Nelly Chen昭菁英語教學工作室-Nelly Chen's English Workshop

In the past, students began to learn English in the first year of junior high school. Starting in 2001, English teaching programs were initiated from the fifth grade of elementary school. Additionally, the MOE (Ministry of Education) planned to start English instruction from 3rd grade in 2005. Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan, instituted the teaching of English courses beginning in the first grade of elementary school. Students take the English class twice a week and each time is for 45 minutes. What’s more, some students also take the private English classes after school.

English teacher positions in the elementary school now are very competitive in Taiwan. The exam for becoming official teachers is not easy to pass or after passing the test the chance to work in elementary school is very limited. Take my friend, Jenny for example, she passed the test to take English teachers required courses at college, however, after she finished the whole classes. She can’t find any school to teach. She has no option but to work in cram school. Therefore, many official teachers can't find the vacancy to teach at the public or private elementary school.

I remembered I started to learn English since I were in the 7th grade. At that time, English teaching focused more on Grammar Translation approach. Nowadays, as the Communicative Language Teaching has come out. More and more textbooks are complied based on this approach. Furthermore, the textbooks are not standardized from elementary to junior high school. The educational policy of this is to make the learning more diverse but this makes students more stressed since they have to prepare as many different versions of textbooks to pass the entrance exam.

Currently, students’ English learning has more options and the educators set up more beneficial policy to make the English learning environment better and better in Taiwan. In Elementary schools, students not only learn the foreign language - English but also they can learn more dialects, such as Hakka and aboriginal languages. As a consequence, people are multilingual and learn to appreciate different cultures and languages in the society of Taiwan.

I think if I were a parent, I would agree with the current policy of multilingual education. But on the other hand, I will hope learning language in the EFL setting could have more authentic materials and students can learn the language subconsciously in their daily life. There could have an English learning Channel for students to watch. Connecting school learning with life, English or other language learning will be more motivational and intriguing for students.


Nelly