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Language education has been an issue of critical importance in China, where 56 officially recognised ethnic groups speak more than 130 languages and dialects. This article presents a case study of bilingual education for an ethnic minority group at the secondary school level in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of northwest China. Informed by Spolsky’s language policy framework, this study adopts an ethnographic approach to examine local teachers’ language practices and the interplay between government policy and community-level engagement. Findings reveal that, within the boundaries of language policy, teachers employed translanguaging strategies by drawing resourcefully on both the minority language and Mandarin Chinese with constructive flexibility to accommodate their bilingual students’ academic and communicative needs. They create a supportive classroom environment in which bilingual and bicultural experiences are respected and valued.
Yang Xu (Tue,) studied this question.