Law
on Ethnic Minority Regional Autonomy of the People's
Republic of China provides that schools which enroll
mainly ethnic minority students should, if conditions
permit, use textbooks in ethnic minority languages and
that lectures should be given in ethnic minority languages.
In senior years of the primary school or in middle school,
Chinese should be taught with putonghua - common speech
of the Chinese language - promoted.
Among
China's 55 ethnic minority groups, 53 have their own
languages except the Huis and Mongolians who use Chinese.
Twenty ethnic minorities have their own scripts. Among
these scripts are traditional ones with a fairly long
history, ones created after 1949 with help from the
state, and alphabetical systems of writing designed
by ethnic minority autonomies on their own and approved
by the state. At present, most traditional scripts are
used for school teaching. Scripts created after 1949
have been used in varying degrees in the educational
field with the exception of the Li script. Used now
in bilingual teaching are 60 ethnic minority languages
and 29 ethnic minority scripts.
With
many years of application, bilingual teaching now has
three basic modes: predominant use of an ethnic minority
language in teaching, with use of Chinese as a supplement;
predominant use of Chinese in teaching, with use of
an ethnic minority language as supplement; a gradual
transition from predominant use of an ethnic minority
language in teaching to predominant use of Chinese.
Teaching
materials in ethnic minority scripts are compiled by
the ethnic minority script teaching materials publishing
houses of relevant provinces and regions. To ensure
quality of such teaching materials, the Ministry of
Education has established three cross-regional ethnic
minority script teaching materials coordinating agencies
responsible respectively for: Mongolian-language teaching
materials for eight provinces and regions including
Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, Korean-language teaching
materials for three provinces including Jilin, and Tibetan-language
teaching materials for five province and regions including
Tibet and Qinghai. The state has established examination
committees for teaching materials written in Mongolian,
Korean and Tibetan languages. Preparation and publication
of ethnic minority teaching materials has received human
resources, financial and material support from the central
and local governments.
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