After Taiwan's education ministry announced an update to its national "Bilingual 2030" policy, teachers say it's still not enough and are calling for fairer solutions. The policy's stated goal is to improve student's English proficiency and competitiveness.
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00:00The National Federation of Teachers' Union is calling for more changes to Taiwan's bilingual
00:05education policy, saying that it's made mixed progress over the past six years and that's
00:09even negatively impacted students' education.
00:13Their biggest concern is a requirement known as English as a Medium of Instruction, or
00:17EMI, that requires students to take some subjects in English, which they say could actually
00:22hinder their understanding of the topics.
00:25In the past, there were professors in the Chinese department who had to teach in English
00:30and a course in Chinese, which was a very ridiculous thing to do.
00:36Through such a course, students not only did not learn what they were supposed to learn,
00:41but also affected their original learning.
00:43As time went by, I think it was a huge damage to the overall performance of students' learning.
00:49Earlier this week, the Ministry of Education announced improvements to the bilingual policy,
00:54promising to offer more opportunities to speak English outside of the classroom, and
00:58promoting new technologies to assist with language learning.
01:01It also adjusted lessons so only English-language classes would be taught in English.
01:06But this change only applies to primary and secondary schools, not in higher education.
01:11Some students still have concerns about the policy.
01:14We think that full-English classes will actually make those students who don't understand English
01:19lose their interest in language learning.
01:26If a student completely loses their interest in language learning, they will basically
01:30choose to fail.
01:32The policy aims to make Taiwan into a bilingual nation by 2030, to make the country's talent
01:37more competitive and attract international companies to Taiwan.
01:41The educators here say that that's made English-language education in Taiwan more competitive, adding
01:46pressure on students, parents and educators to spend time and money on a language that's
01:52still not widely used in the country today.
01:54Yixin Chen and Tiffany Wong in Taipei for Taiwan Plus.