As Taiwan celebrated Teachers’ Day on Saturday, many Taiwanese students and even English teachers misspelled the term as “Teacher’s Day,” showing that there is room for improvement regarding the public’s English spelling ability. This reminds me of the Cabinet’s proposal of a bilingual nation (雙語國家) policy last year, aimed at making English a second official language.
Although the government then released the Blueprint for Developing Taiwan into a Bilingual Nation by 2030 (二○三○雙語國家政策發展藍圖), the policy is going nowhere a year later.
One of the strategies in the blueprint is making the official Web sites of all government agencies bilingual. However, if you visit the English Web site of the Ministry of Education, you will find only one entry in the “News Updates” category for this whole month, and the “Events” category has not been updated for almost a month. Does the ministry really intend to promote the bilingual policy?
At other agencies, the situation is not much better. On an English Web page created by another agency to promote an international tourism event, the renowned Guinness World Records is mistranslated as “King’s Records” and “Kim’s Records.”
Obviously, there is still a long way to go before Taiwan can be transformed into a bilingual state.
To improve English proficiency in Taiwan, the government should increase the number of class hours devoted to English, and adopt more practical materials and flexible teaching methods. Unfortunately, it is busy training elementary and high-school teachers to teach all subjects in English even before students can communicate in the language, while turning a blind eye to the many local universities that are cutting compulsory English courses just to save money. By doing so, isn't it focusing on the superficial over the essential?
Eddy Chang is an assistant professor of English at National Taipei University of Business.
Apart from the first arms sales approval for Taiwan since US President Donald Trump took office, last month also witnessed another milestone for Taiwan-US relations. Trump signed the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act into law on Tuesday. Its passing without objection in the US Senate underscores how bipartisan US support for Taiwan has evolved. The new law would further help normalize exchanges between Taiwanese and US government officials. We have already seen a flurry of visits to Washington earlier this summer, not only with Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), but also delegations led by National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu
When the towers of Wang Fuk Court turned into a seven-building inferno on Wednesday last week, killing 128 people, including a firefighter, Hong Kong officials promised investigations, pledged to review regulations and within hours issued a plan to replace bamboo scaffolding with steel. It sounded decisive. It was not. The gestures are about political optics, not accountability. The tragedy was not caused by bamboo or by outdated laws. Flame-retardant netting is already required. Under Hong Kong’s Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme — which requires buildings more than 30 years old to undergo inspection every decade and compulsory repairs — the framework for
President William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced a plan to invest an additional NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.8 billion) in military spending to procure advanced defense systems over the next eight years, and outlined two major plans and concrete steps to defend democratic Taiwan in the face of China’s intensifying threat. While Lai’s plans for boosting the country’s national security have been praised by many US lawmakers, former defense officials, academics and the American Institute in Taiwan, the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan, they were not equally welcomed by all Taiwanese, particularly among the opposition parties. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman
President William Lai’s (賴清德) historic announcement on Wednesday, Nov. 26, of a supplemental defense budget valued in excess of US$40 billion is a testament to the seriousness with which Taiwan is responding to the relentless expansionist ambitions of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Chinese Communist Party and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Lai is responding to the threat posed to Taiwan sovereignty along with US President Donald Trump’s insistence that American partners in good standing must take on more responsibility for their own defense. The supplemental defense budget will be broken into three main parts. The first and largest piece
RSS