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.
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