The government is promoting its “Bilingual Nation by 2030” policy, which includes highlighting the necessity of balancing and optimizing bilingual conditions for schools of all levels.
Data indicate a link between the socioeconomic status of families and children’s learning outcome in English. The government has determined that promoting English in elementary schools would make up for socioeconomic inequalities. It is also taking other measures such as boosting digital learning in English and increasing bilingual personnel.
The Taiwan Assessment of Student Achievement Longitudinal Study showed that there are patterned relationships between students’ socioeconomic characteristics and their learning outcomes in English, but anyone who has taken statistics knows that correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
There are other unmeasured factors that affect students’ English proficiency, such as learning strategies, teaching methods and resources.
With the complicated interplay of these psychological, socioeconomic and education factors, the government should not be so naive to believe that the issue could be solved through the simple and coarse policy of adopting bilingual education as early as possible.
If the government wishes to address socioeconomic inequality, a better method would be to offer financial support, such as through grants or scholarships.
The creation of an immersive English environment could hardly be achieved just by adopting bilingual education in elementary and junior-high schools.
As teaching hours are fixed, if every subject were to be taught in English and Chinese, the policy would hinder the conveyance of knowledge.
In the US, to help students who are learning English as a second language, the government does not promote immersive learning, but instead full-time language schools. When a student is equipped with adequate English skills, they can then focus on other subjects.
As for improving English proficiency in Taiwan, the government promotes the existing teaching platform Cool English as the main source for learning, expecting up to 40 percent of schools to use the system by 2024.
Nevertheless, as new apps and programs about English learning and teaching hit the market daily, students can learn English any time, anywhere.
As the materials on Cool English are centered on daily conversation and lack in-depth discussion and analyses, students who rely solely on the platform to improve their English might only make progress with basic speaking skills. Without further vocabulary, students would not be able to engage in debate or analysis in conferences or hold in-depth exchanges.
In terms of bilingual faculty, it is outdated to think that hiring English-speaking assistants would improve bilingual education for students. People who speak English are not necessarily skilled in teaching it, just as native Mandarin speakers are not automatically capable of teaching.
Due to the popularity of the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT and translation software, students could be robbed of their motivation to learn English. Therefore, rather than spending large sums of money building platforms or hiring bilingual faculty, a better solution would be to offer subsidies to students taking English proficiency tests, or subsidize their purchase of hardware to study. Only in this way can the government address socioeconomic inequalities when promoting its bilingual plan.
Liu Yung-chien is an educator.
Translated by Rita Wang
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