More than 90 percent of Taiwanese consider learning Mandarin helpful for work and interpersonal relationships, a survey released by National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Chinese Language and Technology Center showed.
The survey, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, collected 1,092 valid samples from Taiwanese aged 21 to 60, the center said on Thursday.
The study also used news reports on classical Chinese education posted on Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest online bulletin board system, it added.
Photo: CNA
The survey was publicized after an announcement by the University Admission Committee last month that subjects of the General Scholastic Ability Test are to be included in each university department’s admission criteria.
The test consists of six subjects: Mandarin, English, category A mathematics, category B mathematics, social sciences and the sciences.
However, some universities — including a number of engineering departments at National Taiwan University — have decided to exclude applicant scores for Mandarin when considering their qualifications.
The project’s principal investigator, Chung Chung-hsien (鍾宗憲), who is also a professor at NTNU’s Department of Chinese, said on Thursday that the Mandarin language topic has generated a lot of discussion.
Mandarin courses are often criticized as being conservative, especially as electronic devices have altered the function of language and how people interact, he said, adding that opinions for and against Mandarin courses exist.
The survey found that 76 percent of respondents considered Mandarin lessons “very good” or “good”; while 82.7 percent of respondents thought that Mandarin teachers were “very good” or “good,” he said.
Furthermore, 91.7 percent, 88.5 percent and 91.8 percent of the respondents thought that Mandarin courses had a good influence on career, life planning and interpersonal relationships respectively, he said.
One of the major goals of Mandarin courses is to facilitate communication by teaching the essence of the language, he said.
Respondents over the age of 30 highly supported Mandarin lessons, indicating that teaching materials containing a large proportion of classical Chinese, familiar to people in that age group’s school curriculum, do not hinder the ability to learn and apply the language, he said.
His comment alluded to the Ministry of Education’s curriculum review committee decision in 2017 to reduce the proportion of classical Chinese content in senior-high schools to between 35 percent and 45 percent from between 45 percent and 65 percent; the change took effect in 2019.
NTNU Department of Chinese professor Hsu Kuo-neng (徐國能) said that departments can only consider scores of four subjects as their admission criteria, so a trade-off would be inevitable.
However, some departments initially decided to exclude Mandarin, but later included it back in their assessment criteria, he said.
Language education is related to students’ adaptability, competitiveness and quality of life, so should be reconsidered and adjusted, he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS