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Letters: Is Taiwan behind in English?

The story about declining standards of English ("Taiwan behind in English proficiency, paper reports," Aug. 22, page 2) appears to provide ammunition for those who believe that English language proficiency in Taiwan is low.

If proficiency is low, however, the International English Language Testing System results don't show it.

Even if Taiwan had outscored all other countries, it would be inappropriate to conclude anything on the basis of such tests, because there is no way of knowing crucial facts about test-takers' backgrounds. But even if the test results are valid, they don't show that Taiwan is doing poorly.

Yes, Taiwan scored 17th out of 20 countries, but elementary statistical analysis shows that students in only five locations did significantly better and students in one country did significantly worse.

In other words, the differences among the middle 14 countries were too small to be considered real; they could easily have been the result of chance. (An example: Taiwan, in 17th place, scored 5.62. Japan, in 12th place, scored 5.78, a difference of only 15 percent of a point on a nine-point scale.)

It should also be pointed out that in two of the five locations in which students scored significantly higher than those in Taiwan, English has official status (Hong Kong and the Philippines). If we eliminate these two, we could claim that Taiwan tied for third place.

Stephen Krashen

Los Angeles, California

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