On the alliance car
Ilha Formosa, Taiwan, is so beautiful, my beloved homeland! In the last decades, there has been great improvement.
The Taiwan High-Speed Rail, Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, the Maokong Gondola, the Grand Hotel in Taipei, the Sun Moon Lake Ropeway, paragliding in Nantou County’s Puli Township (埔里), the Weiwuying National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, etc.
Wherever you travel, you meet a lot of tourists from all over the world, you experience a sense of internationalization, modernization and the superiority of Taiwan.
Taipei is a busy city where people enjoy convenient and precise MRT public transportation services. In Puli, while walking in the village you meet a lot of morning walkers. They are so friendly in greeting you. Traveling to a campground, the owner can tell you the detailed history of local culture. In Kaohsiung, the KMRT is not as busy as Taipei’s MRT, but conveniently transports you to any scenic spot.
The public transportation system in Taiwan is so convenient that people can easily travel from north to south in 90 minutes by high-speed rail. Travelers can book and pick up tickets from any 7-Eleven or Family Mart store.
Walking into elementary and high schools, you notice the number of students drops significantly and teachers are facing difficulty to survive. Taiwan is facing the worldwide challenge of an aging population with too few children. Yes, the structure of Taiwanese society is changing rapidly, like the high-speed rail, but what puzzles me the most is that the people with the highest college graduation rate in the world are still blocked by the international community. Why? Where is Taiwan heading?
On Sept. 26, Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) gave an order to demolish a former temple that had been illegally converted by contractor and former military officer Wei Ming-jen (魏明仁) into a shrine to the Chinese Communist Party, while the owner protested by raising aloft the Chinese flag a final time. Now Biyun Temple has been razed to the ground.
On Tuesday last week, Ethan Gutmann answered “yes” when asked whether he thought Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was a liar.
He interviewed Ko for his 2014 book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting and China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem, and wrote that Ko was aware that many of the organs transplanted in China came from Falun Gong members.
Ko gave him 24 hours to provide evidence or face a lawsuit.
Gutmann said go ahead and welcomed the lawsuit.
Yes, there are a lot of issues that need to be clarified in Taiwan. Is Taiwan part of China? Why does the Chinese national flag still fly in Taipei? Is Taiwan an independent, sovereign nation? Why is Taiwan is still blocked out of the international community? What is the relationship between Taiwan and the Republic of China (ROC)? Does the ROC own Taiwan’s sovereignty? Is the ROC an independent, sovereign nation?
Thanks to the modernization of the Internet, we can easily view the original, historic document related to Taiwan’s legal status.
In 1895, a Qing emperor ceded Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and Taiwan has not been related to China since then.
In 1951, Japan did not transfer Taiwan’s sovereignty to the ROC under the San Francisco Peace Treaty.
In the UN Charter, Article 4 defines its membership as open to any peace-loving state.
So, Taiwan needs to identify itself as a peace-loving nation and the only way to achieve that goal is by exercising its right to self-determination.
On Saturday next week, let us get on the Formosa Alliance car to voice our strong will and desire to be a peace-loving nation that has nothing to do with China, either the People’s Republic or the ROC.
John Hsieh
Hayward, California
Oral English tests
Including oral English tests at the university level is not the way to improve English oral proficiency. Yes, such testing will encourage more English-language use, that is: more “speaking English” by students in class.
However, research consistently shows that more speaking does not improve speaking: The ability to speak fluently with accurate grammar and appropriate vocabulary comes from input, from listening and reading.
Also, oral English tests are difficult to evaluate and are anxiety-provoking for students. They are also expensive.
The NT$3 billion [US$97.06 million] that the Ministry of Education is eager to spend on oral English tests would be much better used to improve libraries, increasing the holdings of interesting reading material at all levels, as well as TV shows, films, and, above all, audio stories made comprehensible for people who are acquiring English.
I suspect that the real problem Taiwan has with English is that policymakers are not aware of the research.
At the English Language Teacher conference in Taiwan next month, my colleagues and I will be presenting several papers on improving English, including the problems with forcing speech and the advantages and pleasures of listening to stories, all supported by serious academic research.
Stephen Krashen
Los Angeles, California
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