The Ministry of Education changing the focus of its English-language curriculum for high-school students to prioritize listening and speaking skills over memorizing vocabulary.
The ministry’s Curriculum Evaluation Committee on Sunday decided to reduce the number of English words and terms students must be familiar with before graduation, saying it would encourage students to “first listen, then speak, then write.”
Sunday’s meeting was intended to introduce amendments to the curriculum guidelines for the 12-year national education system, which were originally intended to be implemented last year, but were pushed back to September this year.
The committee feels that the curriculum should emphasize the nature of language as a tool of communication, K-12 Education Administration Director-General Chiu Chien-kuo (邱乾國) said.
Students at regular high schools will now be required to know 4,500 English words, down from 7,000, while those at comprehensive and technical high schools will need to know 3,500, Chiu said.
Knowing this number of words will be important to understanding the curriculum content, and he hopes teachers can expand on the use of these words without requiring students to memorize more vocabulary that they would not use, Chiu said.
Chang Wu-chang (張武昌), who heads a subcommittee to determine English-language curriculum changes, said a list of commonly used English terms was formulated a while ago.
The list was compiled so that students would not have to memorize very difficult words that they would be likely to misuse, Chang said.
While course materials can incorporate supplementary vocabulary, teachers should avoid emphasizing rote memorization, Chang said.
There will be an increase in the number of listening components in the Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior-High School Students, and so teachers should start to periodically test their students’ listening ability, he said.
Schools should seek to foster an English-language environment in classrooms with events such as “English days” and speech contests, as well as bringing foreign teachers into the classroom, he added.
Chen Chao-ming (陳超明), a visiting professor at Shih Chien University who has researched the changes to the English-language test in Taiwan’s university entrance examinations over the past two decades, said 2,000 words on the old high school vocabulary lists never appeared in the exams.
There were also 1,000 words in the exams that never appeared in high school textbooks, he said.
Helping students improve their English reading ability would be more beneficial than having them memorize 7,000 words, Chen said.
The distinction between speaking and reading ability must be recognized, as an average of 1,500 to 2,000 words is enough for everyday conversation, but reading a book like Harry Potter requires a 10,000-word vocabulary, while understanding a university textbook written in English requires a vocabulary of 15,000 to 20,000 words, he said.
Different academic majors require different vocabularies and this should be addressed through specialized courses, he said.
National Taipei University professor Liu Ching-Kang (劉慶剛) said the reduced vocabulary requirements might make high school textbooks appear too simple, but “textbooks are only the beginning of study, not the end.”
Teachers should look at the abilities of all the students in a class and make appropriate adjustments to the curriculum, he said, adding that an ability to properly use the vocabulary is what is most important.
Huang Han-yu (黃涵榆), an English professor at National Taiwan Normal University, said focusing just on the number of words students must learn is too one-sided.
The problem of how language is taught must be addressed, or else students’ English-language abilities will not improve regardless of the number of words they need to remember, she said.
Teachers should use techniques such as synonyms and context-specific examples to help students understand words they are unfamiliar with, she said.
The committee also decided to introduce Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hokkien and seven Southeast Asian languages into the high-school curriculum beginning next year.
Students will be required to study one of the languages, determined by their family background, with options including Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia, Malay, Thai, Cambodian, Tagalog and Burmese.
The move will hopefully allow young people to better understand their heritage, make them more international in outlook and help further the government’s New Southbound Policy, Chiu said.
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