English Education

English education was formally introduced into school education in 2001. Prior to this implementation by the central government, there had been public demands for English education, and informal English language education had begun between 1993 and 1997 and supported by the local government (Chen, 2006, p. 323; Wu, 2011, p. 107). The central government’s English curriculum was firstly implemented in 2001 for students in Grade 5 and above, with 40 minutes minimum of instruction each week (Chen, 2006, p. 331). In 2005, a revised curriculum was implemented for students in Grade 3

27 _{This table is adapted from Li and Cao, 2009: 37.}

BOPOMOFO ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄈ ㄉ ㄊ ㄋ ㄌ ㄍ ㄎ ㄏ ㄐ ㄑ ㄒ ㄓ

Pinyin b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh BOPOMOFO ㄔ ㄕ ㄖ ㄗ ㄘ ㄙ

Pinyin ch sh r z c s

BOPOMOFO ㄚ ㄛ ㄜ ㄝ ㄞ ㄟ ㄠ ㄡ ㄢ ㄣ ㄤ ㄥ ㄦ

Pinyin a o e e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng er BOPOMOFO ㄧ ㄧ ㄚ ㄧ ㄝ ㄧ ㄞ ㄧ ㄠ ㄧ ㄡ ㄧ ㄢ ㄧ ㄣ ㄧ ㄤ ㄧ ㄥ

Pinyin yi ia ie iai iao iu ian in ian g ing BOPOMOFO ㄨ ㄨ ㄚ ㄨ ㄛ ㄨ ㄞ ㄨ ㄟ ㄨ ㄢ ㄨ ㄣ ㄨ ㄤ ㄨ ㄥ Pinyin

wu ua uo uai ui uan uenuangueng /ong BOPOMOFO ㄩ ㄩ ㄝ ㄩ ㄢ ㄩ ㄣ ㄩ ㄥ

Pinyin yu ue uan un iong BOPOMOFO ∅ ˊ ˇ ˋ ˙

Pinyin – ˊ ˇ ˋ ∅

Consonants

Rhymes

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and above with the same number of hours28. American English and British

English29 are the varieties included in most pedagogical materials (Chen, 2006,

p. 331). Many parents themselves do not speak English. Yet, they make efforts to promote children’s learning of English by sending them to private educational institutions as a supplement to the "limited" instruction offered in the schools (Chen, 2006; Wu, 2011). Learning English is then taken as an essential in Taiwan.

For beginners, the course curriculum aims at developing

communicative competence (i.e. speaking and listening); for 7th graders and above, it focuses on writing and reading abilities. (See Table 5).

Table 5: The course curriculum of English education30

Teaching items Specific items to be taught Notes Auxiliary phonic

system

The "Kenyon and Knott symbols " (often known as "KK symbols " by Taiwanese people)

Knowing how to use phonics to pronounce English words

Writing system English letters Knowing the names of

the 26 letters of the alphabet

Being able to to hand-write the 26 English letters and to spell out English words

Punctuation - -

The ability of using reference resources

Ways of using English dictionary

Knowing how to look up words or phrases in the dictionaries31 Idiomatic phrase - - Listening to and comprehending utterance/ sentences Listening to songs, dialogues, stories and dramas in English

Being able to distinguish between consonants and vowels, to aurally recognize

28

Chen's (2006, p. 331) review on English education shows that the actual implementation of English education often exceeds the requirement of the central government with more than 40 hours being offered and students in lower grades (e.g. Grade 1) being involved.

29 _{More people advocate American English than British English.} 30

This table is adapted and summarized from the guidelines of the nine-year English curriculum.

31 _{Most dictionaries used by learners are English-Mandarin dictionaries not}

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English words, to perceive English intonation and stress and to comprehend the utterance, sentences and stories spoken in

English

Speaking ability (1) Role playing in

English (2) orally introducing one’s self, one’s families and friends.

(3) Orally expressing one’s needs and

communicate with others in English

(4) Raising questions and answering questions in English

Being able to speak in English and knowing how to address

messages appropriately in different contexts

Reading texts Reading common English

signs, English stories, magazines, essays and letters and drama scripts

Being able to

comprehend the English texts written with standard and cursive styles

Writing (1) Composing

meaningful words, sentences and paragraphs in English

(2) Composing letters and messages in cards or emails in English (3) Filling up English forms Knowing how to compose in English

Sentence patterns & parts of speech

(1) Parts of speech (2) Types of speech act (3) Forms of sentence (4) Tenses

(5) Aspects (6) Clauses

(Refer to the guidelines of the nine-year English curriculum (The

Ministry of Education of Taiwan, 2008) for details of the required grammar points for teaching).

Table 5 reveals that the English education is very different from Mandarin education, as the English curriculum contains learning of English grammatical structures, and provides more practical usages for developing oral proficiency with regards to conversation. In terms of learning English

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pronunciation, Taiwanese students are expected to learn the KK symbols which resemble the International Phonetic Alphabets (IPA) with a few deviations (Kenyon & Knott, 1953). This suggests that IPA symbols and Roman letters are not completely unknown to most Taiwanese people.

Apart from the school education, English learning has been the most explored area in the field of foreign language learning in Taiwan. Discussion about English learning by English teachers, learners, researchers and parents has been expanded into various aspects, ranging from pedagogies to testing, such as the General English Proficiency Test, an English test authorized by the MOE. Some issues relevant to pedagogies include comparison and contrast of sentence structure between Mandarin and English (Chang, 2014), the audiolingual method (Wang, 2014), content-based instruction (Hsu & Lo, 2009) and task-based approach (Ni, 2013).

The richness of development in teaching and learning English in Taiwan suggests that these pedagogies are familiar to many Taiwanese people, who will have been taught with these teaching methods at primary, junior high, senior high or college level. Some may have been taught other languages using similar methods or may have used similar strategies to learn other languages. In other words, Taiwanese people’s experience of learning English has implications for applying similar methods in learning languages other than Mandarin.