Education woes
It has been 20 years since I first started visiting Taiwan, a country full of warmth and hospitality.
However, as my affection for the country continues to grow, so too does my frustration with its waning education system and, in particular, abysmal emphasis on English and English instruction.
I was reminded of this when I recently took the Maokong Gondola. Instead of enjoying the scenery of the ride, I just sat there in the swaying cabin shaking my head at the English brochure I had been handed — a government-sanctioned brochure — that was plagued with amateurish English and faulty grammar.
Don’t officials in the tourism department realize that handing off translation to unqualified people only furthers the perception that Taiwan is not ready to promote international tourism or to convince the world that it has come of age; that it makes Taiwan look like a third-world country?
Quality English writing does matter to English travelers and, in their eyes, writing that is barely acceptable is never good enough and significantly demeans the quality of the product with which it is associated.
Of course much has been written about the antiquated education system in Taiwan. While Western countries are reducing class sizes and focusing on team-based critical thinking and technology-driven instruction that expects students to communicate using various platforms, Taiwan still seems content to maintain its oversized classrooms, which have little student interaction, and bushibans, where memory-driven grammar instruction is taught for no other reason than to pass a test.
Promoting authentic language development in Taiwan is simply not a priority.
G.C. Allan
Bade, Taoyuan
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past