Exchanges between Taiwan and the US on bilingual education support Washington’s policy of limiting Chinese influence in the US, as well as Taiwan’s goal of becoming a bilingual nation by 2030, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Brent Christensen said at a Bilingual Education Symposium at Kaohsiung’s National Sun Yat-sen University yesterday.
A US-Taiwan Education Initiative would increase the number of Americans visiting Taiwan to study Mandarin, as well as the number of Taiwanese Mandarin teachers in the US, Christensen said.
The initiative was conceived in a memorandum of understanding signed on Dec. 3 last year between the AIT and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US.
Photo: Fang Chih-hsien, Taipei Times
Nearly 300 educators from across Taiwan attended the symposium, which was also attended by Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) and Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠).
Speaking at the symposium, Pan announced that a bilingual training center would be established at the university as part of the initiative.
The initiative is an important milestone formally marking the beginning of cooperation between the two nations on education issues, he said.
Over the past few months, Taiwanese and US representatives have held several meetings and workshops to discuss educational topics, with bilingual education a major focus, he added.
“English-language skills are an important foundation in efforts to be internationally competitive,” Pan said.
Aside from equipping educators with English-language skills, the bilingual training center would also provide digital resources, including a platform that teachers could access for teaching material, he said.
Christensen touted the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange’s Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program as an important resource to help achieve the initiative’s goals.
The program, which was implemented in Taiwan by the foundation in 2003, brings teaching assistants from the US to Taiwan to help teach English at the nation’s elementary and junior high schools, he said.
The program is run in 160 nations, but Taiwan has the second-largest implementation worldwide, Pan said, adding that Taiwan is one of the few places in the world where the program is continuing with in-person exchanges amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The moment is ripe for deepening cooperation, especially in teaching and studying Chinese and English. What an excellent example of ‘real friends, real progress,’” Pan said.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS