Students' communication abilities have dropped drastically in recent years with the decrease of class hours at school and the prevalence of Internet usage, teachers' organizations said yesterday.
Since educational reforms were implemented in 2001, language classes have gone from 10 periods per week to as little as six periods, cutting out 96 hours per year of class time, in elementary schools nationwide, said Wang Ling-hui (王玲惠), director of the Taiwan Provincial Education Association (TPEA).
The drop in linguistic ability is also causing problems for students in subjects such as math, since many have difficulty with word problems, Wang said.
Web chat
Internet usage and online chat have also affected students' ability to discern the correct Chinese characters, since the Microsoft phonetic system used when keying in characters on a computer keyboard automatically selects the word for the user, Wang added.
Lin An-wu (林安梧), a professor in the Chinese department at National Taiwan Normal University, said that literary Chinese is now often regarded as an unnecessary part of language education in junior high schools because of its so-called difficulty.
Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese.
However, Lin said that many phrases in the Hokklo and Hakka languages have actually preserved the usage of ancient Chinese. In learning mother tongues, students should take the opportunity to learn literary Chinese as well, he added.
"Nowadays, people talk about avoiding putting pressure on students, but in fact, everybody needs a bit of pressure. What we [teachers] shouldn't do is force education upon the students," Lin said.
According to studies conducted in 2003 in Taiwan, the average student spends 1,200 hours per year in the classroom, said Chou Chu-ing (
Television a problem
Time spent in front of the television follows closely behind, at 1,000 hours, meaning that time set aside for reading has become almost non-existent, Chou said.
Studies in the US have also shown that on average, TV time is five times longer than reading time, Chou added.
"The less these students read, the lower their language abilities are," Chou said. "College students nowadays can't even answer essay questions properly."
The TPEA began evaluating various problems of educational reforms in October and now holds monthly conferences to discuss the problems.
In response, officials from the Ministry of Education said that teachers should encourage their students to do outside reading and to polish writing skills in their free time.
Ministry regulations stipulate that individual schools are allowed to adjust the number of hours allotted for language courses according to students' needs by offering after-school classes or even adding in extra language classes, officials added.
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