Legislators and educators called on the government to make English the nation’s second language, with recommendations to allocate money from the Cabinet’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Plan to achieve the objective.
Taiwan has to improve its English-language proficiency because it is the common language of international trade and commerce, and on a regional level it could facilitate the nation’s drive to forge partnerships with Southeast Asian countries under the government’s “new southbound policy,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳) said at public hearing on Friday, promoting the use of English throughout the nation’s private and public sectors.
The proposal for English to be included in the Ministry of Culture’s “national language development bill,” is to be taken into consideration along with a focus on promoting Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Hakka and Aboriginal languages, the ministry said.
Participants at the hearing also made suggestions for implementing bilingual education programs for children to require civil servants to pass spoken English proficiency tests and to change the way English is taught, by emphasizing listening and speaking rather than the pedagogical fixation on grammar and sentence construction.
“We have more people speaking and writing messages in Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka and English [via Line and other social messaging apps] with all the different languages all mixed together,” Liu said.
“As long as people can understand each other, there is no need to get worked up about grammar and correct sentence structure,” he added.
DPP Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) said he would request for the Ministry of Education and the National Development Council to implement programs under the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Plan to teach foreign languages in the public education system and create friendly environments to promote the use of English at city and county levels.
Liu and Chiu suggested a 20-year national plan for Taiwanese to speak English as a second language, using the examples set by Singapore and Malaysia.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
The Civil Aviation Administration yesterday said that it is considering punishments for China Airlines (CAL) and Starlux Airlines for making hard landings and overworking their cabin crew when the nation was hit by Typhoon Kong-rey in October last year. The civil aviation authority launched an investigation after media reported that many airlines were forced to divert their flights to different airports or go around after failing to land when the typhoon affected the nation on Oct. 30 and 31 last year. The agency reviewed 503 flights dispatched by Taiwanese airlines during those two days, as well as weather data, flight hours
Three people have had their citizenship revoked after authorities confirmed that they hold Chinese ID cards, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said yesterday. Two of the three people were featured in a recent video about Beijing’s “united front” tactics by YouTuber Pa Chiung (八炯) and Taiwanese rapper Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源), including Su Shi-en (蘇士恩), who displayed a Chinese ID card in the video, and taekwondo athlete Lee Tung-hsien (李東憲), who mentioned he had obtained a Chinese ID card in a telephone call with Chen, Liang told the council’s weekly news conference. Lee, who reportedly worked in
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding