About 70 percent of the nation’s high schools and universities support testing people taking college entrance examinations on English listening proficiency, a Ministry of Education-affiliated survey showed yesterday.
The poll, conducted by the College Entrance Examination Center on behalf of the ministry, showed that 66 percent of high schools and 70 percent of universities in Taiwan believed English listening comprehension tests should be added to the annual college entrance examination, center deputy director Hung Tung-kuei (洪冬桂) told reporters.
At present, examinees are only tested on reading, writing, grammar, translation and vocabulary.
KEEPING UP
Hung said Taiwan’s main competitors in Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, have included listening comprehension in their college entrance examinations.
Hung said China even implemented traffic control measures and banned construction work to avoid excessive noise when examinees were taking its listening proficiency test this year, while South Korea made 125 changes to commercial aircraft take off schedules to avoid disturbing English listening test-takers.
DELIBERATION
Hung said the center is considering the possibility of introducing listening comprehension tests to the entrance exam and would submit the results of the survey to the ministry for further deliberation next month.
Hung said some students from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School and Taipei First Girls High School told the center that even if their schools offered English listening sessions, their classmates never took the classes seriously, which could be problematic if listening tests were to be implemented.
Hung said the center would also propose that the ministry turn the entrance examination’s English writing section into an independent test and divide the test into different levels of difficulty so students can choose the level that best suits them.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS