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Ma reiterates policy to prioritize Mandarin education

Although the Mandarin ability of Taipei elementary school students proved better than expected on a recent test, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) repeated that the city would prioritize Mandarin education, with the possibility of cutting back on English courses.

"The policy to add more Mandarin classes to the curriculum in elementary schools has to be implemented, and we won't exclude cutting back on English courses if necessary," Ma said yesterday when attending a briefing on an evaluation of the results of a Mandarin Proficiency Test last year.

About 80 percent of the city's students received scores of between 75 and 90 on the 2005 Taipei Elementary School Mandarin Proficiency Test, which was taken by 31,000 six graders. Only 4.5 percent of students received failing grades of below 60.

Taipei Tatung Elementary School Principal Cheng Chin-yi (陳清義), who was in charge of the test, said the result showed no correlation between students' parents' birthplace and Mandarin ability.

Children of foreign spouses did not underperform on the test, although students who lived with their parents received better grades on average.

Although most students received good grades, the essay test revealed weaknesses in writing ability, including a limited use of adjectives, Chen said.

The evaluation of the proficiency test also indicated that the more students watched TV or stayed in front of the computer, the worse they performed on the test.

Ma encouraged parents to be more attentive to their children's Mandarin learning, saying that "Mandarin education should be given a higher priority than English education."

"Teaching English in elementary schools is not to equip students with a great English ability, but to help them become familiar with the language ? Learning Mandarin is helpful to other language learning in the future," he said.

In response to Ma's request to add more Mandarin classes, Taipei City Department of Education Commissioner Wu Ching-ji (吳清基) said the department would boost the number of weekly hours of elementary school Mandarin to seven from six starting next semester, without scrapping English classes.
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