Bilingual 2030: In Conversation with Lin Tzu-bin

[@romeocivilino6667]

I think it’s good for Taiwan to look up to the Language Policy Experiences of the Philippines in these matters. They can learned the Philippines Recorded failures, shortcomings, mitigations and how they approached several issues and problems that arise from it’s enforcement and promotions then, during the early days of propagation in the Philippines during Early part of 19th Century American Occupation of the Philippines up to the Era of Establishments of the Philippine Commonwealth.

[@阮Michael]

Forcing teachers who are not proficient in English to teach a subject in English just sounds like an invitation for a disaster or at best a farce. Wouldn't it be more prudent to send Taiwanese teachers to total immersion environments for 5-10 years to hone their English skills to acceptable levels first? This time can be shorter with intensive learning schedules: studying 14-16 hours a day, 7 days a week for 2-3 years. The teachers need to be on par with or exceed native speakers before being allowed to teach in English. Native speaker teachers can fill the spots of Taiwanese teachers in those 5-10 years in the meantime. Training teachers to make sure they are up to par may be expensive, but it must be done to make sure a slippery slope situation does not develop in which nonstandard English progressively deviates further from the standard through successive teaching of the nonstandard and becomes a new dialect that is no longer intelligible to speakers of standard English. Secondly, the students must also have access to simultaneous instruction in the native languages to ensure understanding of the content of the subject matter. Reduce the pace of teaching if necessary to ensure both goals are achieved: promotion of English or any other foreign language and thorough understanding of the subject in question. This way you may sacrifice time, but you will achieve both goals. Some kind of sacrifice must be made. You can't have everything at the same time.

[@chunjuihsu1972]

Agree with you. Having teachers trained in an English environment can be really helpful. I believe as short as 3-months in the Philippines can also make a huge difference.

[@mertenkeith5420]

This policy is alive indeed but sadly Taiwan doesn't do anything to improve their education of English language at schools. They think that taking foreigners to teach English at schools will sort out the issue and teenagers will become fluent in English. Taiwan needs to change the way English future teachers are educated. English at schools should be taught in English, not Chinese! Change your coursebooks asap! There are plenty of beautiful and useful coursebook however Taiwan is using coursebooks designed ages ago! Change the senior high school entry exams. Why students have 10 readings on their exam. What is the purpose of it? The list here is very long...

[@taiwansivispacemparabellum9546]

I can see myself staring at this professor blindly, trying to figure out what he's enunciating. Not the accent, his enunciation. Send god please.

[@cooliipie]

Get foreigners(real English speakers) to teach in public schools. Taiwanese, no matter how much they study English, will always sound off.

[@taiwansivispacemparabellum9546]

I cringed when this "educator" said "Blah-Blah".

[@阮Michael]

There are plenty of instances of non-native speakers acquiring native competence and accent in their second, third, fourth, etc. languages. Not all of them are language geniuses. All it takes is serious efforts with the right training. Former NTU phonetics professor, Karen Chung, has taught students that practically passed as native speakers after her courses. Speaking with an acceptable standard pronunciation and enunciation is a science that can be taught methodically without judgment. Many KZbinrs even offer free or for-pay English accent training in their videos, complete with phonetic analyses. The underlying, real problem in Taiwan, however, is the unwillingness to openly admit one's own linguistic shortcomings or to undertake and accept the training in the first place. Many Taiwanese instinctively shy away from revealing or being revealed that their English or pronunciation is "off" or grossly subpar just because of the fear of losing face. "Face" is an enormous cultural problem to overcome before any improvement can be expected in Taiwan's English competence. The Taiwanese really need to think about and decide whether each individual's face is more important than the whole country's surviving economically and politically in the long run against China. So far, no one I have heard of in any leadership positions has even touched this subject, presumably because of how sensitive this is. There is even a Chinese proverb to the effect of death is preferable to humiliation, which goes to show how culturally deeply entrenched the concept of "face" is. It won't be easy. Sigh.