Abstract:

Background: The popularization and improvement of Mandarin are of great significance to Tibetan areas' economic and social development. There is a lack of qualified Tibetan-Mandarin bilingual teachers in the Tibetan area of China and a lack of students' teaching resources and educational environment. It is challenging to implement Mandarin teaching in Tibetan areas widely. The development of artificial intelligence technology has brought changes to education, and it also provides a new opportunity for Tibetan-Mandarin bilingual education. However, the research on Mandarin-Tibetan learning is mostly theoretical and lacks practical research on educational product development and teaching platform construction.

MethodTo solve the current problems in the learning of Mandarin in elementary schools in Tibetan areas, we build a Mandarin-Tibetan bilingual learning platform using artificial intelligence. The platform includes five modules and matches the Mandarin textbooks for Tibetan elementary school students. The first is the pronunciation evaluation and feedback module, which can let students practice the pronunciation of single characters, words, and texts learned in class, and sentences commonly used in daily life. The second is the test item library module, which is conducted according to grade, can test pronunciation and classroom basic knowledge of Mandarin. The third is the Mandarin course resources module, which provides learning resources according to the grade. In this module, students can preview the learning objectives and learn detailed explanations of texts, standard readings, paragraph topics. The fourth is the extracurricular resources module, which includes fascinating stories and music, and so on. Students can learn Mandarin extracurricular resources to broaden their horizons and stimulate their interest in learning. The fifth is the online communication module, which supports students communicating and discussing online. It provides a community for learning Mandarin. To ensure the effectiveness and practicality of the platform, we recruited 15 Tibetan students to test the platform's effect and get feedback to adjust. At the same time, we also discuss the feasible application mode of the built platform in elementary schools in China's Tibetan areas according to the actual situation.

Conclusion: We design a Mandarin-Tibetan bilingual intelligent learning platform, based on artificial intelligence technology. It can meet the learning characteristics of Tibetan students in elementary education. Using the five modules of the platform, students can consolidate the pronunciation and basic knowledge of Mandarin in the course, understand their deficiencies, and make up for them. Besides, students can learn Mandarin extra-curricular resources to broaden their horizons and improve their ability to understand and use Mandarin. This paper has practical significance for assisting the teaching of Mandarin in elementary schools in Tibetan areas and accelerating promoting Mandarin in ethnic areas in China.

Keywords:

Mandarin learning, bilingual learning, learning platform, artificial intelligence, machine translation.