Thanks to sponsorship from the US State Department, National Cheng Kung University is now offering a medical program in English to improve its medical students’ use of the language.
Tsai Mei-ling (蔡美玲), director of the Office of International Affairs at the university’s College of Medicine, said the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) had accepted her proposal for the US’ English Language Specialist Program — a project funded by the State Department that sends US academics specializing in teaching English as a second or foreign language abroad to help develop curriculum, textbooks, or hold training seminars for teachers.
Upon acceptance of the proposal, the Office of English Language Programs at the State Department dispatched Andrew Noonan, one of the fellows of the program, to offer a 10-month medical English program to the College of Medicine, she said.
Tsai said Taiwanese medical students need to develop a more “global vision” and “awareness as citizens of the global village” if they hoped to increase their participation in international medical missions.
In addition, Tsai said, medical majors should also be encouraged to help the nation develop medical tourism with Taiwanese characteristics.
“To reach this goal, encouraging students to participate in overseas training and international rescue is an important start,” Tsai said. “The improvement of the use of professional [medical] English is the only way to motivate this very first step.”
During a meeting with university president Michael Lai (賴明詔) in Tainan on Thursday, Scott Robinson, director of AIT’s American Culture Center, praised Taiwan’s medical system, adding that he expected the program to contribute to greater participation by Taiwanese medical students in developing medical tourism and in international medical or rescue services.
In a related development, Tony Lin (林文通), director of the Ministry of Education’s Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations, said the ministry planned to expand foreign intern exchanges between Taiwan and France.
The ministry and the French Institute in Taipei launched the exchange program three years ago to enhance mutual understanding, with Taiwan sending a number of teaching assistants to teach Mandarin in secondary schools in France, while France sent students to Taiwan to serve as teaching assistants in French classes.
Eleven Taiwanese students were sent to France this year, while 10 French students came to Taiwan.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS