codas. Additionally both English and Uyghur are non-tonal languages, creating some similarity in the pronunciation of the two languages.
Researchers have found that one of the key issues in the ideas of language distance and typology is the learner’s perceived distance between the two languages. This is a theory suggested by Kellerman (1983) who described this as a “learner’s perception of relative proximity of languages. It is generated in the learner’s mind and does not necessarily refer to objective linguistic similarity, but to the learner’s own perception of the relationship between the languages” (as cited in Falk and Bardel, 2010, p. 194). Part of the reason that linguistic distance, perceived or real, is crucial in the language acquisition process is because learners are always searching for similarities between languages. Research has further found that if there are real or perceived similarities between two languages it “it leads to higher self-perceived communicative competence and less communicative anxiety” (Lindqvist & Bardel, 2010, p. 88).
Therefore one of the key aspects for understanding language-learning challenges for Uyghurs is an understanding of their perception of the distance between the languages they are learning.
Therefore even if the actual linguistic distance between English and Uyghur is further than that between Uyghur and Mandarin, if students perceive greater similarities between two languages it could result in greater confidence and motivation in learning English because of the perceived similarities. 31
It is important to add a qualifying statement at this point about the difference between language acquisition and acquiring the orthography of a language. Much of the literature seems used in this paper seems to conflate language and orthographic acquisition. Orthographic acquisition is the ability to write words in the script of the language. Orthographic acquisition is not language acquisition (Language Files, 2011). Language acquisition is focused on the
“knowledge in speakers minds: made up of lexicon and a mental grammar” (Language Files,
2011, p. 12). Most of the participants like much of the research mentioned in this literature review combine these concepts because the Mandarin classroom is focused on character
(orthographic) acquisition. English orthography is also a focus of the English classroom, however English orthography is much easier to learn because it is a phonetic language. In
Mandarin and English language learning classrooms in China orthographic acquisition is a large focus of the classroom. Therefore in this study in both the literature reviewed and the participants perspectives orthographic acquisition and language acquisition are conflated.
Therefore although these are two separate linguistic concepts in this study orthographic acquisition will be included in much of the ideas about the challenges of learning the Mandarin language. Kellerman’s thoughts on the perceived similarities of two languages by the language learners are pertinent to the perceptions not only of language but also to orthographic similarities since orthographic acquisition is a focus of the university classroom.
Language Attitudes. Attitude towards language also plays a key role in language acquisition (Psaltou-Joycey & Kantaridou, 2009). There are conflicting results from studies examining Uyghur attitudes and motivation towards learning English (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009;
Yang, 2005). Yang’s (2005) research reports an overall low motivation to learn English by most
Uyghurs because the large majority of rural Uyghurs do not see any practical use for the English 32 language in their lives and for their jobs. Overall the Uyghurs in Yang’s study are not opposed to learning Mandarin and see the usefulness of Mandarin in their lives for doing business. They welcome Mandarin education do not resent Mandarin it in part because the rural areas of
Xinjiang are not dealing with the influx of the Han population (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009).
These results are contrary to the research discovered at the university level by Feng &
Sunuodula (2009). Their research pointed out that despite low achievement before university due to limited opportunities to study and be exposed to English, once at university these students’ acquisition of English appeared to be very rapid compared to their progress in the
Mandarin language. Although the students who were taking part in the study saw the necessity for Mandarin in the work place and for their future careers, most of the students indicated greater motivation to study English compared to their motivation to learn Mandarin. “Chinese [Han] students started early and Uyghur students started late, but they often got the same exam marks in subjects taught in English” (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009, p. 695). The researchers explain that
Uyghur students “find obligatory Chinese learning difficult, but they learn English spontaneously” (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009, p. 695). Since 1903 the Han Chinese government has been taking steps to teach the Uyghur people Mandarin (Schluessel, 2007). As these steps have also come with political rule, some Uyghurs hold resentment towards the national majority
Chinese language (Schluessel, 2007). Schluessel (2007) explains how elimination of mother tongue education and replacing it by Mandarin instruction in the classroom works “to reinforce the sense of dominance” by the Han (p. 262). Further these bilingual polices have produced
“Language grief, concern over actual or anticipated language loss” and in many parts of the world this “is a significant contributor to ethnic conflict” (Schluessel, 2007, p. 269). Schluessel
(2007) points out that: 33
no more threats to stability are needed in the already contentious Xinjiang, particularly
among the Uyghurs, whom the Chinese government already views as suspect as a whole.
However, the forcible increase in the use of Mandarin in minority education has already
produced a significant outcry (p. 269).
An American student, that I interviewed, who spent time in Xinjiang corroborated these stories explaining that English was sought after, as it was not considered the language of the oppressor.
Therefore these often-negative attitudes towards Mandarin have resulted in positive attitudes towards English acquisition. Many students indicate a desire to start English study earlier (Feng
& Sunuodula, 2009).
L2 as the Medium for L3 Acquisition. Another important consideration in Uyghur students’ education is that in most situations they are learning English from Mandarin, their L2 rather than from their L1. Yang (2005) sees this as a disadvantage. Feng & Sunuodulo (2009) found that some students in Xinjiang echoed this premise, "I think the use of mother tongue as the explanatory language in classrooms and textbooks will bring about better results. Students can use the mother tongue to learn grammar to recite vocabulary, and this helps [them] memorize things easily" (p. 695). At universities in Xinjiang this issue has been addressed through the creation of textbooks in Uyghur for English classes (Yang, 2005). It is confusing to understand how much this has been implemented as Grose (2010) in his findings states that all Uyghur medium courses were banned at the university level in 2002. This finding is corroborated by conversations with Uyghur students.
Feng & Sunuodula (2009) put forward another reason why Uyghur students have lower
English test scores. Their research indicates that although the government has expressed a desire to improve minority English levels as a matter of equality, the reality is that in an effort to 34 increase Mandarin levels the government is not as focused on the English language. They point out that the 2002 State Council’s directive on minority education focused on the importance of minority students’ mastery of the Mandarin language, which “implicitly excluded minority groups from the promotion of English language education” (Feng & Sunuodula, 2009, p. 687).
This directive stated English “should be offered in regions where favorable conditions exist”
(Feng & Sunuodula, 2009, p. 695). Yet these “favorable conditions” are never explained.
Therefore some scholars are apprehensive that this exclusion of English due to all the challenges of acquiring a third language will impact minorities in the world economy (Feng & Sunuodula,
2009).
Uyghur Women
This study will focus specifically on the experiences of female Uyghur studying English at university. Limited research appears to have taken place on Uyghur women. The research that has occurred reflects the conflicting values, those of communism and those of Islam, that are influencing most Uyghur women’s lives. However, Huang (2010) in her ethnographic research stresses that some of these values are not necessarily at odds with one another. As mentioned, most Uyghurs’ associate their identity with being Muslim. Islam advocates and values the role of a woman as homemaker and child care giver (Zang, 2011). Uyghur society also values the role of mother as virtuous. These values conflict with the role of women in Chinese communist society that has valued the “career women” and has encouraged women to find employment outside the home.
These communist policies and values have changed the role of Han women in Chinese society (Zang, 2011). Han women have not just been encouraged to work outside the home but 35 policy states that women should be paid equivalent salaries to men in the same position. Under the influence of communist ideology and the policies that have accompanied it, Zuo & Bian
“argue that the ‘same-work, same-pay’ policy raised women’s socioeconomic status relative to men’s” (as cited in Zang, 2011, p. 243). Another factor that has elevated the status of Han women is the one child policy. Because urban parents are subject, in more strict terms to the one child policy, urban parents focus their lives on educating and helping their child to find good employment, whether male or female (Zang, 2011). Part of the parents’ practical motivation to encourage both their daughter and or son to be educated and career minded is because there is the societal expectation that your child will be your provider once you can no longer work. This is part of the Confucian ideal of “filial piety” which includes “ respect, obedience, and the obligation to care for elderly parents and respond to their needs… a collective sense of self… in which family needs and honor came before personal desires” (Deutsch, 2006, p. 367).
Uyghur women are influenced by both Uyghur traditional values and Muslim values that emphasize the role of a woman as taking care of children at home and the communist ideology emphasizing the importance of women in the work place receiving equal pay. Uyghurs, as a rural minority group, are not included in the one child policy since minority families are able to have more than one child. The reality of bearing multiple children may change Uyghur women’s life experiences. Overall research has shown that Uyghur women are much more likely than Han women to be caregivers in the home than to have a full time job outside of the home. Among
Han women 79% were employed in full time jobs compared to 62% of Uyghur women (Zang,
2011). Zang’s (2011) research points to wage discrepancies between Han and Uyghur people because Uyghur women are more likely to be focused on care of their family rather than a career 36 outside of the home. Zang concluded that Uyghur society valued women being in the home caring for their children versus being educated and working in a career outside their home.
These results differ from those Chen (2010) found while researching the inland Xinjiang high schools. His research indicated that Uyghur families did indeed value schooling and careers for their female children (2010). One female school counselor explained, “we Uyghurs pay more attention to female education, as females are physically weak and need to live off their minds”
(Chen, 2010, p. 51). Because of physically limitations, they are often restricted as to the types of jobs they can get outside of the home and therefore a female child’s education is more important or just as important as the education of their male children. Additionally, his study found that
95.5% of female students felt that their parents had strong expectations for their higher education. This sample seems to be a little distorted as families that are willing to send their daughters far away from home for their high school education may not be representative of the values generally held by Uyghur society. Therefore it is difficult to know how much these findings could be generalized to all of Uyghur society but these findings are very relevant to the university women that will be participating in the study.
Huang’s (2009) ethnographic study attempted to understand what it means for a woman “ to be an economic success, a pious Muslim and a good Uyghur”. She discovered a number of fascinating insights into the culture. Huang felt that these women in many ways demonstrated and communicated that being a good Muslim and Uyghur was not separated from being an economic success outside the home. As she examined the life of six middle class aspiring women she discovered that they provided in significant ways for their families. Three of these women used higher educational experiences to help them get ahead financially. One who was originally a teacher in a somewhat rural school moved on to get her master’s degree from a prestigious 37 university. Another woman returned to university at the age of 43 and then supported her four daughters in their “pursuit of high-powered educations and careers” (2009, p. 80). What was most important for these women was that they were “being one who is japakesh”. That is “one who perseveres through difficulty and suffers with a moral purpose” (2009, p. 1). This was what helped make you a moral and virtuous woman in Uyghur society.
However, Huang discovered more traditional views of a woman’s role when asking a
Uyghur husband and wife in rural Xinjiang whether it was more difficult to be a man or a woman. The man stated: “Now in our customs it is very hard to be a girl. Yes, it is very hard to be a girl. Whatever a boy does, he can do that and take care of himself. According to our customs, we think women are weak” (2009, p. 78). His wife explains another aspect of why it is difficult to be a woman “I think between men and women, women have the greatest difficulties. We prepare the food, we knead the dough, we take care of the kids, we work in the fields, and we gather the feed for the livestock. The things that we have to do are several times more than what they have to do. There are a lot of things we have to do. We do everything don’t we?” (2009, p. 78.). Their responses agreed on who life was more difficult for, but not necessarily on why. There was also definite disagreement on who was the “stronger” person.
Uyghur women are culturally similar to many of the women in Central Asia and face some of the same pressures that many women in post-soviet Central Asia face. They live in a society influenced by both communist and Islamic values. The Uzbek people, as a Central Asian people share these similarities with Uyghurs and are additionally a Turkic people with the language that is closest other Turkic language to the Uyghur language. Therefore Peshkova
(2013) findings in her research on the perceptions of the role of women in Uzbekistan society are relevant and applicable to Uyghur women in many ways. Peshkova found that there were many 38 women who both upheld traditional roles for males and females and supported certain types of women’s rights and democracy. One of these women explained that because of the legacy of communism “in post-Soviet Uzbek society women were treated inferior to men, and had to bear the dual burden of household responsibilities and wage labor” (2013, p.668). Other participants in Peshkova’s research “praised Soviet secularism for giving women equal rights and the post-
Soviet state for attempting to preserve these rights” (p. 669). There were also other women that believed the “Soviet state failed to give women equal rights, and that the post-Soviet Uzbek state should follow the model of liberal equality” (p.669). Although the Uzbek and Uyghur situation is very different there are probably many Uyghur women who would identify with the various sentiments and perspectives held by their Uzbek counter parts.
Family, where you are from, the education the parents have received, the type of occupation that the parents have all impacts the ways that women are driven to either get an education or encouraged or encouraged not to get one. Since there exists such a diversity of lives and values it was interesting to understand the ways that being a woman has impacted English language study at the university level.
39
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY
This study focused on the experiences of Uyghur women learning English in a predominantly Han University. The primary research question was: What socio-cultural factors influence the English language acquisition process for female Uyghur university students? This question focused on examining the following areas: a. The subjects' perception of the manner in which gender influences the English language acquisition process; b. The students' perception of the ways in which their language of instruction influences their language acquisition; c. The students' perception of the means in which the ethnic identity of other classmates and their instructor impacts their language acquisition.
Qualitative Case Study Research
Qualitative research has been chosen for this study because I am interested in further understanding the socio-cultural elements that Uyghur students perceive influencing their
English language acquisition.
The specific methodology used for this research is a case study. “Case study research is a qualitative approach in which the investigator explores a bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information (Creswell, Hanson, Clark & Morales, 2007, p.245). Case studies have a specific focus. This research’s focus is the case of English language acquisition and it was investigated in a bounded system: Uyghur women learning English in the university 40 environment. This is the case of a minority people in a majority classroom. This is the case of a minority population acquiring their third language, English. The minority population is the
Uyghur people. They are an intriguing population and one of the few minorities groups in China with their own mother tongue language education. They are a population learning English as a third language and that is a field that has limited research beyond European languages.
Linguistically and socio-culturally, this is additionally intriguing as students are being asked to acquire a language from a linguistically different family in an environment where they are a minority population. Women are the focus of this research, first, because I was interested in understanding the impact of being a woman in the process of learning English and second, because it was more culturally acceptable and easier for me to use female participants (Taynen,
2006). A quiet place with few interruptions was important in order to conduct the interviews.
There would have been complications in conducting these interviews for me as a woman with a male participant because of the moral implications of a man and woman being alone together in this Muslim culture. This research was conducted over a year through in-depth recorded interviews and informal interviews with the participants. Additionally I asked graduate students and graduated students for additional insight. I also observed a few English classrooms and made observations in informal settings.
A case study does not emphasize the individual stories as narrative research does, but rather the context of the individual as it relates to the specific phenomenon being studied. Yin
(2003) explains the case study method is used because the researcher “deliberately wanted to cover contextual conditions” (as cited in Creswell et al., 2007, p.245). In this situation the context of these women’s lives and the conditions and historical context in which they were studying the English language were pivotal to gaining an understanding of this phenomenon. 41
Research Location
This research was conducted with university students who were located on three different campuses in a city in China. These universities were in close proximity to where I live and to one another. This location was chosen because it was where I had contacts and additionally it did not involve a lot of travel on my part or that of the students who were coming to be interviewed. A couple of students had to travel about an hour from my house to their campus to be interviewed, but for most students it took 15 to 20 minutes to get from their campus to interview location.
This city is in the central part of China. There are currently more than 20 universities in this city and there is one university prepartory program for minority students. Ten years ago, a university village was created on the outskirts of the city to accommodate the growing university population. These new campuses look impressive with large structures. This is the area where I live and where most of the students interviewed were studying. The study focused on students from a computer engineering campus, a teacher’s training university and a foreign languages university. These universities are similar in that none of them are the most prestigious universities in the city, but all have a good national reputation.
Uyghurs are less than 1% of the population in this city and make up a small minority of students on all three of the universities where I interviewed students. On each campus students live in dormitories with it least three other students. On two of the three campuses Uyghur students were required to live in dormitories with non-Uyghur roommates. On one of the campuses, after some complaints to the Univeristy, one of the research participants was allowed to move into a dormitory with all Uyghur roommates. One of the major challenges for these 42 students is finding appropriate places to eat. All three universities that participants were drawn from had a halal (qing zhen) cafeteria. This cafeteria is provided for not only Uyghur students but also Hui, Kazakh and other minority Muslim students. One of these cafeterias on the Foreign languages University did not seem to be frequented by the students. It was small and the food was not considered good. Most of the Muslim students on this campus went to a small Hui restaurant across the street from the campus. The other two university cafeterias were frquented by the Uyghurs on campus. Food may seem like a minor aspect of university life but for students that are surrounded by Han culture this appears to be one of the major stress points. The other reality of being a minority on campus was that some students experienced great insecurity during times of Uyghur political stress. This includes the times when police had arrested several
Uyghurs and they had retaliated with violence against the police and the three Uyghur attacks against people in train stations in the past year. After one of these events one participant and her fellow Uyghur friends did not want to attend class. However for other Uyghur students campus felt safe and leaving campus was what brought insecurity. Therefore, after the incident of
Uyghurs killing Han at a train station in Kunming, May 2014, some students heasitated to leave campus.
Data Collection Procedures
Permission was obtained from the Bowling Green State University Human Subjects
Review Board in order to start this research. Two professors at one of the universities where I interviewed participants explained to me that permission was not needed to do research in China.
This research used one on one relationships over formal recruitment letters, scripts or sign up sheets. Each suitable participant was asked informally to be a part of the research 43 project. The participants were told that research was being conducted for a master's thesis on the topic of Uyghur women's English language acquisition process in the university classroom.
The subjects were asked to participate in a 60-90 minute recorded interview.
Additionally, after I had got the formal interview transcribed, I asked some follow-up or clarifying questions to ensure an accurate understanding of the data collected. These follow-up interviews were important to bring greater understanding and clarity to their responses. This included perceptions of language similarities (language typology) and greater clarity on gender issues. During the informal formal follow-up interviews the participants were provided with a transcript of the interview for their review in order to confirm that it accurately reflects what they desired to communicate.
Participant Recruitment
As mentioned, this research is taking place in a city that is predominantly Han and where
Uyghurs are less than 1% of the population. It was important to utilize any available Uyghur women who fit the criteria for the research; the "convenience strategy" because it selects subjects
"simply because they are available" (Gall, J., Gall, M., Borg, W., 2005, p. 311). The initial
‘available subjects’ did not provide enough people to meet the criteria of the study and there is not a specific locations where the sample population is located. Therefore, it was imperative to find a few key people who could enable me to make contact with Uyghur univeristy women. A couple of foreigners who had relationships with Uyghur women and two Han professors on one of the nearby universities became these key contacts. Therefore this research also utilized the the snowball/chain strategy, using "subjects that are recommended by individuals who know other individuals likely to yield relevant, information-rich data" (Gall et al., 2005, p. 311). This 44 snowball/chain strategy was not always effective. One of the first women interviewed seemed hesitant to introduce me to other women. A few women that she was possibly going introduce me to returned to Xinjiang before there was opportunity to interview them. However, the second participant was very eager to bring friends to be interviewed. Once she had run out of friends she used her friends to find friends and encouraged the participants she invited to be a part of the research to recruit other friends.
Participants
All the contacts that were asked were willing to be a part of the research. These are the descriptions of the participants. All participants have been given pseudonyms to protect their identity.
Table 1. The Research Participants
Rural/City Type of Minority English Major High educated in Study School Chinese or Began Uyghur
Halidah Town Inland BS Chinese Elementary English School Rai La City Inland BS Uyghur High school English
Tursun Ai Town Local Uyghur University Computer prep school programing Ai Tula City Inland BS Uyghur High School Mangement
Amangul Rural Inland BS Uyghur High School English
Ranagul Rural Inland BS Chinese Elementary Kindergarten
Howahgul Rural Nearby BS Uyghur Private English program Aruzgul City Local Uyghur University Accounting prep school 45
Ai Peri Rural Local Uyghur Grad School Management prep Rayhangul City Inland BS Chinese High school English
Halidah: She is in her last year of university studying English. She is energetic, outgoing and laughs a lot. She is fashion conscious, she does not cover her head and her clothing choices are not overly conservative. She thinks one day she might change and wear a head covering but does not feel any shame in being uncovered. She was educated in Mandarin schools from the primary level and feels shame in her Uyghur language abilities. She attended an inland boarding school, solidifying her Mandarin skills. She has found a job overseas and is excited for the adventure of going to a new place. She is hoping this study will prevent the loss of the Uyghur language. She is eager to be both a wife and mom, but also wants to live a life of adventure and have a career.
Rai La: Her best friend is Halidah. She is also in the last year of university studying English.
She is from a Uyghur majority city in Xinjiang. She started her education in a Uyghur school and transitioned to Mandarin after being accepted at an inland boarding school. She is the opposite personality type of her friend. She is quiet and reserved; her friend did most of the talking when we first met and had lunch together. She does give her thoughts and opinions in a confident manner but would prefer to stay a little in the background. She hopes to teach English back in
Xinjiang once she graduates from university. She also is uncovered and is very comfortable with being uncovered.
46
Howahgul: Covered and fairly conservatively dressed when she shows up for the interview.
This is completely different from when we first met. We first informally met the previous summer. She and her boyfriend came to swim with another foreign family at the pool where my family swims. She was by western standards, conservatively dressed for swimming but by
Uyghur standards she was far from conservative. She was wearing shorts, which I had never seen a Uyghur woman wear before and no head covering. I asked about the head covering and she said since the summer she had started reading the Quran and studying with some Iranian friends and therefore she wants to start practicing her religion and not just being a Muslim in name. She is an English student at the foreign languages university, she was confident in her
English abilities and felt insecure in her Mandarin abilities. She was from a rural area of
Xinjiang and had been educated primarily in Uyghur.
Tursun Ai (keep safe the moon): She was my first Uyghur friend. I met her through a foreigner in town before this research began. She was feeling a little lost in Xi’an and was glad to meet someone else who was new here and not a Han. She originally had Han roommates and was glad for the opportunity to switch to Uyghur ones because they had “dirty hygiene”. Her present
Uyghur roommates are more conservative and cover their heads. Tursun Ai feels she cannot cover her head because her parent’s work in the government and it would impact their lives.
Although she is not overly religious she feels ashamed that she does not cover her head. She studies computers and feels confident in her Mandarin skills although she was predominantly educated in the Uyghur language.
47
Ranagul (very beautiful flower): She is an undergraduate student learning how to be a kindergarten teacher at the teachers’ university. She had studied in Chinese from the primary level and saw this language as the way of the future in society, going so far as to say that she thought her language was dying. She did not express regret about this, but just was dealing with the reality of where she felt the future of Xinjiang was going. She mentioned that she felt lonely in university as she felt she was not able to be close to her Han classmates.
Aruzgul (Hope Flower): She was shy. She came from a traditional background and had not cut her hair since she was 10 years old. Although she seemed traditional, she did not cover her head and her father seemed untraditional. In that her father was greatly supportive of her education and told her that marriage was not important until she had finished her accounting Masters degree. Her English skills were very limited and she had been educated in Uyghur schools from the primary through the high school level.
Ai Peri (Moon Angel): She came from a poor rural area of Xinjiang. Her undergraduate degree was in environment science driven by her desire to serve her family and her people. She wanted to care for those of her people who did not have enough money to meet medical bills, pay for education and those who had been orphaned. She was now a management graduate student who continued her studies because she felt that it would give her greater opportunities to serve others.
She describes herself as conservative and covers her head. She was a little shy to talk me and appeared even more so when I got to observe her with other male and female Uyghur friends.
Her English was limited and throughout her primary through secondary level education the
Uyghur language was the medium of instruction. 48
Ai Tula (Moon Silver): She has helped me navigate finding people for my thesis project. As a graduate student in management she is also finishing her research for her thesis. She helped me understand Uyghur hospitability as I invited Uyghur friends into my home and helped me care for them by showing me how to make tea. She is uncovered and has no desire to cover and is resentful of other women questioning her as a good Muslim because of it, whether they do it through their words or just by judgment she perceives from them because they themselves cover.
Amangul (Safe Flower): She is another English major, a junior undergraduate student at the teachers’ university. She is covered and wears fashionable clothing. She appears very confident in the way she carries herself and also expresses confidence in her spoken English. She wants to start an English training program for Uyghur children once she graduates alongside her elementary teaching English job.
Rayhangul (Fragrant Flower): She is the only participant who had more Han friends than
Uyghurs. This was extremely unusual. Her mother is a professor who aims to introduce Uyghur literature to the Chinese. Her father took care of her while her mom was completing her PhD studies. As an English major she would like to continue her mother’s work and introduce
Uyghur literature to the English-speaking world. Although she is an English major her spoken
English was limited. She had been educated in a predominantly Han environment from primary school through the junior high level. She was very comfortable in Mandarin and described it as her second mother tongue.
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Data collection Process
Students were very willing to participate in the research. All HSRB requirements were adhered to. Most students were very willing to express their thoughts, but the formality of the process appeared to be a little intimidating to some participants. Seeing the content of the questions that I would be asking did seem to reduce some of the concerns. The interviews were conducted either in my apartment or in the empty apartment of one of my foreign friends. Two of the women who were good friends were present for one anothers’ interviews. They wanted to come to together as it was less intimidating for them. Follow-up interviews were often conducted outside on their universities. These follow-up interviews added to the trustworthiness of this study as through these follow-up interviews I was able to clarify answers that were unclear in the initial interview. This created greater interpretive validity (Maxwell, 1992), which refers to an ability to accurately the research participants’ perspectives. This interpretive validity was also affirmed through giving participants a copy of the transcript of their interview when we met for the follow-up interview. The participants were specifically asked to affirm that these transcripts accurately conveyed their meaning. None of the participants requested changes to the transcripts. Additionally I was able to observe a couple of classrooms with minority students and observe the participants in social situations. This enabled me to add validity to the findings through triangulation; the use a few different sources to confirm the findings.
Data Analysis
For the completion of this research a Uyghur student competent in Mandarin and English was hired to help with the translation and transcription of the interviews. This was vitally 50 important for the interviews conducted in Mandarin. Most of the English interviews I transcribed myself. In order to add to the trustworthiness of this study if there were items that were unclear in the transcriptions of the interviews I went back to the original interview to ensure the transcription and translation appeared to be accurate.
Once the interviews had been obtained and transcribed the data relevant to the key questions this reseach was asking and new areas that appeared to be themes in the responses of the students was grouped. The responses were examined and color coded. These color codings grouped the responses into these specific areas: 1) language attitudes, 2) perceived similarities and differences between languages, 3) learning English through Mandarin, 4) being a female, 5) being a minority in class, 6) being a minority in the university environment, 8) background education, 7) comfort level in mother-tongue, Mandarin and English. After the process of color-coding ideas that were either originally part of my focus or themes that were re-occuring concept maps were used to help clarify relationships between certain ideas. Then from these concept maps the findings in this paper took their organizational form.
The processing of data took place informally as I discussed my findings with some
Uyghurs, expatriats, Dr Frey and my husband. A Uyghur PhD linguistic student added some helpful background information to the Uyghur education system and English, Uyghur typology linguistics. As did informal times with a graduated University English major who felt strongly about education and its role in the development of the Uyghur people. Dr. Frey additionally provided helpful insight and perspective on analysis and interpretation of data. As I was compiling my findings and interpretation of these findings I consulted an expatriat living here who also had spent extensive time with Uyghur university students. She agreed with the interpretations of my findings and helped build their validity. My husband who has background 51 in linguistics and has many Uyghur relationships also provided a good sounding board. He read all of my paper and once again to confer with him both about the findings and the conclusions reached from these findings.
Limitations
Language. The interviews were conducted in both English and Mandarin. This was important since I sought to understand the experiences of many different types of English learners. If I had only carried out interviews in English it would have restricted the sample of students to only those who felt competent in their English level. Because the interviews were conducted in English and Chinese all of the students being interviewed were using their second or third language. It seemed that particularly for those choosing to do the interview in English there were times they were grasping for the right word to express their meaning. Often they were able to explain the word to me in Mandarin and then I was able to understand it at this time.
However language was one of the limitations to students being able to accurately express their perceptions. Additionally my language abilities created limitations. My Mandarin skills are a little rusty. There were times I did not fully understand their answers and therefore my ability to ask follow-up questions was limited. This limitation was minimized in the follow-up interviews because I was also to ask questions about areas I had misunderstood in the original interview.
Researcher Ethnicity and Experience. I am a Christian, caucasian, American university graduate student who is a mom with two children. The research is about female university students from Xinjiang studying in this city. These students are unmarried, without children, significantly younger than myself and self identify as Muslims. I was able to identify with being a woman and university student. However American and Chinese universities are 52 very different and being an American woman and Uyghur woman also gave us very different life experiences. I have visited Urumuqi and Turpan, two cities in Xinjiang. However I was not in a rural home in Xinjiang and was not in a location where Uyghurs were a majority. I am learning some Uyghur customs but do not begin to understand the culture and experiences that these women are coming from. Although being an American limited my ability to understand the life experiences of these women, it did provide an outsider perspective in carrying out this research.
Most Uyghur have a level of distrust with Han and a sense of trust and greater freedom of expression with foreigners. Therefore my ethnicity did increase my access to hearing students’ perceptions about their English acquisition process. Although my Chinese is rusty, I have studied Chinese which enabled me to do the interviews in Mandarin instead of being limited to an English speaking participant pool.
Delimitations
This research focused on ten Uyghur female university students. Originally the research was to focus on students who were currently studying English at university. However, because in the course of interviewing some masters level students I discovered they were not currently in
English classes, I expanded the participant base. The participants included all those who had taken English classes at the university level and were currently undergraduate or master level university students. Some of the participants were English majors and others only studied
English as part of a university requirements.
53
CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS
This study focused on the socio-cultural factors influencing the English language acquisition process for female Uyghur university students. As previously mentioned in the chapter on methodology, the research focused on examining how the subjects’ perceived gender, language of instruction and the ethnicity of their classmates and instructor in influencing their language acquisition. The goal of the questionnaire, created to guide the interview, was to gain a direct and indirect understanding of these areas.
These findings discovered that, in general, the participants gender did not seem to be perceived as having a negative impact on these women’s language acquisition and, in certain ways, may have gained them greater freedom to pursue the studies that interested them.
However, educational background, including language and location of schools, did impact the quality of their education and, therefore, their English language opportunities. The language of instruction had various, nuanced ways of impacting learning, and was once again dependent on the individual’s educational background. The ethnic identity of the students’ classmates and instructor were perceived to impact learning. Perceived similarity between languages, attitudes towards languages and outside of the classroom opportunities were additional socio-cultural elements of the quality of English language acquisition. These findings have been grouped into four major areas:1) The individual background, 2) the university environment, 3) attitudes towards langauge and 4) out of class opportunities. These are all areas perceived as impactful to
English acqusition by the participants.
54
Impact of Education and Family Background on English Acquisition
The first area that impacts English language acquisition is the individual background of the student. Individual background includes three main topics: The participants’ family background, the participants’ educational background and gender roles in Uyghur society.
Family Background. The student’s family influenced the type of pre-college education a student would pursue. This pre-college education then had a large influence on each participant’s experiences as a university student studying English. Not only did the type of education influence the quality of their language learning experiences, it additionally influenced their attitudes and reasons for learning English. The first choice that parents made for their children was to put their child in either Uyghur or Mandarin language as the medium of instruction primary school. This decision was crucial in developing student attitudes towards their identity as a Uyghur in the PRC. Presently, many Uyghur parents no longer have this choice as the government gradually implements the bilingual policy of 2004, but for all the participants in this study this choice was still available. This decision divided students into two distinct groups. Literally translated the first group is “minorities taking exams in minority language” (min kao min) and the second group is “minorities taking exams in Mandarin” (min kao han).
Cultural Divider and Identifier: Min kao min vs. Min kao han. Originally I understood this difference to entail those who had taken the university entrance exam in the Uyghur language versus those who had taken the university entrance exam in the Chinese language
(Taynen, 2006; Tsung & Clark, (2010). However, this was not true, and I offended a Uyghur girl by suggesting that she was min kao han because she had taken her university entrance exam in Mandarin. She explained that although she had attended a Mandarin inland boarding high 55 school, her family had chosen for her to attend a Uyghur school at the primary level and therefore she self-identified as min kao min and was offended at the idea of being labeled a min kao han. The identity of min kao min vs. min kao han was an important cultural identifier and divider. A Uyghur Ph.D. student studying third language acquisition explained that those who have attended Uyghur language schools in primary level and then transferred into an inland boarding school with Mandarin as the language medium of instruction could linguistically be defined as min kao han, but through a socio-cultural lens still identified as min kao han.
As the literature indicates (Taynen, 2006; Tsung & Clarke, 2010), students attribute many characteristics and value differences to the identities of min kao han and min kao min. An individual’s values, the clothes they wear, their level of rudeness and ultimately, ideas about the ways the Uyghur people should be a part of the PRC are often attributed to the identity of min kao han or min kao min. As this differentiation is so distinct, many aspects of life are attributed to the distinction between min kao han and min kao min. For example, my husband’s friend blamed his divorce on his decision to marry a min kao han Uyghur woman, reflecting Tsung &
Clarke’s (2010) findings that a min kao han and a min kao min “cannot marry.” The reason my husband’s friend felt there was a lack of compatibility in his marriage was due to the depth of the differences in values between min kao han and min kao min.
Rayhangul, who comes from a highly educated family (her mother is a university professor and her father a university lecturer), identifies three different categories of people from her majority Uyghur hometown. She delineates these categories along educational decisions not simply ethnic lines.
There are three kind of students in Kashgar now: one is min kao min, Uyghur student
learned all the lesson in Uyghur from primary school, min kao han, Uyghur students 56
learned all the lesson in Chinese from primary school, han kao han, Han Chinese learned
all lesson in Chinese. I belongs to the middle min kao han. If I communicate with them I
might be speak more, because I can express all that I want. If you can’t express whatever
you want, than you speak less.
She clearly categorizes three types of students and explains her connection to fellow min kao han students. When asked to elaborate on these thoughts Rayhangul provided some insight into the overall mindset difference between min kao han and min kao min students. She explained that min kao han and min kao min students have different values and different perspectives about
“what will help change our (Uyghur) nation and the role we as Uyghurs should play in the PRC.”
She explains that there are value differences between the two peoples because of this. Therefore she is able to identify and express herself freely with fellow min kao han students. She does not want to abandon her Uyghur heritage and wants the Han people to further understand who the
Uyghur people are, but wants to do it within the structures and systems of the PRC. Rayhangul sees the Uyghur peoples’ future and identity closely tied together with the future success of the
PRC. She ignores and down plays any hostility between the Uyghur and the Han people both on a large scale and at a personal level. She admits there is some prejudice by her Han classmates, but she chooses to ignore this.
Ranagul, who comes from a rural area where she explains “most of the people speak
Uyghur,” attended a Mandarin school all her life and therefore self-identifies as a min kao han student. When asked about the differences between the two identities she explains that min kao han students are “more selfish and self focused and min kao min students are more generous.” I asked her if that meant she was more selfish, and she giggled and responded “sometimes.” She further explained that her own language was a dying language and therefore it was more 57 important to learn Mandarin. Mandarin was the language of the future. This valuing of the
Mandarin language appears in her relationship with her boyfriend as she speaks Mandarin to him and he speaks Uyghur to her. She is pragmatic about the importance of Mandarin and the loss of her own language. Halidah, who is from a rural area and is also a min kao han student, explains in greater detail some of the pragmatic reasons her and other parents choose for their children to be min kao han. She states that it is easier to find a job because “some jobs advertise as only min kao han or even some as just Han.” Therefore, her parents saw the pragmatic necessity and advantage of her attending a Mandarin school for her future employment.
However, Halidah also sees this identity as a min kao han student as a source of shame as she somewhat tearfully explained “but now I feel bad, I need to know who I am, I need to know my own culture.” In most of our interview she was lighthearted and laughed a lot, her emotions as a sharp contrast to her personality seemed to indicate the pain she feels in this identity. She feels a loss of her identity because she and her parents decided that she would study at a
Mandarin primary school and so now she is unable write her own language and she explained that she is “ashamed to speak Uyghur with my Uyghur friends.” One of her close friends is a male student who is half Han, half Uyghur. He is in the process of attempting to connect more deeply with his Uyghur roots, as he also feels inadequate in his Uyghur skills. They describe their relationship as a “brother and sister” relationship and it is easy to understand their strong connection as they both struggle to fit in the Uyghur culture.
Halidah, as a min kao han, often feels inadequate in her ability to communicate in the
Uyghur language. Therefore, she has used the English language as a means of communicating with other Uyghurs. It would be unacceptable for her to speak Mandarin with other Uyghurs, but due to her shame in using Uyghur with Uyghur friends, explains that she enjoys speaking 58
English with her friends; “so sometimes if I do not using Uyghurish talking with my friend I’d like to choose English, even my English is not so good but still I want it.” It seems that for
Halidah the English language has created a means to move beyond her place of inadequacy, as a min kao han with limited Uyghur abilities. It would not be considered appropriate for her to use
Mandarin with other Uyghurs so she is able to use English as a neutral ground to communicate and feel connected to other Uyghurs.
Ranagul appears to carry none of the shame that Halidah carries in her min kao han identity and instead embraces it in many ways, yet her min kao han identity appears to contribute to the loneliness she feels at university. She does not have many Han classmates as friends and mentions the difficulty of connecting with classmates out of class. She adds that there are few people to hang out with even though her university has at least 1000 other Uyghur university students. Many of these other Uyghur students are min kao min and they are students that are going through the preparatory program. She appears to lack a connection to other Uyghur students. Her identity as a min kao han appears to have left her isolated from both Uyghurs and
Han, rather than assimilated her with Han culture. However, she gets great joy both from time in the English classroom and in outside opportunities to study English. She explains that she practices English outside the classroom; “we have English corner and I often go.” She attends an
English corner that does have other Uyghurs, but it also has a number of foreigners to practice
English with. She is very faithful to go to English corner each week. She adds that she “prefers
English corner” because I can “communicate and there are foreigners.” It seems that this place in which she is able to use English allows her to be connected to a world beyond her daily life.
She no longer has to take English classes for her major, but she explains that she continues studying English on her own because “purely I like it” and because she “makes many friends.” 59
Her daily life appears to be somewhat alienated between Han and Uyghur culture. English allows her to connect to a more neutral, accepting world.
Rai La, who is best friends with Halidah, had wanted to be interviewed at the same time as her friend, but when asked about min kao han and min kao min differences the two seemed uncomfortable for the first time in the interview process. Rai La was min kao min, however she had narrowly missed becoming a min kao han student. Her parents wanted to send her to a
Mandarin elementary school, but she did not want to go so her parents relented and she attended a Uyghur school. She subtlety expresses that her parents are now proud of this stubbornness and that she saved herself from the wrong path. However, when directly asked about the differences she only felt freedom to state that min kao min students were able to understand the beauty of their own language in a way that min kao han Uyghur were not able to as “they only knew simple words.” The surfacing of this difference between these two friends in their identity was the one time during our interview that Rai La, a min kao min, may have had more freedom to express herself if her best friend, a min kao han, had not been present. Again this difference stemmed from an early educational decision that Halidah regretted and that Rai La had been grateful for.
Many of the min kao min students mentioned that min kao han students had taken on the culture and values of the Han and had lost those of their own culture. Min kao min students viewed this adoption of Han culture by the min kao han as a betrayal of their own people.
Except for Halidah the Min kao han participants saw this as a practical, necessary decision in most cases. For Halidah and Ranagul, despite their very different views on their identity as min kao han, English has enabled them to create connections beyond their identity. 60
Type of High School. Families’ decisions at the high school level were also crucial in influencing the students’ future university English education experience. At the end of middle school the government administers exams that determine which high schools students can gain entry to. The government awards the students with the best grades an opportunity to attend an inland boarding school. These inland boarding schools are hundreds of miles away in the eastern part of China. Many of them are in coastal cities like Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.
Attendance or lack of attendance at an inland boarding school created a great divide between the type of educational background and personal characteristics students had as they approached the university environment and influenced their ability to succeed in the English classroom. The students who did not qualify for the inland boarding school could choose between a local high school or a boarding school in a nearby city within Xinjiang. This decision had a less impactful role in their future education, but was also influenced by the parents.
There were educated and uneducated, rural and city parents whose children qualified for the inland boarding school. All of these parents supported their children in going to these boarding schools. For those participants who did not qualify for the inland boarding schools, this research found participants whose parents both supported and opposed their children in their attendance at Xinjiang local boarding schools.
Amangul, Ai Tula, Rayhangul, Rai La, Ranagul and Halidah are all students who studied in the inland boarding schools for the entirety of their high school. This group included min kao min and min kao han students. All of these students talk of both their parents and their own excitement and joy in being accepted into these programs. Amangul describes her emotions:
“When I know that I can go to the high school in Nanjing first I excited, honestly I excited.” Rai
La explains that part of the joy was from both attaining a high grade on the exam and “because it 61 was the fashion at this time” to go to the inland boarding schools. The government had laid crucial groundwork for these schools in creating positive feelings towards them because even if parents had chosen for their students to go to a mother tongue language primary and middle school, there still was great anticipation for the Mandarin language inland high school. Ai Tula, who staunchly defends her identity as min kao min, explains:
There is some kind of government policy, because the west developing slowly rather than
east part of china. So the east part has some kind of help the west to developing, this is
part of educational help. Chinese we can say that youhui zhengce (preferential/favorable
policy). Let the kids take exam first after finish the junior school and than according to
the score we get the exam, like if I get the higher point in the exam, I am qualified to go
the east where education developed better than my home town.
The government, in their effort to develop the west and build greater unity within the country, grants the top students from Xinjiang the privilege of attending inland boarding schools. This policy is known as a “preferential policy” for minorities, as the government attempts to include all types of students in the higher education system. Ranagul explains “It’s like a policy, education of Xinjiang is not good, so they let us went to big city and take better education.” The government has succeeded in allowing min kao min students to keep their cultural identity as min kao min but gain better Mandarin skills and often better English skills through their attendance at these boarding schools.
Gender and Family Background.
Type of High School. This study attempted to clarify if gender could have been one of the influencing factors on how parents made decisions regarding their children’s high school education. Parents whose daughters were accepted at an inland boarding school allowed their 62 daughters to go away from home (often a two to three day journey) at the age of 14. For
Muslims, Hadith tradition forbids females from travelling overnight without being accompanied by a male relative. Therefore, these parents are breaking with and gave their daughters greater independence.
Although most parents were excited that their daughters had been accepted into these boarding school programs, Ai Tula mentions the stress her parents felt because she was only 14 years old when she was accepted into a boarding school in Guangzhou in the far south of China.
It would be similar to someone moving from California to New York City to go to boarding school at age 14, but the travel would take place by train, not plane, and therefore take three days. Her perception was that it was the distance and her age, but not her gender that lead to their concerns. Despite these concerns they supported her and felt better after her first initial year of study.
Rai La, who is from a predominantly Uyghur city, does identify gender as a reason why her parents had some concerns. She mentions that she felt that they were worried about her being able to take care of herself, so when asked if she thought it made a difference that it was their daughter not their son, she replied “I think maybe a female made it more difficult” because:
they worry about my clothes, they worry about my hairstyle, worry about make-up all
kinds of. Maybe I am wearing some kind of clothes maybe it will look like some older
then they will worry about that. Because they want I am to be a little girl.
Although they had many concerns about their daughter going far away and the influence it would have on her as a woman, they did not oppose her going.
Halidah’s family seemed to fully embrace the opportunity for their daughter to have a greater sense of the world even at a young age. “If I go out and I see more maybe it is good for 63 me. Maybe I didn’t think like that but my parents did.” Therefore, the gender of these women did not inhibit the early educational opportunities available to them; just perhaps add some worry to one set of parents.
Howahgul comes from a poor, rural family. She is the only person in her family to go to university. She did not have the opportunity to study in an inland boarding school, but her parents were willing to let her study at a high school away from home. She mentioned in the course of the interview that she is the only sibling to be able to go to university, and explained that she was chosen to go because her parents did not have a lot of money and she was the only one who truly wanted to go. Her siblings (two brothers and two sisters) are jealous of her because she is the one who got to go to university. She says they envy her now because “they think in college have a lot of fun like spending money, sleep and play.” Her sister got married at seventeen and two years later had her own child, who is now 17. Her family appears to be traditional, but not overly religious. Her father encourages her in the wearing of make-up and nice clothes, but her mother discourages this. She has only started wearing a headscarf since she has been in Xi’an. It is interesting that in her family she is the one chosen to go. It is hard to know if it is because her grades were good enough or if there is another more economically driven reason. Higher education can be very expensive and since she is the youngest daughter, the family may be better able to provide for her at this time now that her siblings are also working. Her gender has not kept her from her studies but it is hard to know if it has/has not encouraged them.
Aruzgul has a similar educational background to Howahgul. She also did not travel to an inland boarding school and most of her education was in the Uyghur language. However, her father as a school principal is better educated than the members of Howahgul’s family. He told 64 his children if they qualified for University they would get to go and if not they would go to work on the farm. Aruzgul describes her family’s rule: “Study hard at our early age and which degree we want to get they support us. If we wouldn’t pass exam they would not give us any help. If we have ability to go to college he will support us.” It was not based on gender. It seems that her parents have been very supportive through the process of her education, but wanted to make sure she achieved the results she needed to complete her education. Both her older sisters also went to university.
For some students it seems that parents concerns may limit some of their education options. Tursun Ai explains that her parents did not want her to go far from them. She wanted to go to a better school in a city nearby (one hour away) and her parents refused. Her brother now goes to a boarding school in this city. She sees this as a product of her being a first child rather than her gender. It seems that from the comments that Rai La made about her parents concern over her going away to boarding school gender could have been a contributing element.
Choice of Major and University. Amangul, who got high enough results on the exam and therefore, “earned the privilege” of going to an inland boarding school, explains how this achievement actually gave her, in her parents view, additional rights and freedom:
When I fill out the form about which university I should go I called my parents from
Nanjing and I asked my parents do you have any suggestion for me and my father said
you just decide it by your own. You spend so much time for your study and if you feel
good we don’t have any other suggestion.
It does not seem that her gender influences their thoughts about her need to choose a certain type of degree or location. Her father emphasized that since she has worked hard in her studies she has the privilege of making her own choices in the realm of her education. 65
In Ranagul’s family it was specifically her gender that gave her greater choice in being able to choose her course of study. She explains: “Now my parents expect him (her brother) to be a doctor, I am a girl I can choose whatever I want.” Therefore, as a woman, Ranagul had more freedom to make choices in her college degree because her parents had placed specific expectations on her brother.
Individual and Familial Post-Educational Expectations. Another aspect that could impact the university English classroom is the expectations from parents on the way(s) they will use their studies post-graduation. According to Zang (2011) gender impacted Uyghur women’s role in the work place because they were more likely to be stay-at-home moms. This could indirectly influence students’ attitudes towards their education if they were not going to be using it as much post-graduation. However, the perceptions of the students interviewed did not reflect
Zang’s findings. Some students were asked directly about their parents’ expectations on their career if they got married and had children. In other interviews this issue came up in a more indirect manner.
Amangul explains her father’s thoughts on what she should do with her major if/once she became a mother. He doesn’t seem to want her to “waste” her time on taking care of her children; “You work so hard and you should work, you should do something for that.” She explains that because Amangul made sacrifices to study hard, gain entrance to an inland boarding school and receive entrance into university, she should use her education in a career out of the home.
Halidah, Ranagul and Rai La both indicated that they would both need to work as they had children. They would like to be home with the children, but because of their family’s financial needs and the reality that if they left a job for a few years it would be difficult to find a 66 job later on, they would need to keep working. This appears to affirm Dillon’s (2004) findings on the high levels of unemployment within Uyghur society and that there is competition to find work and that more Han are likely to get jobs than the Uyghur with a similar education.
These findings indicate that for these students who have made it to university gender has in no way been a limiting factor. A PHD student from Xinjiang actually feels like a recent trend
(since 2009) among Uyghur people is to keep their children, male and female, from all types of education because their children are being educated in an atheistic, anti-Uyghur cultural manner.
These findings are focused on families who have been willing to embrace the PRC education system.
Educational Background
Language Skills. One of the big differences between those who had attended local Xinjiang high schools and those who had attended boarding schools was their language skill-level in Mandarin and particularly in English. The students who had attended the inland boarding school completed all of their high school education in Mandarin. Therefore, their competency in Chinese was established much earlier than the non-boarding school people. They also had the opportunity to start learning English in high school. All of the students who had been to the inland boarding schools had overall greater confidence in their English abilities. All of these students, except one, were willing and had the confidence to do the interview in English.
All of the students, except one, who were English majors, were students who had attended the inland boarding schools. Amangul explains the difference between learning English in junior high in Xinjiang compared to learning English at the boarding school. In junior high a “man teacher taught us and he didn’t teach very well. In junior high school I just learned ABC and some basic knowledge.” But at the inland boarding school “I learned the most important 67 knowledge about English because in this four year the teacher basically taught us English and secondly guwen (Chinese script before the Qin dynasty). In this four year I learned a lot.” She felt her English education had begun in high school. She thought highly of the skills and knowledge she gained in the four years at the inland boarding school, which gave her greater confidence in approaching the university classroom. She had consequently chosen to study
English at university.
Conversely, all the min kao min students who had studied locally in mother-tongue schools in Xinjiang were faced with the challenge of attempting to catch up to Han students’ language abilities in two years of preparatory classes and bridge other gaps, including English.
In the mother tongue as medium schools, Mandarin was studied as a “foreign language” and
English was barely begun. Therefore, the students coming from this background seem to have very little confidence in their English ability and emphasize the challenges of the English language. Tursun Ai completed all of her schooling in the Uyghur language then attended university preparatory class before starting university in Xi’an. When asked to rate herself, using a scale of 1-10, on her English level compared to her Han classmates she responds that her
English is “very bad, and I can just get one.” She explained “I think learn English harder than learn Chinese.” She clarified that she thinks this is because of the “learning environment” when she was in high school:
When I learn English there is no way to communicate or practice. If there are many
foreigners we can also learn English easily. Now I also feel better because you are
helping me. In Xinjiang it’s different we only learn it through training school. 68
Her background had not prepared her for English class at university because of the limited opportunities to study English in her school in Xinjiang. She saw her only English acquisition options as coming from training centers outside of the school environment.
Preparation for University Experience. The students who attended the inland boarding schools were provided with experience and exposure to life in a Han majority population. This exposure to living as a minority population in high school appeared to result in less stress for those students who had already experienced being a minority at the boarding school compared to the students who had only studied in Xinjiang. All of the students that mention the stress from the new city environment at university came from non-inland boarding school students. Tursun
Ai explains, “I did not adapt well” in this city. Ranagul attended high school in a similar sized city to the one in which she attended university. She states that here is “also nice city I just like it. Any where you can go all is convenient and I like big city.” She had come from a rural area in
Xinjiang, so without the high school experience there could have been greater stress.
The inland boarding school background sometimes prepared students for the socio- cultural dynamics of being a minority in a university classroom because they had already experienced this in the high school classroom. Ai Tula explained how there were only two other
Uyghur students in her class at the high school level. She had good relationships with her classmates and appeared to enjoy this learning environment. It provided a good groundwork for
University where she was the only Uyghur in her class.
However, boarding school also provided a pattern that continues into university for most students. Close friendships were developed with fellow Uyghurs rather than with Han classmates. When asked about the challenges of boarding school Ai Tula responds: 69
We have first experience leaving home so far, I need to learn independent and learn to
some life experience and need to learn lesson, all of them very hard for me. My other
friends also have the same experience, so our friendship so good until now we keep in
touch.
Due to the hardship of being far from home, the students naturally forged deep bonds with other minority students. Her big discovery in high school about Han people was “Han Chinese is very different.” This experience did not build deep bridges to Han people, but instead greater bonds with Uyghur classmates. But many of these students learned to live in these two worlds, strong friendships within a small Uyghur community, and classroom interaction in a majority environment. The skill of learning how to be relationally comfortable living in two worlds was another aspect of the preparation for the university environment.
Gender Roles in Uyghur Society. It appeared that English acquisition had not been directly impacted by the gender of these women, however, there were societal norms that still impacted the lives of female university students. Communism and traditional Uyghur and
Muslim values were both expressed by the women. Communist values included equal opportunities for men and women to be educated and emphasized the importance of women working in careers outside of the home. However, there still seemed to be certain Islamic,
Uyghur traditional roles influencing women indirectly through pressures from extended family members and general ideas on suitable behavior and choices for male and female students.
First, there are specific types of careers that might be considered better for women in
Uyghur society. Ranagul who has explained that being a woman gave her more choice in what major she choose, also added that “teacher profession is especially suitable for girls, so they (her 70 parents) are not very opposed.” She is choosing a career, which is viewed in her family and culture as acceptable for a woman.
Second, there are specific roles and behaviors that men and women are expected to play in society and these are still being lived out in the university environment. For example, the man is to be a protector of woman. When Halidah is asked whether it is more difficult to be a male or female university student she responds that it is more difficult to be a male university student because of societal roles that they think they need to fulfill. She explains:
Maybe a man is more difficult because to be a Uyghur man you need to spend more
money because you know if you go out to eat a Uyghur man always want to spend their
own money. They just don’t want woman to pay so they want to protect that, and even if
they are a stranger, still they want to protect woman. In university we all want to leave
our home so maybe man think it is more responsibility for man I guess.
The men are to be the protectors even, at the university environment, and she thinks this pressure on men to pay for and protect the women they interact with makes their lives more challenging.
Rayhangul gives the opposite answer to this question and responds that it is more difficult to be a female and it is once again tied to the societal roles and expectations of men and women. She explains that it is “of course boys” who have an easier time studying English because:
Take one of my friends who are now in Beijing for example, he can have the chances to
take part in many parties. The photo he sends me last time is that he attended the party.
But from the time I still very young, the elders of my family always told me not to speak
a lot, not to tell my opinions to others before knowing well. Going to party too many
times is also not allowed, so I would seldom to join the party. They also tell me not to 71
communicate with boys too much. Therefore I chat with boys but seldom deeply
communicate with them. That is why it is easier for boys in English study.
Rayhangul felt that her male friend had a lot more freedom in being able to attend parties, without risk to his reputation. She is to not be too opinionated if it is not a safe environment and she is not to develop close relationships with male friends. Since she is not to be too opinionated this may impact the freedom she has to participate in English class discussions. Therefore even as a supported university student from a non-traditional home she is living out this role with some traditional values.
There appears to be a split between the education and home life in regards to the roles of women. Two students, Rai La and Ai Tula, explained they really felt there was no difference in being a male or female university students. Rai La explains: “I think it is the same because we both must study. I think it is the same.” However, Rai La and Ai Tula seem to exemplify a split between the role of gender in their education life and the role of gender in personal behaviors.
Rai La, although she feels that it is the same for men and women at university, was also the same student who had explained that it was more challenging for her parents to send her away to boarding school because she was a female. Ai Tula, who repeatedly felt that the gender factor was a non-issue in the educational realm, explains the process of getting engaged, in which gender roles are important. She first needed to persuade her family that her current boyfriend was appropriate marriage material. She engaged with her mom and sister on this topic, but never directly her father explaining, “After I persuaded my mother and my older sister, they are going to persuade my father. And my father has different opinion he was going to talk to my mother, no directly.” She could not directly communicate these things with her father. Additionally Ai
Tula, who plans to use her education and work outside of the home, shared her fears about the 72 first year of marriage. She and her husband will live with her in-laws. There is tremendous pressure to please and become like a servant in the home of the in-laws in the first few years of marriage. In her education and career world her gender has little impact, but in her home life her gender greatly impacts her communication style and role.
This split was also seen clearly in Amangul’s familial relationships. Amangul talks a lot more to her father than her mother. She explains that they have a lot more topics they like to discuss. He has consistently given her great freedom and support in pursuit of her education goals. However, Amangul would never tell her dad about her boyfriend, but she has told her mother. When asked about this she responds “He don’t know because I feel shy.” This was a pattern that consistently occurred. Ai Peri explains why she did not tell her father about her boyfriend. “Our rural people more conservative, I also is more conservative, so I told my mother.” If the father did know about these relationships, it was because the mother had acted as an intermediary between the daughter and her father.
Students were sometimes faced with another divide in their educational process, between what society generally perceived as the role of a woman and the immediate family’s perspective of their daughter’s role in society. For example, Aruzgul’s father had said if she achieved entrance into university he would support her choice of degree and now continues to support her.
Aruzgul has spent six years of her life in preparatory class and as an undergraduate and then three years of her life getting her graduate degree and is now 26 years old. However, her aunt had told her, “You were in school a long time. You should married” but her father had responded, “She is too young to get married, she need to study now. Other things we talk about later.” Ranagul additionally explains that there are generational differences. “The older people says girls should be stay at home and don’t go to school.” However, her father is very proud of 73 her achievement in going to University. Ai Peri repeats similar sentiments. “Like us from countryside the older people have prejudice for girls. In my hometown more girls couldn’t go to college. It’s just small part can go to college” because “they thought girls should not go to college a long time, get marry earlier and being mother.” In Ai Peri’s life the split expectations about a woman’s roles in society actually occurred within her family between her mother and father. “I was 23 years old when I graduate college. In my hometown a rural girl get married in their age of 18 or 19 so my mother wish me go to work and get marry. But my father agree” for her to go to graduate school. Her father has supported her graduate work while her mother feels stress over her marriage prospects and hopes her education will cease. Her father’s opinion seems to have won out. This father once again demonstrates two sets of values. He supports the education of his daughters and their ability to achieve independence a more non-traditional values but as it is his opinion, not the mothers that has been implemented. This demonstrates a more traditional, patriarchal family value.
University Environment
The university environment is the second area that the findings can be grouped into. This area includes five aspects: 1) the general learning environment as a minority, 2), the ethnicity of classmates, 3) the ethnicity of the teacher, 4) the gender dynamics of the classroom and 5) learning English through a second language.
General Learning Environment as a minority. There are several ways that being a minority impacts Uyghur university students and their comfort level in the English university classroom. The first is the environment they live is has the potential to increase stress in their everyday lives and indirectly impact the classroom. 74
Those that have come from a predominantly Uyghur environments are likely to be going through culture shock as they start university. They are in a new place; sometimes this is their first experience in a city. More significantly, they are beginning their lives as a minority among people who sometimes have great doubts about who they are because they are Uyghurs, particularly at present when there have been multiple acts of violence in the country the last four months. There are countless stories of Uyghurs not being able to stay in hotels, rent apartments and, in general, being denied service because of their ethnicity.
For most Uyghurs one of the basic issues that must first be solved is where to eat food and survive in an environment when the majority of the people around them, including their Han roommates, are all pork-eaters. Most universities have a Halal cafeteria, but sometimes options in the cafeteria are limited. Additionally some students try and cook off campus but they often have to travel great distances to find meat that is Halal. Aruzgul mentions choosing to go to
Ningxia for her undergraduate studies because “it’s convenient for eating.” Ningxia is a province with few Uyghurs, but it has a large Muslim minority population. Ai Peri explained that she overall likes her roommates, but gets frustrated with one of them because she often brings pork into the dorm room. She explains, “I just need to keep reminding her.” Her words are gracious, but there is also a sense of frustration that her roommate will not stop doing this behavior that she finds so offensive.
Tursun Ai mentions some other cultural stresses of living in a majority Han population:
“I think college in Xi’an, not better than in Xinjiang. Because living habits in here are very different in Xinjiang, I was not adapt well”. Tursun Ai was originally introduced to me because she was excited to meet non-Han friends, because she was overwhelmed with this Han environment. She told me with disgust that her Han roommates “hygiene is different” and she 75 was so relieved when she got to move in with other Uyghur students. She additionally explained some cultural communication differences that she was adjusting to. She states that the Han people speak louder than Uyghur people so “when I was first came here not used to, but now better, they all speaking like that. Uyghur students a little shy so speak a low voice.” Tursun Ai gives us insight into her feelings in this new environment around Han people as she states she feels a “little shy” in this environment.
The reality of some of the stress of being a minority in a big city is particularly apparent when conflict has broken out between Uyghur and Han people in other parts of the county.
After the 2014 train station attack in Kunming, Tursun Ai and many other students, including male students, mention their discomfort of travelling outside of the university campus. This once again demonstrated the discomfort of being a minority student in a place where Uyghur people have begun to be viewed with great mistrust.
Ethnicity of Classmates.
Classmates Attitudes’ towards Uyghur Students. Most university students are minorities in their classrooms. This is appears to be an intentional policy. Tursun Ai was one of five
Uyghur students studying the same major in the same year. Each of the Uyghur students had been separated out to a different class or “ban.” All of the class (ban) members are enrolled in all the same classes together throughout their four years of university. Therefore, the people in each class (ban) are most likely the ones who will become your close friends over the four years of university. A majority of participants were the only Uyghurs in their class (ban). This appeared to impact their comfort level within the classroom. For example, Amangul, in our interview suddenly changes her volume and expresses very softly to me that she is the only
Uyghur student in her class. She feels challenged by this environment. 76
Ai Tula explains some of the challenges of being a minority in a majority classroom.
When asked why she prefers to practice English outside of the classroom she said, “I feel comfortable and have no restrict. Because some of my Chinese friends or classmates may be they all prejudice about us.” She further explains that the way they express themselves to her makes her feel “not so good” and therefore “I can feel better with other friends.” She additionally adds
“Chinese students, even if the best friend, there are also some distance between us, not feel like very close because we have different traditional, different value and different thinking about the one things.” In a follow-up interview I asked her if this was her feeling or if a student had actually told her this. She said yes one of my classmates who she thought was a friend needed to keep her distance from her because “Uyghur people are not good, you need to keep your distance.” It was interesting to note, for Ai Tula the difference between University classmates and high school classmates. She felt that there was not this distrust in her situation at boarding school where she had also been a minority with a majority of Han classmates. She feels that the differences are because of the 2009 violence in Xinjiang (Schluessel, 2009). In the summer of
2009 violence had broken out in Xinjiang between Uyghur and Han and it least 100 people lost their lives in Urumqi. I, myself, notice a difference between when I talk to Han people about
Uyghur people now compared to when I was here in 2004. Previously when Han people would talk about Uyghurs they would mention some positive stereotypes, such as the beauty of the women and the beautiful dancing of the Uyghur people. Now I am more likely to be told they are a “dangerous” people.
Ai Tursun, in the midst of my friendship and interviews with her, explains some of the stresses of being a minority in her class. When in 2013 some violence had broken out in
Xinjiang, one of her classmates had expressed to the whole class his frustration with the situation 77 in Xinjiang and expressed a lot of anger against Uyghur people. Ai Tursun had been very hurt and had refused to go to class for a few days. It had caused her great insecurity to be in her class environment. Her classmate had apologized to her, but trust appeared to be damaged between her and her classmates. Ai Peri mentioned similarly that one of her classmates had posted on a social media site that everyone should “be careful in train stations and keep their distance from
Uyghur looking people.” She had been angered rather than hurt and had directly confronted her classmate through a message on social media. Before this I saw her as more of a timid personality, but she seemed to have less lingering hurt and mistrust because of her direct handling of the situation. He had apologized and she had accepted it, but as attacks continue on train stations and Han fears grow this overflows into trust relationships in the classroom environment.
Language stress. Part of the stress of being in minority classroom is related to language and the students’ perspectives on their own language ability and their perceptions of how their
Han classmates respond to their language. Amangul, a proficient English communicator who also studies English as her major, explains how her English is compared to her classmates, “It is not very good because you know they all taught, studied English from their preschool and some students from primary school, but I began to learn English in high school.” Ai Tursun feels the stress even more intently in English class because she felt very behind her Han classmates. They had all studied English for many years and she had just begun. Aruzgul, who also described herself as having poor English skills, explains that even though her classmates started learning
English since they were in kindergarten she is determined to catch up and boldly states, “If they learn English one hour we can learn two hours.” 78
There is also stress in all classes, including many English classes, because of the perceptions of how their classmates view their Mandarin. Although the focus of this study is
English class, for many students with Han teachers, Mandarin was still used as a medium of instruction to explain English concepts. Aruzgul indirectly explains some of her stresses in all classroom environments. “Because Uyghur people afraid be laugh at someone else, Uyghur people be sensitive about their reputation, so they don't want others to laugh at them because of the incorrect tone” so they speak in softer volumes. She explains this insecurity at another time in the interview. “Sometimes I speak to Chinese people maybe my tone not so good and they looking at me a weird eyes that makes me most uncomfortable.” Ironically, Aruzgul actually prefers Mandarin being the medium of instruction for explanations in English class because her
English is fairly poor.
Amangul explains that she feels more comfortable with Uyghur friends “because maybe
I have some problem when I speak with Han student, language problem. So I feel more comfortable when I speak to Uyghur student and friend.” Her classroom is not a safe environment and some of this is attributed to the language stress she experiences even though she had been learning in an all Mandarin environment since her freshman year in college.
Howahgul also brings up the judgment she feels from Han people when she speaks
Mandarin with her classmates. “I usually speak to them in English, I don’t like speak Mandarin to them. Because if I speak Mandarin they would say my tones is wrong. So I speak English to them.” For her English has become her way to level the playing field with her classmates.
Despite being a min kao min student and not attending an inland boarding school she feels very confident in her English skills and feels that she speaks English much better than her Han classmates. 79
It was interesting that despite the inadequacy they felt compared to Han classmates’ writing abilities, most students who had been to inland boarding schools felt that their own oral English abilities and that of their fellow Uyghur students surpassed the Han
Chinese who had been studying for years. Amangul explains, “I feel the differences especially in exam, but my oral English is better than them. But my writing skills are not very good.” For many students, their oral English ability actually gave them confidence in the English class environment and seemed to minimize, in certain ways, the stress of being a minority that existed in other classes.
Uyghur Students Attitudes’ Towards Classmates. Sometimes it is prejudice that the subjects felt from classmates as a minority. However, Halidah expresses her frustration with being in a Han heavy English class from a different perspective. She does not like the way her
Han classmates speak English and indicates her own prejudice towards her Han classmates.
“You know, if Han speaking English, sometimes you know OK, I am not judging, but I
feel uncomfortable listening to the speaking. If they speak so good its ok, but sometimes
they start to learn it its not really English at all. I just have this feeling.”
Halidah has not had the motivation for English learning squelched in this environment, but does feel that the class environment is not beneficial for her language learning because of the pronunciation of her classmates. She repeatedly told me she learned nothing in English class, just from her friends outside of class. “Yes, in English class I don’t think I got something because I just play with phone and I feel boring.” Ai Peri, a graduate student with very poor
English skills, expressed similar sentiments towards her Han classmates’ English level. She explains, “Our spoken English is better, they speak too ugly, sometimes I don't understand.”
Although she definitely indicated lots of inadequacy towards her own English level, she still 80 feels like Uyghur peoples spoken English is better and that her Han classmates speak English
“ugly.” Although it appears that many Uyghurs and expatriates I have talked to think that
Uyghurs do have better pronunciation, it also seems that an underlying frustration towards Han classmates is exposed through criticism of the way their Han classmates speak English.
The one person who expressed more obvious positive emotions towards her classmates was Rayhangul, a min kao han student who also mentioned that most of her friends were Han.
She explains how she thinks it is more difficult for Han Chinese to learn English than Uyghur.
“Han Chinese students may be Chinese and English very different, so learn slowly, but them also works hard.” She mentioned that she sometimes feels some prejudice from her classmates, but that she ignores it and she does have more Han friends than Uyghur.
Ethnicity of Teacher. Since these students are studying in an environment as a minority, one of the focuses of this study was the impact of the ethnicity of the English teacher. Some participants had experienced both foreign and ethnic Han teachers in the university English classroom. Once again, English language background and ability impacted many students in their perspectives about their teachers and their effectiveness.
Foreign teachers were definitely considered the highlight for many of the students who were
English majors and who had greater English competency. Halidah, who feels that most of her classes were not helpful towards language acquisition, explains some of her perspective.
If I love my teacher I will love the class. Like I have one teacher, his name is David. He is
from Australia, but sometimes his class is boring, but sometimes his class is funny. At that
time I really like it and enjoy it… he is and old man but he is funny. He like me also so I like
him and I like to enjoy his class.” 81
This was true praise for Halidah because she “will pay all attention” to teachers she likes, but there was only one other teacher that she felt helped her in her language acquisition during university. Amangul references two of her foreign teachers when asked about teachers she liked, an American woman “who is very kind” and “an old man” who was very strict but also “like a grandfather.” She seemed to appreciate all of her foreign teachers because, “Firstly, I can broaden my horizon. If foreign teachers taught us they could tell us more about their about their home town and their family life and their culture and their home life. They show us some pictures.” She also appreciates the style of foreign teachers. “I prefer the discussion because especially foreign teacher and during the class they ask us to have four or five groups and in the groups we just discuss different kinds of topics, so I enjoy that moment.” At another time she explains that her American teacher did not just teach the book but brought in “other knowledge, or video or music” to share with the class. Foreign teachers were appreciated because of their fluent English skills, but also because of the ways they enabled students to learn about and be connected to the world.
Ai Peri is the one student for whom a foreign teacher seems to create an added challenge. “In my first year there is one class taught by foreign teacher and I also not very understand.” Ai Peri had poor English skills and still liked English, but the graduate English classroom was overwhelming when the teacher could only speak English without Mandarin translation.
Teacher Attitudes. It can be intimidating to be a minority in many different situations, but particularly when the teacher (the person in the role of authority) expresses prejudice against your ethnic group. Ai Tula explains why she did not like her first year university English teacher: 82
She have some prejudice about the Xinjiang students, maybe she met before some of
students who don’t like learn. So she has some prejudice and she thought all of the
Uyghur students is the same. I try to explain we have different student, different
educational skill and different level, so some of them have different degree about learn
English like some of them good or some of them are not good. It’s not about us, we have
different environment. But she said Uyghur student just want to play don’t want to learn,
even if he or she not so good, don’t want to try to change this. So after that I don’t want
to explain any more. So it’s the biggest reason I didn’t like her.
Ai Tula here explains that she felt like the teacher had not understood the circumstances of the
Uyghur people and when she had tried to explain the challenges Uyghur people had in learning, the English teacher had not heard her and said it was because Uyghurs were not good students.
Ai Tula explained that at least one time the teacher explained these sentiments in front of the whole class. Ai Tula tried to defend herself and her people so asked, “Teacher, why do you think like this? We have lots of different students.” She felt the teacher ignored her and so she simply survived that English class. However, it actually increased her motivation to learn English that semester. She wanted to show her teacher that she, as a Uyghur, could learn English, but she felt that her productive learning all took place outside of the classroom. Her English attainment was motivated in a large part, that semester, by the need to defend the honor of her people. This was an important theme for Ai Tula. She felt that Uyghur people were misunderstood and she was greatly offended by the manner in which Han people saw Uyghurs. She was so excited to share with me that one of her good friends was being interviewed by the China Daily to highlight his and other Uyghur scholar’s academic accomplishments. She wanted the Han Chinese to understand the intelligence and abilities of her people. Therefore, despite the challenges of this 83
English classroom situation, Ai Tula’s driving motivation to show the Han population the competency of her people, the Uyghur people, resulted in greater motivation to learn English.
Some teacher attitudes might be similar to that of Ai Tula’s, but are subtler in their expression. Tursun Ai explained that her teacher put less pressure on her because she was a
Uyghur student. She had been very stressed about her English class and I had been attempting to help tutor her. However, at a certain point she was no longer worried because she had talked to her teacher and her teacher explained she knew Tursun Ai was trying and therefore, it did not seem to matter exactly how she did in the exam. She would pass. She explained the “teacher understood my situation.” She indicated gratefulness towards this. The teacher may have put less pressure on her because they understood her English challenges in light of her lack of exposure to English and felt that she was too behind to catch up or, like Ai Tula’s teacher, may have felt that she, as a Uyghur, was less intellectually able. Whatever the reason, it appears increased language acquisition was not the focus as the teacher was too overwhelmed to give all the help needed to a student who had not experienced a lot of English class. It seemed that the way her teacher and some other teachers dealt with this was to decrease their expectations for minority students and let them pass exams that they may not have deserved to pass.
Student Attitudes’ Towards Teacher. Many Uyghur students feel their English spoken ability is better than most Han and therefore there is a disregard to the Han teachers level of
English. Many students expressed frustration at the English level of their Han English teachers.
Ranagul explains that she prefers learning English through “Chinese, because the teacher’s spoken English is not good.” Halidah, when explaining which teachers she appreciates, explains that it is either native speakers or a Han teacher who “is staying in England for some years and if she speak English that’s so wonderful, I like it.” 84
Gender Dynamics of the Classroom. The participants were asked specific questions about classmates and teachers and their gender to further understand the role of gender dynamics in the classroom with classmates and the teacher.
Gender of the Teacher. There appeared to be limited significance placed on the gender of the teacher for these research participants. A good example of this is Amangul’s most uncomfortable and most successful moment in English came with the same teacher, an “old” male teacher from Australia. There were few patterns between comfort level with teacher and gender.
The one person who seemed to show a direct correlation between comfort level and gender of the teacher was Tursun Ai who was in a class (ban) with mostly male students. She explained how she really liked one of her female English teachers and how she does not have the discomfort with her that she does with other teachers. However, even with this teacher she doesn’t ask a lot of questions because she is shy.
Classroom Interaction. In China, English majors are mainly female. Five of the students interviewed for this research were studying English. Their classes, on average, had 2-3 male students in a class (ban) of thirty or more students. This was consistent for both of the universities where the English majors came from. Most students said that women talked more in class. Amangul emphasized “of course” women speak more than the few male students.
However, I was surprised how much I heard male voices in the English classes I observed.
Although the males were few in number, they were often some of the first to respond to questions. Halidah was convinced that the two men in her class talked a lot more than the other
30 females. “They are so talkative, even though only two men, still so talkative you can’t 85 imagine that.” She was particularly annoyed by one of her male classmates who she claimed was constantly arguing with the teacher:
Just like the teacher say something and he want to argue with her, maybe he feel like in
class it is more interesting to do that. He argue with our teacher with his angry face so
arguing, arguing speaking English again and again.
Tursun Ai had similar thoughts on the nature of the male role in the classroom. As a computer science major she was one of the few students who had a majority of male classmates. There were 20 male students and 10 female students in her ban. She explained that the male students talked more, but when I asked who answered more questions she mentioned it was the female students. She explained, “Male students just like to discuss what the teacher says and female students like to answer the questions. Male students don’t like to answer the questions.”
Most of the women were willing to ask questions in class, when needed, if they did not understand what was going on. In this way, their gender did not seem to limit their participation.
One student who was fairly quiet said she would not ask questions about what was going on, but she said this was “her problem” because she was shy. Since Uyghur women were a minority in class it was also hard to judge what aspects some of their discomfort in class could have resulted from being a woman and what was the result of being a minority. Most students definitely attributed their discomfort to their minority status not to their gender.
Female Advantage. However Amangul claimed that because she was a female she had an advantage in the study of the English language. She explained, “I think for me the female student is easier because for me I am learning a language because I think for learning a language female is better than male.” When asked to elaborate she said, “Female are very, we have patience and we can keep on doing practice, but for male if they don’t like to learn something 86 they just quit it.” Therefore, she defined perseverance and patience as qualities that are inherent in women and provide an advantage for women in the English classroom.
Learning English Through a Second Language. When asked directly about this issue most students seem to be either happy or neutral that English is explained to them through
Chinese. Students that have made it to university have achieved a fair degree of literacy in
Mandarin, although this is not guaranteed. All of the students interviewed were fairly competent using Mandarin, however, there are other Uyghur students I have met that are not. I met one student who could not communicate with me in English or Mandarin, yet attends a university in the inland region of China.
From students who had not attended the inland boarding schools and therefore, had limited exposure to English before they started university, there was a general sense of great relief in having more English language concepts explained in Mandarin rather than English. Tursun Ai explains that she was grateful when the teacher began to “use Chinese more. Before he didn’t know I couldn’t understand what he said, after I told him, he began to explain in Chinese. Now I feel better.” Other students who had greater English competency expressed neutrality over the use of English or Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the English classroom. Rai La, when asked if she preferred learning English through Mandarin or Uyghur explained, “It’s both. Yes.
Because at that time my Chinese can also understand so either one is OK.” Therefore, many students indicated it was fine that English was taught through Mandarin and liked it this way.
However two students from very different education backgrounds communicated frustration with the use of Mandarin in the English classroom. Howahgul had limited English exposure before university but now feels confident and capable in her English abilities, describing her spoken English, as “I am good.” However, if she needs to use Mandarin in her English class she 87 explains that if the “teacher asks me question in Chinese I feel uncomfortable.” Howahgul has less Mandarin competency than most of the other participants. For Howahgul the use of
Mandarin creates extra stress in the classroom. Halidah, who unlike Howahgul, feels very competent would also like to have English used as the medium of instruction in the English classroom. She explains that “because I want to learn English, in a class everyone speaking
English that could be more useful. But mostly it is Chinese so it is not an English class.” She goes on to again explain this is why she plays with her cell phone in class. She wants the teacher to use English as the medium of instruction to improve her English skills, although she is competent in Mandarin. She repeatedly expresses positive emotions towards English and negative emotions toward Mandarin. Howahgul and Halidah both express positive emotions towards English and negative emotions towards Mandarin, they have very contrasting abilities in
Mandarin. Howahgul feels more competent in English and therefore it helps her feel more confident in her communication with her classmates. Halidah doesn’t enjoy Mandarin and wants to improve her English through greater English usage. She also like Howahgul expresses a confidence in her English abilities compared to those of her Han classmates.
Although some students had indicated relief when Mandarin was used in the English classroom, they still indicated the stress of speaking a second language to learn a third language.
Amangul, who had been grateful that some of the explanations were given in Mandarin, also explains that “when I listen to someone speaking Chinese I just don’t answer quickly because in my head I should translate it first in Uyghur language so I can’t write very quickly.” She also mentions the challenges of textbooks in the Chinese language to learn English. “If we learn
English, at first we just look at the Chinese version and we think for a period of time and then we 88 learnt English. So it is a little difficult for us.” She is explaining the added time she needs to process tasks due to use of L2 to learn her L3.
Rai La, in general, feels fairly competent in Mandarin and says she is “happy” when the teacher uses Mandarin. When asked about her comfort level in a recent English class this is her response:
I feel stressed because last time I had the interpreter class and then my Chinese and my
English also the second language to me. So she want me to interpret it from English to
Chinese and I also did know the means. I don’t know how to express in Chinese the kind
of difficult words. So it’s so difficult to me and has some stress on that class.
Rai La feels the stress of being in a second language environment to learn her third language in her translation class. She needs to know specific, appropriate vocabulary for two languages that are not her mother tongue to be successful, whereas her classmates are working with one-second language.
Interestingly Ranagul prefers her teacher to speak Mandarin because of the teacher’s
English level, however she still acknowledges that English in general is “a little difficult, because
I learn the third language by the second language, so its more difficult for me”. She learned her
Chinese throughout her schooling and went to an inland boarding school but still felt a large stress on her language abilities.
Some students do not relate their stress directly related to English class but it comes across indirectly as they explain the challenges of the Chinese language. The first of these challenges is the tones. Amangul explains challenges that come early on in studying Chinese as she recounts some of the issues her brothers have with Chinese: “you know the Chinese four tones are still difficult for Uyghur people though sometimes the two guys (her brothers) speak very clearly and sometimes they speak very randomly they don’t care for tones”. Howahgul 89 additionally mentions the stress of a tonal language “Because if I speak mandarin they would say my tones is wrong. So I speak English to them.” Aruzgul as already mentioned also brings up the stress of speaking a tonal language as she talked about people’s response to her “incorrect tone” and how her “tone not so good”. The tonal aspect of the Mandarin language appears to be a challenge for students whose mother tongue is not tonal.
The next challenge is the different dialects that Han students have depending on what part of the country they are coming from. Tursun Ai explains some of her challenges in listening to both classmates and her teacher speak Mandarin “Because Chinese have lots of native accent, some of them hard to understand, but standard Chinese or mandarin I can understand. For mandarin the order is listening, speaking, writing, but Chinese with native accent listening is at last”. This native accent is the various dialects different students may have. For example if students are from the south the “h” may be pronounced as an “f” which provides some challenges to a second language listener.
Rai La and a few other students indicate additionally the challenges of character recognition in their use of Mandarin. There are thousands of characters and most Han could spend a lifetime learning all the characters.
Ai Tula explains the challenges of retaining the Mandarin language over extended holidays. She says about her Mandarin ability:
“Now good, but it need to practice every day, when I was back home just winter vacation
and summer vacation I have no opportunity to practice, the words you know
pronunciation different, so if I didn’t practice more, may be my pronunciation no correct,
so after one or two vacation I have some problem, but after one month I feel better”. 90
This is a graduate student conducting her studies in Mandarin and using English for her research, yet retention of the language is still a challenge.
Rayhangul indicated no frustration or stress with either Mandarin being the language of instruction or with the use of Mandarin. “I completely thinking in Chinese though, like I prefer teacher speak in classroom and I write it down and learn it after class”. She had referred to
Mandarin as her second mother tongue and although, her hometown is a Uyghur majority city in
Xinjiang, had spent a lot of time in the inland parts of China.
There was only one student who had attended English class in a formal environment in which the Uyghur language was used as the medium of instruction; this student was Ai Peri.
When asked if she could describe the English class that she has most enjoyed she states: “I like
English very much is the time when I was attending a training center, teachers temper was very good, particularly lively, no any stress at that time”. Training centers are normally privately run language institutes. Therefore it appears that learning English through her mother tongue was helpful to her English acquisition process.
Attitudes Towards Language
The third area of the findings is that of attitudes towards language. This includes four aspects: 1) the perceived similar typology between English and Uyghur, 2) attitudes towards
Mandarin, 3) attitudes towards English and 4) the role of English as a connection to the outside world.
Similar Typology. One of the influences on second and third language acquisition is the perceived similarity between two languages (Kellerman, cited by Falk and Bardel, 2010). Many
Uyghurs perceive great similarities between English and Uyghur. These perceived similarities 91 influences positive emotions and comfort level which all impact language acquisition.
Additionally these perceived similarities allow them to feel greater confidence in certain areas of the language despite many disadvantages.
Halidah described both the similarities she sees between English and Uyghur and how this increases her positive feelings towards English. “I feel exciting when I find some words like
Uyghurish and are really the same Uyghurish and compared to Chinese I like English much.”
She also sees the pronunciation and flow of the language as similar in the ways the language is spoken as she explains, “when we speak Uyghurish is so quick like speaking English, but
Chinese you speak one word than one word. It’s difficult.”
Tursun Ai, although she feels a real lack of competence in English, still explains some of the reasons that Uyghur people do have an advantage in learning from her perspective. “Uyghur language is similar to English, maybe the word of 20% are similar. Compare to Han Chinese we learn English compare with own language.” Amangul, when asked about which languages
(Chinese and Uyghur or English and Uyghur) she sees as having greater similarities she immediately responds “Uyghur and English are more similar because there are many similar words.” She explains that this is due to the vocabulary. “For example, you call restaurant, we call restaurante. Chinese call it jiu dian. It is not very similar.” Aruzgul also mentioned she felt the pronunciation similarities enabled Uyghur people to speak English better than Han Chinese.
Rayhangul also affirms her perception about the similarity of languages: “Uyghur language is similar to English, like we have many words like English. For example television we say televizur.” Other students brought up examples like “telephone we say telephone, doctor we also say doctor.” One student explains that the differences between Mandarin and English actually 92 create problems for some Han students “Han Chinese students may be Chinese and English very different, so learn slowly”.
Ai Tursun and other students seem to think that Uyghurs have an advantage in the pronunciation of the English language. When “Han people speak English make people some kind of uncomfortable, but Uyghur people speak English cordial.” Rai La also sees more similarities between English and Uyghur pronunciation. Ai Tula points out that Uyghur does not have tones like English, so she feels that Uyghurs are better able to pronounce English than Chinese, both, because they don’t have tones, and in comparison to Han students. She feels that Han students ruin English pronunciation through attempting to insert tones into their words.
Rai La refers to the simple fact that Uyghur and English are both based on a phonetic system and the ease that brings to English study. “Because you are writing in Chinese you must learn it one by one, but in English there is only a few alphabets you can learn it like this.” This is referring to the multitude of Chinese characters compared to a phonetic alphabet. Amangul, when describing why English is easier, mentions that with “Chinese there are characters, and you know in Chinese there are too many characters, so it is quite difficult for us.”
This typology led to some positive attitudes towards the English language. However, some individuals did not perceive a similar typology. For example, Ai Tula did not see any specific ways that Chinese, English and Uyghur were similar. She actually saw more similarities between Uyghur and Chinese.
Attitudes towards English. The perceived similarities between Uyghur and English definitely has the potential to increase positive attitudes towards the language, however many students indicated positive attitudes towards English that may have no connection with perceived similarities. 93
Ai Tula felt very positive about studying the English language. She explained that it was like a hobby for her even though there were few similarities. Many of the attitudes towards
English and Chinese were often formed before University began. Halidah explained why she chose to major in English at her university: “I have a special feeling on English. I don’t know I not like it, but I like people to say it. I think it’s a beautiful language and so I want to learn it so that’s why I choose this school”. Later she explains how “English is more nature when you speak it” and “I think it is awesome” is the way she viewed English when she first started learning it.
These positive attitudes were formed before Halidah even started university. She explains that
“so sometimes if I do not using Uyghurish talking to with my friend. I’d like to choose English, even my English is not so good, but still I want it.” She puts her Chinese language competency at an eight and her English competency at a six. Later she volunteers her ranking of languages “I like three languages in the world. I like Arabic, Uyghurish and English. Those three, yeah I want to learn it all.”
Many other students indicated positive attitudes towards English for various reasons. Rai
La thinks English is easier because “there is not the Chinese characters that there is in English”.
Rayhangul feels positive about English because she feels she is better able to pronounce English compared to her classmates:
I feel achievement when I was speaking in class because my oral English is better other
students. Chinese students have not good English accent. I felt I have good accent from
my early age, so when I was answer the question I have sense of achievement. Besides,
when I introduce my experiences I also have a sense of achievement.”
This ability to speak and the opportunities to share about her life has given her a positive perspective on her English language. 94
Attitudes and class. For some students, because there was great joy in studying English, their status as a minority seemed to have little impact or actually enable them to enjoy English class over other classes. Ranagul explains. “Because I like English so I like every English class.”
When asked about her comfort level she responds, “I just like English. Then my response quicker than others. When teacher ask question, before he asks me I know the answer.” In conversation with her, English seems to be a class she excels in over other students and feels more successful in compared to classes in the Chinese language. English class seemed to be a place she felt more of an even footing compared to her Han classmates and this increased her positive emotions towards English language and English class.
Tursun Ai is one of the students whose attitude differed between English class and the
English language. Tursun Ai struggles in English class, would prefer her teachers to explain
English concepts to her in Mandarin and feels very stressed overall with her English class compared to other classes. Yet she explains, “Yes, sometimes English sounds very beautiful and
I feel very comfortable.” For her there is a disconnect between her English class and how she feels about the English language.
Attitudes towards Mandarin. Several students expressed neutral emotions between
Mandarin and English. Both were languages they liked or had got used to. Several students commented on the challenges of Mandarin in a manner that seemed to express more of their language attitudes. Ranagul explain that ”Chinese too hard to learn.” Rai La states that,
“Chinese is more difficult language.” And as already mentioned, due to characters, Amangul states that Mandarin “is quite difficult for us.” Halidah, who was one of the participants who perceived herself as proficient in Mandarin having attended Mandarin as medium of instruction 95 schools all her life, is actually more noticeably negative about Mandarin. She simply stated in the interview, “I don’t want to speak Chinese because I feel tired.”
Role of English as connector to outside world. Most of the students indicated a large desire to be connected to the world. I heard repeatedly we need Mandarin for our lives in China but English is the language of the world. Travelling overseas seems like an impossible dream for many students because of the cost and difficulties in getting a visa and passport. Ai Tursun has already been told when she started to apply for a passport that there is no way she can get one as a Uyghur, but she has not given up yet. Rayhangul expresses her hope for this dream to become reality:
“I want to go abroad. Because one of my friend, she is also Uyghur, she learned French
and now she went France. My friends around me to go abroad, I also want to go abroad.
So one of the biggest benefits of learn English is take exam like TOEFL.”
So the English language could prepare them for travel to the world and, therefore, they are motivated. Other students like Ai Peri just want to learn about the world although she desires to return to Xinjiang. She explains, “We all need to learn English. There are good article written in
English, we have to learn. Besides, in the English paper have new idea and new ways we need to learn.” She continues her study of the English language, even though it is no longer required, because “I want to communicate with foreigners more.”
Out of Class Opportunities
These positive attitudes towards English have lead many students to pursue language- learning opportunities outside the classroom environment, particularly when the classroom environment has not been able to meet their language learning needs. Additionally, these out-of- 96 class schools were in a different type of socio-cultural environment providing connection with other foreigners or further connection with Uyghurs. Most of these out-of-class opportunities did not involve engagement with Han students. These opportunities were events like Uyghur
English corner or interacting with a foreign friend. This also included multimedia opportunities like watching movies or listening to English lectures on the Internet. A couple of students mentioned reading English books during Chinese class that was boring.
Ai Tursun explains why she has a more positive attitude for out of class activities. “Yes,
I feel a little stress in classroom. Outside classroom I can surf the Internet, also can other stuff about English. I can learn whenever I want.” She is one of the students who acknowledges that her English level is far below that of the rest of her Han classmates so she understands why the teacher does not teach to her level. However, this may be part of the reason for the stress she feels in class. Ai Tula also adds that in out of class situation:
“I feel comfortable and have no restrict. Because some of my Chinese friends or
classmates maybe they all prejudice about us and even if I am the best student they also
have they can’t speak, but they think some expression I can feel is not so good. So I can
feel better with other friends.
Ai Tula here refers to how she feels better with people outside the class because they don’t have the prejudice she can feel from people inside the class. She initially spoke a lot of English with a Kazakh friend and now has several American friends she likes to practice with. Her initial practice outside of the class, to grow in confidence, though was simply speaking to herself.
Ranagul who much prefers English corner to English class and attends one almost every week explains that she goes to an English corner with Uyghurs and foreigners. She said it is 97 better because of the foreigners’ accent, however, she is also choosing an English corner that is only Uyghurs and expatriates.
Halidah explains that most of her language learning occurred as she met a Pakistani friend. She mentions the contrast she perceives between her classroom environment and out-of- class activities:
Yes in English class I don’t’ think I got something because I just play with phone and I
feel boring, but when I am talking with (her friend from Pakistan) I have no choice so I
got to talk English. And sometimes if I want to express something I need to check it,
what should I say; so then I began to learn some new words. So yes that’s my class so I
begin to learn English outside of class.
She describes the times talking to her friend as her true class compared to the time in class when she plays with her cell phone. She sees English class as a waste of time, but being able to communicate with another person and develop her English as useful for her life.
Many students like Rai La seem to appreciate the usefulness and practicality of things learned outside of the classroom environment. “More useful because in my class it’s some kind of text we can’t understand. More difficult but it isn’t useful so much.” Amangul further explains:
Because in the corner it is different from the class. In the class we just sit like this and
listen to teacher. And in the corner we can speak what we want to speak, its very
comfortable and also the foreign teachers are very kind. So it’s comfortable.
This quote makes it clear learning practical things is important for Amangul and her university
English class does not seem to offer much of this, the English corner environment cannot be 98 ignored. Twice in this short quote she mentions her comfort level. This comfort level might be attributed to the ethnic make-up of the environment.
99
CHAPTER V: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Gender
One central assumption I held at the beginning of this project was that gender would strongly impact English language acquisition by Uyghur women. Overall, the participants felt that the impact of gender was minimal. These participants had supportive fathers who supported their education. Because they live in a patriarchal society, these fathers had power to support their daughter’s education despite doubts from other family members, including some mothers.
There were a few aspects of gender that did impact the students, but this was limited.
Most participants were influenced by some of the communist ideology about the importance of education for both men and women and for preparing both sexes for the work place. Zang (2011) points out that communist ideology has encouraged women to work outside the home and be treated as equals with their male counterparts through equal pay. Most of the participants plan to have careers outside of their home, even after they have children. Zang
(2011) found that despite communist influence, more Uyghur than Han women would stay home after they get married or had children. This was not consistent with most of the participants’ opinions in this research. These findings did affirm Chen’s (2010) findings that women are encouraged to be educated because they “need to live off their minds” (p. 51). These participants, like in Chen’s findings, had received great support from immediate family members for their education and were expected to pursue higher education and careers. This was exemplified in this research through a father feeling that it would be a waste for his daughter not to pursue a career after the sacrifices she had made to get an education. 100
The participants also reported that their gender had little impact on classroom interaction.
In my observations, and based on the comments of a few other participants, male students were found to be more vocal in classroom settings, but there was not a consensus among the participants about these behaviors. One student did mention that, as a woman, she needed to be careful when and how she gave her opinion. This may have impacted the level at which she participated in the classroom. However, this area was complicated to understand, as there were many differing responses as to how male and female students interacted in the classroom. It seemed that their ethnic identity and confidence in language skills impacted their classroom interaction more than the participants’ gender. This, again, echoes Chen’s findings that women did not seem to be at a disadvantage in the academic classroom. One participant felt that women are actually at an advantage in the classroom. She explains that women have more patience and perseverance, which are needed in the English language classroom. These qualities are some of those that are included in the idea of “japakesh” that Huang (2009) discovered as essential to being an honorable Uyghur woman. It is the quality of “one who perseveres through difficulty”
(p. 1)
Although impacted by communist ideology in their education and work place, these
Uyghur women are nonetheless impacted by societal expectations in the family. There is a split that happens between the household and the role a female will take on in society. This theme is similar to Peshkova’s (2013) findings in Uzbekistan, where Uzbeks share many historical cultural similarities with Uyghurs. Peshkova (2013) discovered that due to both the influence of communism and traditional Islamic values women may have a career outside the house, but inside the house these women are still expected to carry on a more traditional role. One of the participants in Peshkova’s (2013) research explains that women “bear the dual burden” of both 101 the career outside the house and some of the traditional responsibilities inside the house (p.668).
This expectation of equality outside the home while societal roles in the home had not changed resulted in greater burden bearing for some women. One participant’s family did not initially appear to be representative of the reality Peshkova (2013) describes. She was from a non- traditional home where her father had taken care of her as a child so that her mother could pursue her doctoral studies. It seemed that this mother did not experience this “dual burden.” However, later the participant explained that, unlike her twin brother, her mother told her daughter that she, as a woman, should feel no pressure to consider postgraduate studies because she (the mom) had been worn out by all her academic pursuits. Therefore, even though she had lived an untraditional life she may still have felt two different types of burdens as a woman with certain roles in her family and her career outside of her home. Some students observed no difference between being a man or a woman in their studies, yet acknowledged different roles and responsibilities they would need to fulfill to serve their in-laws within their home once they were married.
Learning English Through a Second Language
Research suggests that using an L2 should not be a disadvantage in learning an L3, as long as proficiency has been gained in your L1. Wink & Putney (2002) explain that gaining literacy in your mother tongue is key in successfully acquiring a foreign language (L2).
Therefore, the participants in this research who have attended schools where the medium of instruction has been their mother tongue should be at an advantage learning their L2, Mandarin.
Grasp of the L2 is essential when the L2 is being used as the medium of instruction in learning the L3. Cenoz (2003) further discovered that students who did not reach proficiency in their L1 102 nullified their advantages in learning an L3 through their L2 (Rauch et al., 2011). Therefore the participants who had mastered their mother tongue should be at an advantage in both learning their L2 and in learning their L3 through their L2. These findings did not reflect the perceptions of most of the participants in this research.
Halidah, who is an effective English communicator and an English major, never reached proficiency in her mother tongue. However her English and Mandarin level were good, from both my perspective and her own self-assessment. She indicated little stress in use of the
Mandarin language (L2). Although she disliked learning English through her L2, she did not seem to face any challenges in learning English language through her L2. However, she did not see the advantage of using L2 as a medium of instruction in the classroom and was frustrated by its usage. Tursun Ai, Ai Peri and Aruzgul all had the opportunity to become proficient in their mother tongue. Their L2 was good, however their L3 was very weak. They once again do not correspond to these findings. The reason is their educational background.
Educational background played a large role in the impact of second language being used as the medium of instruction. The three students who had only attended mother-tongue schools expressed relief that their L2 was used in the university English classroom. This could be attributed more to the lack of exposure to English in the Xinjiang schools as highlighted by Feng
& Sunuodula (2009). They point out that because of the government’s imperative to ensure that
Mandarin is acquired there is a lack of emphasis on the English language in minority schools.
Tursun Ai had explained there were “no opportunities” in school to learn English except if you attended an English training center. These students, who had very limited English exposure, were in classes with Han classmates who had often studied English since preschool. Because of the huge gap between the time they had studied English compared to the amount of time their 103 classmates had studied English it is complicated to determine whether they experienced some of the meta-linguistic advantages that Cenoz (2003) suggests would happen within mother-tongue proficient language learners using L2 to learn L3 (Falk & Bardel, 2010).
Despite the relief a few students felt over the use of Mandarin in the classroom the difficulties of Mandarin were expressed by many of the students. The frustration of learning
English through Mandarin was often expressed by students through their acknowledgement that they were competing with Han who knew Mandarin better than themselves, corroborating Tsung
& Cruikshank’s (2009) findings that university minority students had significantly lower
Mandarin levels than their Han counterparts. This stress was acutely felt in classes such as translation when a fluent command of both Mandarin and English was needed to fulfill the assignments. Many students expressed the difficulties of learning the Mandarin language.
McCrum (2010) also expresses this difficulty in his thoughts on English becoming established in
China. He explains that Mandarin is so difficult that many Han will spend a lifetime simply attempting to establish mastery of their own language. Yang (2005) points out that linguistic distance creates greater difficulties in the acquisition of a new language and that there is great linguistic distance between Chinese and Uyghur. Yang points out that when learning non Indo-
European languages, native English speakers can take up to four times as much time to get to the same level of fluency than the time it takes them when studying Indo-European languages
(Yang, 2005). Additionally, Lindqvist & Bardel (2010) point out the importance of perceived similarities of language in reducing “communicative anxiety” (p. 88). Most Uyghurs interviewed perceived great linguistic distance between the their own language and Chinese and pointed to Mandarin’s use of characters versus a phonetic alphabet and their use of tones as two areas that both make Chinese seem more difficult to the Uyghur participants and very different 104 from their own language. Taynen (2006) also confirms the challenges that character acquisition posed for elementary Uyghur students in Chinese school and McCrum (2010) adds that this challenge exists even for Han to learn the 60 000 characters.
Few students could actually compare learning English with their mother tongue vs.
Mandarin as the medium of instruction. Ai Peri was the exception as she did mention the joys of learning English through her mother tongue. Yang (2005) and Feng & Sunuodulo (2009) both found that the use of mother tongue to explain English concepts would aid in language acquisition. However, it appears both through these interviews and the findings of Grose (2010) that there will be no opportunities to learn English through mother tongue except through private training centers. Grose (2010) discovered that there are no longer classes offered with Uyghur as the medium of instruction at the university level.
Although learning English through Mandarin is very challenging, there are no easy alternatives. Particularly as schools are becoming more bilingual through assimilation models, there will be no options for students, as literacy in mother tongue will decrease. For students who will fail to gain mother tongue literacy, using mother tongue as a language of instruction would simply create new issues.
However, one advantage that Uyghurs did have in the English classroom is that although they were often learning English through the distant L2, they perceived a closer distance between their mother tongue and English, their L3. Therefore, although English also has great linguistic distance from Uyghur (Yang, 2005), students perceived similarities, particularly in the areas of pronunciation and vocabulary. Wattendorf et al.(2014) explain that pronunciation and vocabulary are the most important areas of language distance in its impact on language acquisition. As mentioned previously, research has shown that if there are real or perceived similarities between 105 two languages “it leads to higher self-perceived communicative competence and less communicative anxiety” (Lindqvist & Bardel, 2010, p. 88). Since there are perceived similarities and these similarities are mostly in the areas of pronunciation and vocabulary, this could actually increase student comfort in studying English and could also create more positive attitudes towards English. So although there existed the stress of learning an L3 through the L2, other aspects of the stress of an English university classroom appeared to be decreased as many
Uyghur students felt they had greater abilities to pronounce English compared to their Han classmates and therefore greater confidence.
Ethnicity of Classmates and Teacher
Almost all of the participants in the study were the only Uyghur member of their class
(ban). This impacted language acquisition in a few different aspects. First, students who had little English background felt the need to work twice as hard as Han classmates in order to achieve the results of classmates who both had a greater command of both Mandarin (the medium of instruction) and English (L3). This was similar to Taynen (2006) findings about the elementary classrooms she observed where Uyghur students were a minority. Most of the
Uyghur students felt great pressure to catch up with classmates’ level of Mandarin and their knowledge of characters.
Second, participants indicated insecurity communicating with classmates or in classroom settings. This is similar to Taynen’s (2006) findings, which explained that students she observed were, “almost without exception, quiet and avoided drawing unnecessary attention to themselves” (p. 52). It seems that due to language insecurities many students who participated in this study were not confident in their English abilities and were hesitant to speak up in front of 106 their classmates. However, this did not seem true for students who attended the inland boarding schools. They seemed more confident to speak up in English in front of Han classmates.
However, most of the participants indicated fear about how their spoken Chinese would be received by their classmates, often specifically their use of tones. This insecurity of being looked down upon was a recurring theme.
Many of the participants reported a lack of trust between Uyghurs and their Han classmates. Although most Han students form friendships within their ban, Uyghur students reported forming friendships with other Uyghur students, who are likely to also be isolated in their own Han-majority ban. Most Uyghurs closest friends are other Uyghurs. This is evident in
Taynen’s (2006) observations in elementary schools among some min kao han students who played with other Uyghur students after school hours although Han students also lived nearby. It is also evident among students who attended inland boarding schools. Chen (2010) and Grose
(2010) discovered that although students who attend inland boarding schools achieved Mandarin competency, they did not form connections with other Han students. Findings in this study are consistent with that previous research. Most of the participants talk about the challenges of leaving home at such a young age and the bond it created with other Uyghur boarding school students. This situation was similar once students started university. Often faced with roommates and classmates with very different living habits and a different mother tongue, students naturally migrated towards friendships with other Uyghurs. Taynen (2006) points out the challenges for Uyghur students in hanging out with Han students after school hours. She observes that eating halal food in a halal place is important to all Uyghurs, whether min kao han or min kao min. and becomes a dividing line between Han and Uyghur (Taynen, 2006). Most 107
Uyghurs would feel bound not to accept food coming out of the kitchen where pork has been served. This reflects the sentiments of the participants in this study.
This lack of trust between Uyghurs and Han has grown recently as violence in China attributed to and claimed by Uyghurs has increased. Han students driven by fear in the midst of this violence have been more open in expressing the need to be careful of people who appear to be like Uyghurs. Many Han students are resentful of what they perceive as a lack of gratefulness on the part of Uyghurs to the PRC for their investment of funds and preferential policies for the education of the Uyghur minority. Comments from Han classmates have increased the lack of trust most Uyghurs already have towards their classmates. One participant feels a large difference between the treatment she received from her classmates in high school and her classmates in university. She feels a lot more distrust from classmates in university and attributes this to the violence that took place between Uyghur and Han in the summer of 2009
(Schluessel, 2009). This lack of trust is built on a long difficult history between the Han and
Uyghurs as outlined in the literature review that goes further back than 2009 (Dillon, 2004;
Bewicke, 2009). Uyghur students are dealing with a difficult past, a present, complicated by violent conflict and an unknown future as they grapple with the reality of the challenges that lay ahead in finding a job as a Uyghur in competition with the Han (Taynen, 2006). These issues are unique and are not easily resolved. These issues are why trust is easily broken and not easily built in the classroom.
Some teachers do have prejudice against Uyghur students. One of the participants explains that her first English teacher had described all Uyghur students as lazy and not serious students. Tsung & Clark (2007) had discovered similar sentiment from school officials, basically explaining why English was not taught to Uyghurs. They said that since Uyghurs cannot even 108 learn one language, why would we attempt to teach them a second language. Feng (2009) also discovered that many teachers of minority students often had similar perspectives about their students.
This prejudice from teachers can lead to a lack of comfort in the English classroom, but not necessarily a diminishment of the process of English acquisition. Ai Tula feels the need to represent her people well and therefore she worked hard in improving her English skills so this teacher could see that not all Uyghurs were “lazy.” White (2010) mentions similar findings in his research on American minorities; pointing out the pressure they feel and are given by others to represent their entire ethnic group.
Practical Applications to the Classroom
First, as a teacher it would be important to understand the educational background of the
Uyghur students in your English class. The literature and the interviews explain the many different types of possible educational backgrounds that students will be bringing into the classroom and the attitudes and abilities that can accompany those backgrounds. An understanding of the educational backgrounds of the students will assist the teacher in understanding how much English exposure the student has had before starting university. This understanding may help explain why students do or do not participate in class discussions or their ability to fulfill the given assignments. It will help the teacher not pass judgment or stereotype their students.
Second, both Han and expatriate teachers need to give to the ways language is used in the classroom. For most students Mandarin textbooks increase stress, but for other students no
Mandarin in the classroom for explanations can also increase stress. It may be useful to find 109 some assignments that are not dependent on first understanding a Mandarin textbook to complete the assignment. However, foreign teachers need to consider assignments that can be easily understood. So steps can be taken in growing in English without the pressure of long descriptors of the assignment.
Third, the interaction between classmates is important to most students in being able to participate in the classroom. This can happen more easily when trust is established between students. The teacher could take steps to point out or have students acknowledge their own strengths and weaknesses in the English acquisition process. Uyghur students could be reminded of the difficulties for Han in speaking English, Han students reminded of the challenges for
Uyghur students speaking Mandarin. As these pronunciation challenges are acknowledged, this could generate sympathy between the two groups of people rather than adding tension to their relationships. Additionally, Han students could be reminded about the challenges for Uyghur students learning an L3 through an L2. Students can be encouraged to hold back judgment on the weaknesses of others’ language, but rather encourage and appreciate one another in their strengths. The language classroom may not be the place where big issues are solved. However as these small steps in building understanding of one another’s language challenges, it will help create a classroom where trust and safety are established in the simple area of language it can take small steps in building bridges between peoples who inhabit the same country.
Conclusion
The Uyghur people in the PRC inhabit a unique environment and they have many specific challenges in the English classroom that few other minorities face. Nonetheless many of the practical applications to the classroom can be generalized to minority classrooms in other 110 parts of the world. There may not be the same education dividers, such as inland boarding school or local high school, that give Uyghur student deeply different language exposure and experiences compared to one another and compared to their Han classmates, but it is helpful to understand minority students educational experiences compared to the majority students to better understand the tasks that they have or have not been prepared for or are able to handle in the classroom.
Likewise all students will thrive when the language used in the classroom to give instructions is at a level they can comprehend and benefit from, whether that language is
Mandarin to learn English concepts or Russian to learn English concepts. Finally, most minorities in the classroom whether due to their own insecurities of being a minority and not being able to identify with the majority or due to blatant experience of prejudice will all thrive when trust is built. Both minority and majority students will benefit from the building of empathy and understanding of one another even if it over the simple ideas of language challenges. These Uyghur women and their stories can benefit many students of the world who also identify as minorities in the language classroom.
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APPENDIX A: HSRB CONSENT
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APPENDIX B: INSTRUMENT
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