Taiwan and the US on Monday reaffirmed their commitment to deepening cooperation in English and Mandarin-language education, with a view to expanding their collaboration to include the sciences.
Deputy Minister of Education Liu Mon-chi (劉孟奇) led a delegation of ministry officials to the fourth high-level dialogue under the Taiwan-US Education Initiative in Washington, the Ministry of Education said in a news release yesterday.
The ministry presented the outcome of bilateral cooperation in Mandarin and bilingual education; exchanges between elementary, junior-high schools and universities; and cultivation of semiconductor talent, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Education
Significant progress in promoting Mandarin education has been made since the last dialogue in February last year, Liu said.
A record 3,080 US students are to come to Taiwan to study Mandarin this year, while the ministry selected 147 Mandarin-language teachers and teaching assistants to teach in the US, he said.
Taiwan provided subsidies to 20 universities in Taiwan and 56 universities in the US to promote quality Mandarin education under the Huayu Best (台灣優華語計畫) program, he said, adding that four Taiwan Centers for Mandarin Learning were established last year.
The University Academic Alliance in Taiwan, consisting of 12 universities in Taiwan, has signed memorandums of understanding with three US university systems for cooperation in the fields of semiconductors, engineering sciences and Mandarin-language education, he said.
Thanking the US government for continuing to support bilingual education in Taiwan by sending professional English teachers, the ministry said it hoped that the two nations could extend the cooperation to cover STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — education in elementary and junior-high schools.
Also present at the meeting were National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉), who joined online, Overseas Community Affairs Council Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui (俞大?).
On the US side, attendees included US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Camille Dawson, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairwoman Laura Rosenberger and AIT Managing Director for the Washington office Ingrid Larson.
After the meeting, the delegation visited the University of Maryland, a partner in the Huayu Best Program, to discuss with university president Darryll Pines plans to provide Mandarin courses focusing on professional fields to US students coming to Taiwan for internships, the ministry said.
The US-Taiwan Education Initiative was launched in 2020 and was expanded last year to allow more young Americans to learn Mandarin in Taiwan, and more Taiwanese Mandarin instructors to teach in the US, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Working with the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (Fulbright Taiwan), the government is promoting the use of English as the medium of instruction for English-language classes in universities and recruiting more English teaching assistants to meet its Bilingual 2030 policy, it said.
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