The Ministry of Education recently announced that elementary school students in some areas must pass general proficiency tests in Chinese, English and mathematics in order to graduate, starting in the 2005 academic year. Sixth-graders who do not do so will be required to take supplementary courses to bring them up to the standards required for graduation.
This new policy will probably become a cause for concern for parents who expect their children to develop healthily and to experience the pleasure of learning.
Stephen Krashen, a professor of linguistics at the University of Southern California, has argued that teaching is unduly oriented toward the taking of tests. For a vocabulary test, teachers and parents urge students simply to memorize vocabulary and spelling. For a grammar test, teachers teach just grammar and the students study nothing but grammar.
Research, however, shows that reading for pleasure is the most effective way to develop vocabulary and grammar skills. Besides, the cognitive ability of children is generally insufficiently developed for rigorous instruction on the finer points of grammar. Rather, children should naturally take in grammar through human interaction and by reading for their own pleasure.
The proficiency test imposed on elementary school students will encourage teaching methods that count chickens before they are hatched. We can expect more and more mid-term, monthly and term exams for elementary English education. The exams will require students to memorize new vocabulary and sentence structures instantly.
But studies in Taiwan have long shown that difficulties memorizing vocabulary and problems understanding grammar are the biggest obstacles facing elementary English education. These are also the main reasons why some students lose interest in learning English.
In fact, the development of language skills occurs over a long period of time as part of a gradual, cumulative process. If a word is important, it will appear frequently. There is no need to get anxious if children cannot memorize it immediately. As long as they are interested and confident, they will get the hang of it sooner or later.
At present, many cram schools, teachers, and parents require children to memorize vocabulary and spelling. The new English proficiency test will further encourage belief in the misguided notion that the faster children learn the better they learn.
Wu Yin-chang
Wu also points out something particular in our culture: people get nervous and go all out for high grades if there is a test.
If proficiency tests for graduating elementary school students are to come into effect, one possible consequence is that the students will "go all out for the tests." One common problem shared by both elementary and junior high schools is that the level of proficiency varies greatly from one student to another. The tests will only review the problems experienced by the students.
I believe the time and money that the tests will cost would be better spent on raising the teaching skills of the teachers. How to teach classes of varying levels of proficiency, for example, is a constant professional challenge faced by English teachers. We should focus on new approaches to course planning and on how to innovate in English-language education.
Wu Ching-shyue is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages at Chaoyang University of Technology.
Translated by Grace Shaw
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,