A majority of Taiwanese support making English the nation’s second official language and promoting bilingual education, a poll released yesterday by the Professor Huang Kun-huei Education Foundation showed.
Eighty-seven percent of the respondents agreed that English should be Taiwan’s second official language, while 9 percent disagreed, the poll showed.
Eighty-nine percent said that public elementary and junior-high schools should offer bilingual classes taught in Mandarin and English, a practice only allowed at private schools, poll committee member Feng Ching-huang (馮清皇) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The National Development Council on Dec. 6 unveiled a blueprint to make Taiwan a bilingual nation by 2030, but whether to list English as the nation’s second official language is still being debated.
National Taiwan Normal University information and computer education professor Ho Rong-guey (何榮桂), who attended the news conference, said that most respondents seemed to support the policy, adding that officials should start working on it soon, for example by preparing bilingual versions of official documents and improving their English proficiency.
Most respondents also said that the nation’s education system needs to be reformed to put more emphasis on thinking, rather than knowledge-oriented instruction that merely helps students obtain diplomas, the poll showed.
Asked whether they agreed with the idea that curricula taught at elementary, junior-high and high schools should encourage students to have a deeper understanding of Taiwanese geography, history and culture, 68.8 percent of respondents said yes, while 26.1 percent said no.
It is curious that the question’s approval rating was less than that of other questions, especially among the group of respondents with higher education, Ho said, adding that the results need to be analyzed further.
Most Taiwanese have progressive educational concepts that echo global trends, so the government should accelerate its educational reforms, foundation chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said.
The telephone survey was conducted from Nov. 27 to Nov. 30 and collected 1,071 valid samples from people older than 20, and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The final batch of 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks purchased from the US arrived at Taipei Port last night and were transported to the Armor Training Command in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), completing the military’s multi-year procurement of 108 of the tanks. Starting at 12:10am today, reporters observed more than a dozen civilian flatbed trailers departing from Taipei Port, each carrying an M1A2T tank covered with black waterproof tarps. Escorted by military vehicles, the convoy traveled via the West Coast Expressway to the Armor Training Command, with police implementing traffic control. The army operates about 1,000 tanks, including CM-11 Brave Tiger
China on Wednesday teased in a video an aircraft carrier that could be its fourth, and the first using nuclear power, while making an allusion to Taiwan and vowing to further build up its islands, as it looks to boost maritime power, secure resources and bolster territorial claims. The video, issued on the eve of the 77th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, featured fictional officers with names that are homophones of three commissioned aircraft carriers, the Liaoning (遼寧), Shandong (山東) and Fujian (福建). Titled Into the Deep, it showed a 19-year-old named “Hejian” (何劍) joining the group, sparking
BIG YEAR: The company said it would also release its A12 chip the same year to keep a ‘reliable stream of new silicon technologies’ flowing to its customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its newest A13 chip is to enter volume production in 2029 as the chipmaker seeks to hold onto its tech leadership and demand for next-generation chips used in artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, also unveiled its A12 chip at its annual technology symposium in Santa Clara, California. The A12 chip, which features TSMC’s super-power-rail technology to provide backside power delivery for AI and HPC applications, is also to enter volume production in 2029, a year after the scheduled release of the A14 chip. The technology moves
RSS