Multilingualism: A path leading to a wider door of Chinese learning

The Chinese language has been considered very difficult to learn by Indo-European language speaker because of its complicated writing system and sophisticated grammar system. The Chinese programs in Beijing nevertheless are extremely rigorous which makes the Chinese learning even challenging by introducing Chinese Only. As an undeclared language policy, Chinese-only is highly promoted and support by teaching institutes which is in fact a hindrance to keep Chinese teaching and learning sustainable in the long run. To investigate Chinese language learning in the homogeneous culture background, this project is doing a survey in three key universities in Beijing. As a narrative inquiry, the research methodology will be mainly qualitative. Students at all levels will participate in questionnaires survey, and teachers and program coordinators will be interviewed. The theoretical frameworks behind the research design are theories of multilingual pedagogy and second language acquisition. Upon the completion of the research, a benchmark for building multilingualism in Chinese classroom is expected to set up and ready for discussion.