The Ministry of Education on Wednesday unveiled guidelines for teaching English, aiming to have 60 percent of schools use English as a the sole medium of instruction for the language by 2024.
Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said the ministry has intensified its efforts to train Taiwanese teachers of English and recruit foreign teachers of English to attain the nation’s goal of becoming a Mandarin-English bilingual country.
With a growing pool of English teachers, Pan said the 2021-2022 school year would become an important beginning for teaching the language.
The aim is to have teachers in 60 percent of elementary, junior and senior-high schools use only English to teach the language by 2024, he said.
English would also be used to teach other courses to improve students’ proficiency, he said, adding that by 2024, teachers in one-seventh of schools would be asked to teach courses in English.
Afterward, teachers in all schools would be asked to use English only to teach English classes by 2030, he said.
He added that teachers in one-third of schools would be asked to teach part of their courses besides English classes in a bilingual manner, also by 2030.
Pan said that high schools are a critical link to higher education, so the ministry is planning to have 50 high schools offer bilingual classes on a trial basis starting this school year.
Schools should make good use of the budget provided to run their bilingual classes this year, he said, adding that the bilingual classes would eventually be expanded to other schools.
Also, starting this school year, the ministry would launch a large-scale campaign to recruit foreign English teachers, he said.
As part of the recruitment effort, the ministry would have National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and National Chung Cheng University set up counseling centers to provide assistance to foreign teachers, he said.
To help persuade foreign teachers to stay in Taiwan, the ministry would provide subsidies for their living expenses, including lodging and transportation, he added.
Earlier this year, the ministry said it would make National Taiwan University, NTNU, National Cheng Kung University and National Sun Yat-sen University as priority schools for bilingual teaching.
Making Taiwan bilingual by 2030 is a policy initiated by Vice President William Lai (賴清德) in 2018 when he was premier. In June that year, Lai made the “2030 Bilingual Country” plan a major national policy.
On Thursday last week, the Executive Yuan approved a draft bill to establish a national development center to advance the plan to develop Taiwan into a bilingual Chinese and English-speaking nation by 2030.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its