The Ministry of Education is planning a set of standards for the certification of instructors teaching Chinese as a foreign language to better ensure the quality of these teachers.
The Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language at National Taiwan Normal University is heading the project and discussing possible methods for teachers to obtain an official certification from the education ministry.
Currently, university-affiliated Chinese-language centers hire their own instructors and provide their own certification.
A representative surnamed Lin from the Center of Chinese Language and Culture Studies at the university said that their teachers were selected after undergoing rigorous written exams, interviews, oral and pronunciation exams, and presenting demonstration classes.
A representative surnamed Hung from the Chinese department at the National Taiwan University Language Center said that they offered training courses providing a "certificate of completion" at the end of the program.
However, to be allowed to teach, prospective teachers need to obtain an official teaching certificate, Hung said.
After hammering out a set of standards, the education ministry hopes to provide a government-issued certificate for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, said an official surnamed Tang from the Bureau of Cultural and Educational Relations, which oversees the whole project.
Requirements for a government-approved teaching certificate may include taking certain training courses, undergoing exams in certain subjects and pronunciation tests, he said.
Nevertheless, university-affiliated language centers will not be forced to use only instructors with ministry-issued certificates, Tang said.
These centers will still be able to apply their own selection processes when hiring teachers, he added.
The government-issued certification will serve as a basic threshold for teachers, and will serve as official proof that the person has passed a government-authorized exam process, Tang said.
Whether those who graduate with Chinese-language teaching majors will be able to automatically obtain a certificate from the government is still under discussion, he added.
Although National Taiwan Normal University is heading the project, it needs the help of other language centers to compile a set of regulations that would be accepted by all centers, Tang said.
The education ministry will re-evaluate the standards as soon as the language centers finish drafting them, Tang said.
The system is slated for completion no later than June, although "the earlier, the better," he added.
As Chinese language instruction becomes more popular in schools worldwide, the need for qualified teachers is also on the rise, according to recent studies.
According to CNA, Teng Shou-hsin (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching