Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist and the author of The World is Flat, was once asked what his favorite country was. His reply was “Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan.” The reasons? The nation’s effective cultivation and use of its human resources through education, despite a lack of natural resources.
Nonetheless, reading recent news on the dismal performance of university students’ English ability, and the closure and restructuring of English departments nationwide, one might wonder if things have gone wrong.
So is the “crisis” real? If it is real, what should be done about it? Answering these questions gives cause to pondering some of the structural and cultural ills within the education system.
Recent news headlines that indicate “a lack of practical training” in the nation’s English-language education at the university level; the diminishing enrollment at English departments; dismal test scores among university students; and prevalent dissatisfaction among employers with their employees’ English ability, all raise alarms for parents, educators and students.
Yet such assertions need close examination. For instance, according to the ETS (English Testing Services), between 2011 and last year, the average Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) scores for university students were more than 10 percent lower than those of senior-high school students.
Do these statistics indicate that the English-language ability of a university student is lower than that of a senior-high school student? Anyone who is familiar with fundamental statistical concepts might not agree.
Based on such statistics, all that is certain is that among the people who took the TOEIC test, students from senior-high schools performed better than those from universities.
In other words, two groups of test-takers who have quite different goals in mind when taking the TOEIC test are being compared. It is quite possible that university students of high English-language abilities did not take the TOEIC test because it was not required by their school. Similarly, it is also quite plausible that senior-high school students who took the TOEIC test were aiming to apply for college and university admissions and are high academic achievers among their peers.
According to Taipei Times news articles, the education system seems to be seen as the most responsible for this perceived crisis, since it is the very mechanism that prepares students for their future careers. However, such a simplistic conclusion overlooks the deep-rooted problems of structural inequality within the education system.
Over the years, distributions of educational resources such as the ratio of academic versus vocational secondary schools and the expansion (as well as the operation) of higher education have been tightly controlled by the Ministry of Education to satisfy the demands of the nation’s economic development.
As a result, students who do not perform well academically have often been “filtered” (although by their own choosing) through the system and end up going to less prestigious, yet more expensive, private institutions. Studies have shown that students from this group are more likely to come from families of lower socioeconomic status, more likely to receive lower quality of teaching and have less time to study due to financial constraints.
From the viewpoint of allocating educational resources, these are the students who receive the least within the education system. Over the years, this unequal distribution of educational resources has contributed to the disparity of English-language ability among students of different circumstances (public versus private, academic versus vocational) within the system.
Therefore, it should not be too surprising to hear employers — eager to take advantage of this large pool of cheap “educated” workers — complaining about the poor English communication skills of their employees.
The second problem is cultural. In answering the question: “Why do Taiwan’s university graduates continue to have difficulty with English after learning it at school for at least 12 years?” one published opinion points out that English taught at school “is not practical enough” and thus fails to prepare students to use it “in the real world.”
The reality is that despite the government’s talk on internationalization for so many years, for the majority of Taiwanese, English is still a foreign, rather than a second, language. The opportunities for students to practice English outside the classroom are quite limited.
While the shortage of opportunities to practice what students learn in the classroom is real, this should not be seen as an insurmountable obstacle. During my years of studying in the US, I often came across people who had resided there for years, yet could not speak English properly because they were afraid to reach out to locals and associated mainly with other Chinese speakers, even while living in an English-speaking environment.
As the statistics show, the TOEIC scores of most students peak while they are preparing for the national entrance exam, but decline during university years, since it is not required.
Over the course of my teaching career (from elementary school to the university level), I have witnessed a sense of passivity toward language-learning among students — the majority simply do what is required and go no further. Unlike other subjects with a technical nature, having a strong command of English takes a sustained effort over a long period of time. If the student merely does what is required for immediate grade feedback and has no interest or motivation to go beyond course requirements, there is no way they can develop proficiency.
This passivity toward learning is persistent damage done by the century-old exam-based education system that emphasizes the outcome (grades and test scores) rather than the process and motivation of learning.
The closure and refocusing of English departments around the nation show signs of supply-side adjustments toward market demands. Yet we should not forget that the humanities, along with science and technology, have always been and will continue to be a key driver of economic dynamism in tomorrow’s world.
As economics Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps said: “Exposure to literature, philosophy and history will inspire young people to seek a life of richness — one that includes making creative, innovative contributions to society.”
As educators, perhaps how we let down our students most is in failing to instill in them the idea that learning a foreign language is a lifelong project that requires constant effort. Such effort cannot end with simply receiving a grade or a diploma. How long will it take us to accept these facts and how long will we continue to advocate, or worse, make apologies for, a system that does not work?
Without a drastic shift in the culture of learning among parents, teachers and students, merely increasing class hours and offering more so-called “practical” courses will not work wonders in the long run.
Cheng Shiuh-tarng is a full-time elementary-school English teacher and a part-time assistant professor in Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages’ Department of English.
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