Towards an empowerment model for multilingual education at minzu universities in China

This chapter addresses the practical question of how minzu universities could offer a curriculum that is both desirable and attainable for genuine trilingualism, given that students from ethnic minority backgrounds often struggle to learn the national language, their absolute priority. It describes a theory- and evidence-based framework to enable minzu universities to be more confident and committed to multilingual education so as to empower their students, particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds, through more effective maintenance of linguistic and cultural diversity, Putonghua acquisition as China’s lingua franca, and development of competence in English for wider communication. The nature and positioning of the languages that are relevant to strategic planning for language use and education in minzu universities have enabled people to see three major conditions that must be met to develop such a model.