Interpreting a Survey on Language Maintenance
You are analysing survey data for a report on Chinese language maintenance among 200 students at your school. Of the 200, 150 study Chinese at school. Of those 150, 90 speak Mandarin or Cantonese at home. Of the 50 who do not study Chinese, 20 speak a Chinese language at home. A classmate concludes: 'Most students who speak Chinese at home study Chinese, so home language predicts enrolment.' You are asked to check this claim before it goes into the report. The survey also shows that of the 90 home speakers who study Chinese, 60 said their main reason was a parent's wish, while of the 60 students who study Chinese but do not speak it at home, 45 cited interest in Chinese pop culture.
1. Evaluate the classmate's claim using the numbers, and state what the data can and cannot show.
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The claim is not supported as stated. Home speakers of Chinese number 90 plus 20, which is 110. Of these, 90 study Chinese, so 90 out of 110 home speakers study it, about 82 percent. That is a high proportion and it does show an association between home language and enrolment.
However, the claim 'home language predicts enrolment' overstates what a simple survey can show. The data are descriptive and cross-sectional, with no comparison group followed over time, so causation cannot be established. Also, the non-home-speaker group is small (60), and 45 of them cite pop culture, which suggests motivation is not solely about home background. The report should say home speakers are more likely to enrol, while noting the limits of the evidence and the small subgroup sizes.
2. The report needs one recommendation for the school. Propose a recommendation that follows from the motivation data, and explain the reasoning.
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The motivation data show two distinct groups: home speakers who enrol mainly because of parental wishes, and non-home speakers who enrol mainly because of interest in Chinese pop culture. A single recruitment message will not serve both.
A reasonable recommendation is to run two streams of promotion. For home-speaking families, the school could hold information sessions that explain the value of formal study and the pathways it opens, since parental expectation is already a driver and does not need to be created. For non-home speakers, the school could build on the pop culture interest with media-based activities and clubs, since 45 of 60 already cite that reason. The reasoning is that the intervention should match the stated motivation rather than assume one motive for all students. The recommendation should be framed as provisional, because the survey does not test whether these motives actually change enrolment.