On May 8, the Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations (國際文教處), under the Ministry of Education, came up with a suggested list of schools recommending 74 accredited colleges and universities in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK to promote its overseas "Pre-College Intensive English Program" for the nation's high school students.
As the government is actively planning to establish Taiwan as a "global logistics center," the ministry's promotion of an overseas intensive English program for Taiwan's youth is a good start.
English education in Taiwan has long been criticized due to its emphasis on accuracy over fluency. Consequently, many students are incapable of carrying out the most basic conversation with native English speakers even after studying the language for years. To improve this, the education ministry is going to implement English courses in all public elementary schools nationwide, allowing students to start their English education two years earlier in the fifth grade, starting in the fall of this year. The new curriculum will focus on all four skills -- listening, speaking, reading and writing -- and traditional written tests will no longer be the only criteria for evaluation.
Still, despite the enthusiastic welcome from students, parents and educators towards the ministry's recent reforms in English teaching, Taiwan's English education is facing difficulties in many areas. For example, the lack of qualified local and foreign English teachers is a common problem in many elementary schools. Moreover, since students only have an average of two to four hours of English education per week, the input of the target language is always insufficient, and the students' intrinsic motivation is rather low. Thus, they may have difficulty seeing the relevance of learning English except for passing some tests. To enhance local English education, therefore, it is beneficial to encourage our youngsters to attend language programs overseas.
Douglas Brown, a leading professor in TESOL, said "students have a tremendous advantage in an English speaking environment, as they have an instant `laboratory' available to them 24 hours a day." Under the ministry's suggested program, all students will experience four weeks of intensive language study, followed by one week of cultural tour activities. Hence, the English input during the 5-week program will be enormous.
Additionally, studying or traveling overseas can arouse students' interest in learning. For most students, only when being placed in an English-speaking environment can they see the importance of learning the target language. The scheduled cultural tour activities will also be helpful in broadening the vision of students' in Taiwan and will provide them with an international view. As the Chinese saying has it, "Reading tens of thousands of books is inferior to traveling tens of thousands of miles."
Finally, the schools the ministry has recommended all have a fine reputation. Take San Francisco State University (SFSU), where I did my student teaching for two years, for example. The language center at SFSU is considered one of the best on the US west coast. As for students who cannot afford it, I suggest that the ministry make scholarships available so that talented students have a chance to attend.
Taiwan will soon be entering the WTO, and an international perspective has become a must for us to both cooperate and compete with the rest of the world. Thus, "educational internationalization" has become all the more necessary at a time when the eduction ministry is promoting reforms in Taiwan's English education.
Chang Sheng-en is an English teacher trainer at English Advanced Association in Taipei.
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