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Ma worrying about English gap

Visitors browse through English teaching materials at the 11th International Symposium and Book Fair on English Teaching at the Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center in Taipei. The event will run for three days until tomorrow. PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that one of the significant goals in expanding English education to primary schools is to bridge the education gap between rich and poor.

"The trend now is to learn English, and children attending bilingual kindergartens start to learn English at the age of 5 or even younger," Ma said.

"But only the rich can afford to send their children to expensive bilingual schools. Children from poorer families have no opportunities to learn the language until much later," he said.

Ma's remarks came at the opening ceremony of the 4th Pan-Asian Conference (PAC4) and the 11th International Symposium and Book Fair on English Teaching held at the Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center.

To prevent the gap from widening, English education was extended to fifth and sixth graders at primary schools last year.

"Launching English education in primary schools is a serious challenge for teachers, parents and society," Ma said.

"We need more English teachers for our children as we are preparing to expand English education to younger children in the near future," he said.

Li Chen-ching (李振清), director-general of the Education Ministry's Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations, said that the government plans to recruit 2,500 English teachers from abroad next year.

Li said the plan is one of the government's measures to address the shortage of English teachers for primary schools.

"We need these foreign teachers not just because they are native English speakers. They will need to take TESOL [Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages] courses," Li said.

Ma said nowadays students perform much better in English tests than students did 30 years ago.

"However, interestingly but also intriguingly, students' English proficiency does not seem to have improved in a significant way," Ma said.

Ma said he hoped the conference would try to find out why this was so.

"According to a recent report comparing TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language] results in 14 Asian countries, Taiwan ranks second worst, better only than Japan," Ma said.

The report shows Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia scored highest among Asian countries. China was fourth.

The conference provides English teachers in the region with opportunities to discuss and share the similarities and difficulties in their teaching experiences.

Most of the participants in the conference are English teachers from the region. The invited speakers come mostly from English-speaking countries.

PAC1 was held in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1997. PAC2 and PAC3 were respectively held in Seoul, Korea, in 1999 and in Kitakyushu, Japan, last year.

The subject of PAC4 is "English Language Teaching in Asian Contexts: Four PCs in the 21st Century." The event will last for three days.

The four PCs are personal computers and software, the issue of political correctness, plural cultures and personal communication as related to the teaching of English.

One of the main topics of the conference is the application of modern technologies such as the Internet, MP3s and PDAs to the teaching and learning of English.
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