A second round of high-level talks on educational cooperation were held on Tuesday between Taiwan and the US, with officials vowing to expand language exchange commitments made over the past year.
Established in December 2020, the US-Taiwan Education Initiative intends to expand opportunities for Americans to learn Mandarin and US teachers to help Taiwan reach its goal of becoming a bilingual nation by 2030.
Tuesday’s dialogue was held to assess achievements of the initiative thus far, as well as develop a plan for further cooperation over the next three to five years, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said.
Photo: CNA
National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) and US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink led the two-hour dialogue, held via teleconference.
The AIT vowed to “help ensure that US campuses remain bastions of innovation and intellectual freedom, values we share with Taiwan.”
Scholarship funding from both sides was increased under the initiative, including US Department of State language exchanges and Fulbright teaching programs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release yesterday.
Taiwan’s Huayu Best Program saw strides in facilitating Mandarin teaching exchanges between universities, while 15 Taiwan Centers for Mandarin Learning have been opened, setting the program on its way to establishing 100 centers in the US and Europe in the coming years, it added.
The Ministry of Education in May and June is to lead a delegation to the NAFSA Conference in Denver, Colorado, with a stopover in Washington to hold meetings and sign a memorandum of understanding on the Huayu Best Program and sister schools, it said.
Next year is to also see the first cohort of five to seven Taiwanese K-12 instructors teaching Mandarin in US schools through the Teachers of Critical Language Program, it added.
On the US side, dialogue attendees included US Department of Education Chief of Staff Sheila Nix, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Camille Dawson, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Academic Programs Ethan Rosenzweig, AIT Managing Director for the Washington office Ingrid Larson and AIT Deputy Director Jeremy Cornforth.
Taiwan sent representatives from the education and foreign ministries and the Overseas Community Affairs Council, as well as Deputy Representative to the US Cheng Jung-chun (鄭榮俊).
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS