Taiwan and Australia are to collaborate on language courses and training teachers after the Ministry of Education, the National Development Council and the Australian Office in Taipei yesterday signed the Taiwan-Australia English Learning Partners Action Plan.
The program aims to increase focus on the average proficiency of Taiwanese in bilingual communications, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said.
The program includes expedited development of bilingual high-education facilities, creating a bilingual learning environment in elementary and junior-high schools, enhancing the digital learning environment for English, promoting the acceptance of Taiwan’s General English Proficiency Test among international facilities and universities, boosting Mandarin education, and fostering and increasing the talent pool for bilingual education.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Education
The ministry looks forward to working with its Australian peers on bilingual education for students under the 12-Year National Education Program and those in higher education to create online teaching programs and to help English-language teaching at vocational schools, Pan said.
Australia’s efforts to train bilingual talent and step up English-language training for vocational education would interface with professional associations and private organizations based on the needs of both sides, the ministry said.
The project aims to produce more bilingual individuals in the fields of tourism, medicare and in the technology sector, as well as in other industries, the ministry said.
The program was first discussed in March, and the ceremony yesterday marked an excellent beginning for a Taiwan-Australia partnership, National Development Council Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said.
The program also highlights the council’s resolve to implement the government’s 2030 bilingual policy by offering more diverse channels to learn English and creating more opportunities for bilingual Taiwanese to excel and shine on the international stage, Kung said.
Australian Representative to Taiwan Jenny Bloomfield said that the program would deepen Taiwan-Australia collaboration in education, vocational training and youth interaction by establishing more sister-school ties and introducing more joint degree programs.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s New Colombo plan, which was enacted in 2015, has seen thousands of participants travel to Taiwan for academic discussions and other interactions, the ministry said.
These efforts will allow Taiwan to train more talented individuals who can travel the world based on their professional knowledge and proficiency in English, it said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the