To promote the “bilingual country” policy, the Ministry of Education proposed late last year that certain subjects be taught in English only, to boost students’ English ability. According to a report recently published in the Economist, however, an “English-only” policy for all subjects may not necessarily benefit children’s learning, and may sometimes even be detrimental to it.
“Teaching children in English is fine if that is what they speak at home and their parents are fluent in it,” said the report. “But that is not the case in most public and low-cost private schools. Children are taught in a language they don’t understand by teachers whose English is poor. The children learn neither English nor anything else.”
The magazine reported that in a study conducted in 12 schools in Cameroon, those taught in their mother tongue did better than those taught in English in all subjects. As it suggested, English should indeed be seen as an important subject, but not necessarily the language of instruction at school.
Photo courtesy of Office of English as the Second Official Language of the Tainan City Government
照片：台南市政府第二官方語言辦公室
(Eddy Chang, Taipei Times)
為推行「雙語國家」政策，教育部去年底提議部分學科要用英語來授課，以增進學生英文能力。然而根據《經濟學人》近日的報導，所有科目都採用「全英語」方式對孩子的學習不見得有利，有時反而有害。
「如果孩童在家都是說英語，家長的英語也很流利，用英語上課就不成問題」，《經濟學人》說。「但大多數公立學校和低成本私立學校的情況並非如此，孩童以不了解的語言接受教育，老師本身英文又不好，既學不到英文，也學不到其它東西。」
該雜誌還報導，一項在喀麥隆十二所學校所進行的研究顯示，以母語來上課的學生，所有科目的表現皆優於以英語來上課的學生。該雜誌並建議，英語的確應被視為重要的科目，但學校不見得要用它教學授課。
（台北時報張聖恩〉
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