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Ministry enhances overseas training

"Yes, [certification] programs are part of the government's attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Mandarin Chinese worldwide"

Chang Chin-sheng, director of the Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations

Confronted with China's growing cultural and linguistic influence on the world stage amid a global Mandarin learning craze, the Ministry of Education yesterday said it was stepping up its efforts to train and certify more Chinese language instructors overseas.

Chang Chin-sheng (張欽勝), director of the education ministry's Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations, told the Taipei Times that his bureau was establishing a long-distance education curriculum to train Chinese-language instructors through Tamkang University and teacher training programs in the US.

"Yes, such programs are part of the government's attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Mandarin Chinese worldwide," Chang said, referring to a Chinese instructor certification test that his bureau unveiled last November.

The test, he added, would be administered in Thailand and Vietnam, as well as locally, this summer to accredit Mandarin teachers according to Taiwanese linguistic and cultural standards.

Asked if he was concerned about China's aggressive global deployment of Chinese language teachers, Chang said: "We're just going our own way; we don't care what China does."

A shortage of Chinese-language teachers in US elementary and junior high schools, Chang added, has created opportunities for Taiwanese who have US citizenship to fill in that gap and promote Mandarin as it is used in Taiwan.

Taipei and economic cultural offices (TECOs) in the US, Taiwan's de facto diplomatic missions, have already established Chinese-language teaching programs for Taiwanese in the US through their "cultural divisions," but demand for such programs is rising, said bureau official Chou Hui-yi (周慧宜), who directly oversees the programs.

Conducted in local schools, the programs not only train aspiring Chinese instructors but also help them to prepare for government-administered teacher certification tests, Chou said by phone yesterday.

They need not take and pass the ministry's own Chinese teacher certification exam because US state governments have their own certification methods, Chang said.

Los Angeles, which has a large population of Taiwanese Americans, is home to three such programs churning out Chinese instructors, while Washington and San Francisco have one each, Chou said, adding that the TECO "cultural divisions" funding the programs are staffed by education ministry officials.

The Tamkang University program, meanwhile, focuses on training overseas Taiwanese via the Internet to become Chinese-language teachers, Chang said.

The program will start in June, he said, and summer classes that can be attended in person will also be up and running by that time. Whether via long-distance education or classroom instruction, the Tamkang University program seeks to give overseas Taiwanese the necessary training for teaching Mandarin abroad, Chang added.

"The Tamkang and US programs are complementary," Chou said. "The former gives them the academic training they need, while the US programs help them to pass state government-administered teacher certification tests."

For more information on the Tamkang University program, go to www.dce.tku.edu.tw.
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