The Ministry of Education and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) on Tuesday last week inaugurated the Office of Global Mandarin Education, with officials saying that they hope to devise strategies and integrate resources to promote the nation as a top destination for foreigners who want to learn the Chinese language.
NTNU president Chang Kuo-en (張國恩) said that when the university founded its Mandarin Training Center in 1956, the institute had only five students, but now about 6,000 students study Chinese at NTNU every year.
About one-third of the students who graduated from the Department of Chinese as a Second Language and the Department of Applied Chinese Language and Culture pursued a career as Chinese teachers at foreign institutions, he added.
With the help of the advisers who the ministry recruited from academia and business, the office is aimed at pooling resources from different sectors of society to promote the nation’s Mandarin education sector, he said.
The office will supply Mandarin teachers to ASEAN members in accordance with the government’s “new southbound policy,” while having a global focus when promoting the nation as a Mandarin-
teaching hub, the ministry’s Department of International and Cross-strait Education Director-General Yang Ming-ling (楊敏玲) said.
Through the joint efforts of NTNU and the ministry, 111 Mandarin teachers were dispatched to 16 nations to teach traditional Chinese, and many of them have built promising careers due to their outstanding work, Yang said.
One of the office’s missions is to identify foreigners’ needs learning Chinese and devise strategies and create teaching methods, she said.
As about half the foreign students studying at NTNU pursue further education after graduating from Chinese programs, 45 universities nationwide have set up language learning centers, which play a pivotal role in the ministry’s initiative to increase the number of foreign students who obtain Taiwanese diplomas, she said.
Responding to media queries about how the nation would respond to competition from China in the field of Chinese education, given the international prevalence of Confucius Institute branches set up by the Chinese government to promote Chinese education, NTNU vice president Sung Yao-ting (宋曜廷) said that even though China has spent profusely on sending teachers abroad to teach Chinese, Taiwan outperforms China with its animated teaching materials.
Sung said the most common criticism about the institute is that its teaching materials are laced with dogmas and that its teaching methods lack ingenuity.
With the help of the Internet, students who sign up for Chinese learning or graduate programs can obtain their diplomas online, he said.
Another edge Taiwan has over China is its technology-driven classes, Sung said, citing NTNU’s Smart Pinyin system, which automatically detects problems with foreign students’ intonation and corrects them.
“I think we have a pretty good chance [against China],” Sung said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS