The Control Yuan yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to look into why four universities receiving special project funding failed to offer 20 percent of all courses in each grade taught entirely in English.
According to his investigation, Control Yuan member Peter Chang (張武修) said that National Taiwan University only offers 5 percent of courses in each grade in English, while National Cheng Kung University averaged 10 percent, National Chiao Tung University averaged 10 to 13 percent, and National Tsing Hua University, while better than the others, still averaged under 20 percent.
In addition, the findings of a Times Higher Education report that looked into 70,000 bachelor and master-level programs in 700 cities taught in English differed from the figures reported by universities to the ministry, Chang added.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
Of the four universities participating in the ministry’s program, the report found that National Taiwan University offered 20 English-taught programs, National Cheng Kung University offered two and National Tsing Hua University only offered one, while figures for National Chiao Tung University were not provided, Chang said.
The findings show that the four universities are lagging behind their international peers in terms of competitiveness, he added.
The universities are allocating less than 1 percent of their total expenditures on offering courses taught in English, Chang said.
Course material and planning varies greatly from year to year, showing that the universities have not enacted a long-term plan to use ministry funding to provide students with an all-English education environment, he said.
Across the four universities, the number of English-taught courses have either remained unchanged or declined, and none have established a metric to determine course quality, Chang said.
None of the courses have screening procedures to determine students’ ability to comprehend course materials, nor are there systems in place to help students learn, he added.
The key to establishing an English-taught curriculum is systematic training for teachers in English and education, which is not provided by the schools or the ministry, he said.
Chang suggested that the ministry and universities collaborate to develop a training program for teachers and to provide sufficient incentive to strengthen teachers’ ability and will to teach courses in English.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
RSS