Lawmakers yesterday expressed concern that in promoting English and native language education the Ministry of Education was causing students' Mandarin abilities to deteriorate.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday said during an Education Committee question session at the Legislative Yuan that Mandarin classes in schools had been drastically cut after the start of education reforms in 2001.
Seventy-two to 96 hours of elementary school Mandarin class time had been cut, Hung said.
Forty-five hours had been cut in junior high and 48 in high school, she added.
Compared to other Asian countries, Taiwan set aside fewer hours for Mandarin classes, Hung said.
Taiwan offered 80 to 133 hours of Mandarin, while China had 172 to 271 hours, and Singapore offered 80 to 240 hours, she said.
The reading ability of elementary school students was lower than the international standard and the length of articles that they read was shorter too, she said.
She did not cite any sources for this information.
KMT Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) added that in a recent survey conducted by Taipei City's Education Department, 98.6 percent of the 355 teachers polled said that they felt their students' Mandarin abilities had declined compared with students of a few years ago.
Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said he felt that the recent drop in students' Mandarin abilities was largely because of multiple choice exam questions and computerized testing methods.
"The reasons behind the drop are complicated," Tu said. "But the education ministry is currently reevaluating its policies regarding computerized testing and multiple choice questions."
Multiple choice questions curb students' creativity and imagination, he said.
Tu gave a report on the language abilities of students and other education policies during the session. However, English and mother-tongue education policies were not the target of legislators' fire.
Tu said that the media's frequent use of Mandarin homonyms confused students, and might be another cause of the decline in Mandarin ability.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS