ABSTRACT
The Chinese government issued a series of policies concerning English language in education, which, in combination with a number of internal and external forces, helped to push the status of the English language to an unprecedented new height in Chinese society. This was hailed by some as one of the major educational and linguistic stories of the contemporary age. English language teaching has become a multi-billion dollar business, with more than thirty thousand private English language schools established. A study of English language acquisition among the Uyghur youth sets both a theoretical and an empirical challenge, because the literature on foreign language provision for ethnic minorities in China is as yet underdeveloped. Traditionally, language education for ethnic minorities aimed primarily at developing bilinguals in both the minority language and Mandarin Chinese. As a language with a long history, Uyghur is spoken by about 10 million speakers in Xinjiang, as well as in bordering countries such as Kazakhstan.
