Wed, Jan 16, 2019 page8

• Boost school recruitment with more languages

  • By Hsu Yu-fang 許又方
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  New curriculum guidelines for elementary and junior-high schools are to take effect in August. As part of the guidelines, language courses for new citizens are to be made compulsory, which could be hugely helpful to attract international students.

  The effects of the nation’s falling birthrate in the past few years has made it increasingly difficult for higher-education institutions to attract students. This has made schools think of ways to attract foreign students, with a special focus on those from Southeast Asia.

  For example, at the school where I teach, the largest contingents of foreign students come from Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Malaysia, and most of them are not very familiar with Chinese. The school must therefore provide a fairly large number of classes in English.

  The question is how effective these classes are. When I discussed the issue with an American colleague, he said in a very roundabout way that with the exception of a few students, the English level of most of the Southeast Asian students was not sufficient to understand most of the academic concepts taught in the classes, despite them having a certain level of English-language comprehension.

  I have heard the same thing from a Taiwanese colleague teaching in English. There are other issues, and a Malaysian student once complained that a teacher did not have very good English pronunciation and made frequent grammatical mistakes to the point that the student sometimes did not understand what the teacher was talking about.

  In other words, teaching classes in English is not always as effective as it should be, in particular as Southeast Asian students are not native English-language speakers.

  I will leave aside the issue of whether it is reasonable to require that teachers lecture in English just so that Taiwan should be able to attract more foreign students, although one comment often heard on campus is that foreign students in Taiwan should learn Chinese, just as Taiwanese students have to learn English if they are studying in the US.

  As the government is encouraging universities to look for students in Southeast Asia and thus having to provide courses in English, would it not be possible to take it one step further and provide courses in Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian?

  At first this might sound like a wild fantasy, but a more serious look implies that it is not necessarily impossible. Data show that by 2030, one out of every four people 25 years or younger — quite a large number — would be children of immigrants. While it is true that most immigrants come from China, one-third come from Southeast Asia.

  Based on my teaching experience, the children of Southeast Asian parents often have excellent bilingual skills — Mandarin and their parent’s native language.

  For example, one such student has just passed the test for teaching Mandarin as a foreign language and is to go to his mother’s native country, Thailand, to teach Mandarin there.

  If the government is willing to train the children of immigrants with an aptitude for academic studies to become teachers, could it not use their bilingual abilities to teach Southeast Asian students using their native language?

  Furthermore, if Taiwanese children who do not have an immigrant parent also studied Southeast Asian languages and later became teachers, Taiwan would be even better placed to attract students from the region. Perhaps this is an approach that the government should give some serious consideration.

  Hsu Yu-fang is a professor at National Dong Hwa University.

  Translated by Perry Svensson
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