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
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump is to return to the White House in January, but his second term would surely be different from the first. His Cabinet would not include former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former US national security adviser John Bolton, both outspoken supporters of Taiwan. Trump is expected to implement a transactionalist approach to Taiwan, including measures such as demanding that Taiwan pay a high “protection fee” or requiring that Taiwan’s military spending amount to at least 10 percent of its GDP. However, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invades Taiwan, it is doubtful that Trump would dispatch
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has been dubbed Taiwan’s “sacred mountain.” In the past few years, it has invested in the construction of fabs in the US, Japan and Europe, and has long been a world-leading super enterprise — a source of pride for Taiwanese. However, many erroneous news reports, some part of cognitive warfare campaigns, have appeared online, intentionally spreading the false idea that TSMC is not really a Taiwanese company. It is true that TSMC depositary receipts can be purchased on the US securities market, and the proportion of foreign investment in the company is high. However, this reflects the
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
RSS