The government plans to train 2,000 grade-school teachers to teach entirely in English within the next four years, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said on Monday.
The Executive Yuan on Dec. 6, 2018 passed a “blueprint for developing a bilingual nation” submitted by the National Development Council, with the goal of achieving widespread public fluency in English by 2030.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday met with a group of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, and reportedly urged the lawmakers to make faster progress on the blueprint.
Tsai, who is also the DPP chairperson, was quoted as saying that English fluency was necessary to ensure Taiwan’s international competitiveness, and asked the ministry to work with legislators to facilitate that progress.
DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) also said that bilingualism was important for Taiwan’s international competitiveness, adding that it was an important policy for Tsai to implement during her second term.
DPP Legislator Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) said Tsai had spoken with Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) by telephone earlier in the day to inquire about progress on the blueprint, and was told that it had been put on hold due to elections.
Citing Tsai, Chang Liao said English fluency was important in many circumstances, such as when procuring arms internationally.
Tsai has asked defense officials to improve their English-language proficiency and knowledge of international affairs toward this purpose, he added.
The ministry later on Monday said it is promoting the use of English as the medium of instruction for English-language classes — as opposed to teaching grammar using Chinese, adding it would begin promoting the use of English as the medium of instruction for all courses in some vocational school departments.
It plans train 2,000 English-speaking teachers for this purpose over the next four years, and an additional 1,000 teachers before 2028, it said.
DPP Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) said that the ministry still had no road map to implement its goal.
The legislature cannot do anything until the Executive Yuan works out a legislative proposal that lawmakers could discuss, he said.
According to the ministry, the Executive Yuan has begun looking at loosening some restrictions, such as a stipulation in the Regulations Governing the Implementation of Kindergarten and Childcare Services (幼兒園教保服務實施準則) that prohibits all day or half-day foreign language lessons for children, as well as a stipulation in the Employment Service Act (就業服務法) prohibiting kindergartens from hiring foreign teachers.
It was focused on pushing for amendments to the National Education Act (國民教育法) and the Senior High School Education Act (高級中等教育法) that would pave the way for elementary, junior and senior-high schools to become more bilingual, the ministry said.
It said it also wants to have the Private School Act (私立學校法) amended to allow Taiwanese students attend international schools in the nation, and would push for dual-degree programs at colleges, among other amendments, it said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS