Foreign Language Education in an Ethnic University from the Perspective of Economics of Language

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201030.030How to use a DOI?

Keywords

economics of language, ethnic university, cost-benefit analysis, foreign language education

Abstract

China’s foreign language education (FLE) in universities has been widely criticized as time-consuming and inefficient in the last decade, and universities sought reforms to improve the situation. An ethnic university in China provides higher education for ethnic minority students who are bilinguals before learning a foreign language. How to value the FLE of an ethnic university and develop it more effectively? According to Marschak’s proposition that language has value, utility, costs, and benefits, this paper conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the undergraduate FLE in an ethnic university in Southwest China. By comparing the data with other universities, the paper reveals the unsatisfactory benefits of FLE for non-foreign-language majors and uncorrelated costs and benefits of FLE for foreign-language majors as well as the potential consequences. Based on the economic analysis and the university feature, a development direction of ethnic characteristics and diversified courses with more input into the FLE in the university is suggested.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xia Jiang
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/11/02
TI  - Foreign Language Education in an Ethnic University from the Perspective of Economics of Language
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Social Sciences and Big Data Application (ICSSBDA 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 144
EP  - 150
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201030.030
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201030.030
ID  - Jiang2020
ER  -