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Program targets foreign spouses

"According to the DMV, the rate of a foreign spouse passing the test without taking our program is about 20 percent; however, the pass rate for our students has reached as high as 70 percent."

Chiu Su-chen, Wennan Township secretary

A township in Tainan City is offering a motorcyclist education program to foreign spouses who do not read Chinese, and reports a 70 percent passing rate for students who have completed the program.

Wennan Township (文南里) launched a pilot program last December and the latest class, which will begin tomorrow, has an enrollment of 40 students.

"Most of the students are Vietnamese wives, as in the Vietnamese society women often take up the role of family breadwinner or head of the house; other students are Indonesian and Chinese," Chiu Su-chen (邱素禛), the township secretary who is in charge of organizing the program, said on Sunday.

Vietnamese wives often need to ride a motorcycle to pick up their children from school, to get to work or to go grocery shopping.

In order to help foreign spouses who can't read or write Chinese to pass their written test, during the week-long program, questions are read out loud in Chinese by instructors and the students simply answer yes or no, or pick the right answer on answer sheets.

In addition, the students also learn practical motorcycle-riding skills in the program.

Additionally, the program has been able to help spouses from China that are unable to take written tests -- because of either illiteracy or an inability to read traditional Chinese characters.

After receiving special approval from the local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the usual computerized test has been replaced by an oral test conducted by a DMV official.

The rate of program students obtaining their motorcyclist licenses is high.

"According to the DMV, the rate of a foreign spouse passing the test without taking our program is about 20 percent; however, the pass rate for our students has reached as high as 70 percent," Chiu said.

"Many students said that passing the test felt better than getting married!" Chiu said.

Before the program was initiated, officials had considered conducting the written test in Vietnamese, but in order to give foreign spouses more motivation to learn Chinese, the township chief, Chen Chin-chuan (陳清泉) decided to run the program in Mandarin.

The township initiated the program after being approached by Tainan City's Overseas Vietnamese Association last year.

The program charges its students a basic fee of NT$500 for every two days to cover space rental and instructors' fees.

Students who only wish to attend the actual riding sessions are charged NT$750 for the entire program.

Those caught riding a motorcycle without a proper license face a fine of NT$6,000. As such, many foreign spouses feel that the program fees are a good investment.

Seeing the success rate of the motorcyclist education program, the township is planning to start a driver's license program in the near future.
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