Government-run English villages face a shortage of foreign teachers, a Ministry of Education report showed yesterday.
The report by National Taiwan Normal University English professors Vincent Chang (張武昌) and Chern Chiou-lan (陳秋蘭) said that 16 of the nation’s 22 English villages in 11 cities and counties reported difficulty recruiting foreign teachers.
English villages — facilities simulating real-life situations such as dining in restaurants or shopping to help students learn English — have been springing up since Taoyuan County established three in 2007.
The villages operate between one and five days a week and are open for half-day or full-day sessions for students. Some of the villages also hold summer camps.
The villages complain that they do not have sufficient funds to recruit foreign teachers with teaching certificates and were thus forced to find other alternatives, such as hiring foreign teachers who do not possess valid teaching certificates or seeking help from foreign parents or cram school teachers.
Given this phenomenon, the report urged the ministry to review whether it was legitimate for villages to hire foreign teachers who do not hold valid teaching certificates.
“Foreign teachers are integral in English villages that emphasize an English-only environment. They help put pressure on the children who visit the villages because the students have no choice but to speak English,” the report said.
Some of the villages said there was an “uneven” quality of foreign teachers they recruited, adding that many foreign teachers only plan to stay in the same village for a short period of time because they just came to experience the local lifestyle.
The report also found that the government failed to meet its goal of bringing in foreign teachers to improve the English learning environment in remote areas because most city and county governments concentrated the foreign teachers they recruited in the English villages.
The report also criticized the policy of having students visit the villages for between half and one day in a semester.
“There isn’t enough time [for students] to learn or internalize [English in the villages]. They are only left with an experience or a feeling. This cannot make up for weak [English] lessons in schools,” the report said.
Students visiting the villages only recited dialogues they memorized before going to the villages, the report said, urging the ministry to improve the effectiveness of the villages.
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