The Ministry of Education’s official proficiency test for the Hoklo language (commonly known as Taiwanese) took place on Saturday last week. The number of registrations — 11,617 — was relatively high, helped by a waiver on registration fees for elementary and junior-high school students.
To teach Hoklo in elementary schools, teachers must pass the high-intermediate level of the ministry’s Hoklo-language proficiency test (paper B), while the education bureaus of local governments can implement additional criteria for full-time teachers.
In the 2014-2015 academic year, the Taipei City Government broke new ground by creating four vacancies for full-time Hoklo teachers, which was followed by Hsinchu the next year offering eight vacancies.
In the 2016-2017 academic year, Taipei and Hsinchu each had three vacancies and Taichung had two, while in the last academic year, Taipei had six vacancies, Taichung had two and Kaohsiung had four.
For the coming academic year, Taipei has 12 vacancies, with four each in Hsinchu and Taichung, and two in Kaohsiung.
Curiously, Tainan — which has a reputation as the nation’s cultural capital and has long been governed by the pan-green camp — has not offered any positions for full-time Hoklo teachers in the past five years. This is bewildering.
What incentives do students have to take Hoklo proficiency tests?
On Jan. 19, the Kaohsiung Education Bureau decided that an elementary-level certificate would be worth 10 bonus points. The same number of points is awarded for an elementary-level certificate in the General English Proficiency Test, which is part of the exam-free admission program for high schools.
Up to 20 bonus points are given to students who pass at least the intermediate level of the professional version of the General Taiwanese Proficiency Test administered by National Cheng Kung University’s Center for Taiwanese Language Testing.
Taoyuan made a similar decision to Kaohsiung and awards two bonus points in the exam-free high-school admission program for a proficiency certificate in the ministry’s Hoklo-language test.
Hopefully, the ministry will encourage more local education bureaus to learn from Kaohsiung and Taoyuan and encourage Hoklo-language education in schools.
Regarding its design, the proficiency test has reduced the use of romanized Hoklo. The reason remains unknown, even though Hoklo romanization remains the core teaching method in the textbook used in elementary schools.
A concern is that the less-frequent appearance of romanized Hoklo in the test would not only reduce students’ familiarity with it, but would also make people question whether teachers’ professional competency in teaching romanized Hoklo is enhanced by the test.
Ten years have passed since the ministry launched the test, and it has greatly contributed to Hoklo-language and cultural education.
Hopefully, the ministry will revise its certification system and any additional criteria, and the Legislative Yuan will pass the proposed national languages development act swiftly to guarantee more comprehensive measures to promote Hoklo, a language that still lacks a legal foundation.
These would be concrete measures to realize transformative justice for the nation’s native language and culture.
Koeh Ian-lim is deputy director of the Union of Taiwan Teachers.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming.
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