DOI: 10.11648/j.ijll.20261404.13 ISSN: 2330-0221

An Ethnography of Bangladeshi Students’ Chinese Learning Experiences in China During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Wei Duan
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In a globalized era, Chinese language is becoming a global language to learn for international students. Under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an increasing number of South-Asian students come to China for receiving higher education. Based on a longitudinal ethnography conducted at a university in Yunnan, China, this study explores the Chinese learning experiences of a cohort of Bangladeshi students who are majored in TCSOL (Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Informed by the notions of language ideologies, this study explores what language-related challenges might impede their academic performance and social integration, and how their educational aspirations are constrained by various social factors mediated in the process of public crisis. Findings indicate that students’ insufficient Chinese linguistic competence fails to accommodate curriculum requirements, with linguistic obstacles substantially hindering academic attainment. Online pedagogy generates adverse outcomes including reduced student involvement and insufficient teacher-student interaction. Despite auxiliary learning resources, pandemic-induced HSK test disruptions render students passive in academic aspiration formation. The study also argues that the diverse language acquisition trajectories of multilingual international learners offer alternative perspectives to the prevalent discourse regarding English’s dominant position as a global medium for cross-cultural communication. The study sheds some lights on the cross-border education in the shifting paradigm of global emergency. The study also provides implications for educational practice and language policy for China's promotion of Chinese as a global language.

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