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The Application of Artificial Intelligence in Bilingual Education in Primary Schools in Ethnic Minority Areas of Qinghai: Technological Possibilities and Structural Constraints

Author(s)

Zeng Maotai

Affiliation(s)

College of Nationalities Normal, Qinghai Normal University, Xining, Qinghai, China

Abstract

Artificial intelligence technology offers new tool possibilities for bilingual teaching in ethnic minority regions, but its actual effectiveness is constrained by the structural characteristics of the bilingual education system. Taking primary schools in ethnic minority areas of Qinghai as the object of analysis, this paper draws on the functional classification framework of AI in language teaching and, in combination with the differences in minority-language and Chinese bilingual education models, the teacher structure, and the language ecology in ethnic minority areas of Qinghai, examines the applicable conditions and limits of four types of applications: intelligent listening training, pronunciation detection, reading recommendation, and robot-assisted teaching. The analysis shows that AI can produce marginal improvements in the contextualization of oral training, the immediacy of pronunciation feedback, and the adaptation of reading resources, but it is difficult for AI to replace the cultural mediation function of bilingual teachers, nor can it resolve the deep-seated contradictions caused by the instrumental weakness of the minority language. The effective embedding of AI should be premised on supplementing rather than replacing bilingual teachers, and bounded by respect for the minority cultural context. Rather than treating AI as a substitute for teachers or as a solution to structural inequality, this paper argues that its most defensible role is a conditional, teacher-mediated, and culturally bounded supplement. The paper contributes to the discussion of educational technology in ethnic minority regions by connecting the functional promises of AI to the institutional, linguistic, and cultural conditions under which bilingual teaching actually takes place.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence; Ethnic Minority Areas of Qinghai; Bilingual Education; Primary School; Technological Limits

References

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