Well done, TSU lawmaker
I would like to say, "Well done!" to TSU Legislator Cheng Chen-lung (程建隆), whose research group reported on the use of impractical vocabulary in English text books ("Lawmaker says English material too hard for kids," Aug. 28, page 2).
For too long now, parents and schools have taken a competitive viewpoint about the vocabulary (and grammar lessons) being forced on their children.
The schools, too, want to have a reputation for high-level learning but when appearances become more important than what is really needed, it is the children who suffer.
The Ministry of Education is to be congratulated for what it has achieved with the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT). The words in the 1,000 word list are all that are needed for most everyday purposes and there are no words or phrases that sound unusual to native speakers of the English language.
English has the largest vocabulary of any language and an enormous range of idioms and phrases, and to teach these correctly all educators would do well to familiarize themselves with the study technology of US educator L. Ron Hubbard.
If they did, they would not emphasize the wrong aspects (eg, the size of vocabulary), they would not skip correct study gradients (use materials that are too difficult), and they would not choose material which has no relevance to the lives of Taiwanese children (giving students what Hubbard described as an "absence of mass").
The National Institute for Compilation and Translation is already moving in the right direction by asking publishers to adjust the content of junior-high school text books.
If parents and school administrators could be brave in the same way as Cheng, Taiwanese school students would suffer less, get better results and actually be able to use English better.
Henry Bartnik
Taichung
A fable of two nations
A long time ago in a world now almost gone, slipping into the mists of time, two sons (KMT and PRC) were born to rule a place (China) on a planet called Earth.
Neither son was at the outset ready to govern, and being youthful, fighting was in their blood. They organized groups and fought. Neither son said what the prize might be.
They looked at the fruit of their efforts, with each one's description of what they had achieved sounding exactly like that of the other one. They even called the future prize by similar names: one son said the "Republic of" and the other said the "People's Republic of."
This situation lasted a while -- generations -- and in that time frame neither son had a vision of governance that looked anything like the government that evolved since and has continuing to evolve to the present day.
One son (KMT) lost the fight and retreated to another spot on Earth (Taiwan), and enslaved the people there to help keep up the fight against the brother (PRC) who won. The losing brother even kept the name of his vision -- Republic of China -- intact and saddled the Taiwanese with the name to irritate the winning brother.
The two sons (KMT and PRC) of China want to unite and live happy in their mother's house (Greater China). While their children want to start a new house and lineage and history, the KMT and the PRC, being older, feel they know better. They say, "Taiwan is a place that cannot exist on it's own."
This is however a losing proposition that is similar to telling children that they were born of bad circumstances, that they will never make it on their own no matter what they do, and they should instead join a gangster organization to have clout in the real world. The people of the Republic of China should circumvent this game and start a new legacy by changing the country's name to Taiwan.
Bode Bliss
Cleveland, Ohio
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