As stated in "Elementary School in Taiwan," I am drawing from personal experience here, and this experience is sometimes exclusive to the school where I work. Individual schools will vary, but probably not by much.
Students in Taiwanese public schools start learning English in Grade 3, though some will have already studied English in private schools long before this time. There are a lot of private kindergartens on the island, and most of these kindergartens teach English.
My first job in Taiwan was at one of these private kindergartens. I taught a class of 15-20 students, from about 8 am to 4 pm, Monday to Friday. The selling point behind my kindergarten was English immersion, and I was in charge of everything except meal times. Most other kindergartens aren't half as intensive when it comes to English.
After graduating from kindergarten, many students continue on to a private cram school, where they learn English for a few hours a week. On the west coast of Taiwan, in urban areas, almost all children do this. On the east coast, and in more rural areas on the west coast, this practice is not so common.
These cram school classes often continue throughout the duration of their elementary school careers, so there is a fair amount of overlap between what students learn in their private classes and what they learn in the public elementary schools. This fact often leads people to believe that most Taiwanese students are more proficient in English than is truly the case. Given the nature of both public and private education in Taiwan, it is only a small minority of Taiwanese students who graduate elementary, junior high, or high school with a functional understanding of English.
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There are many reasons for this. The primary reason is probably the focus on memorization and mastering "rules" over learning to use the language for its intended purpose, i.e. communication. This is a problem common to many Asian countries, and is not limited to Taiwan. From what I've heard, this is an even bigger problem in Mainland China.
When Taiwanese students learn Chinese, the majority of their Chinese study consists of learning and memorizing characters. This works very well for Chinese, since it is a language that is more easily dissected into parts. It doesn't work as well for English, because English (like German, French, and other European languages) is a language of relationships, where isolating each phoneme or word won't necessarily help you get the big picture. Unfortunately, much of the way that Taiwanese students study English is a reflection of how they learn (or were taught) Chinese. This problem is particularly acute when it comes to the subject of English verb tenses, where the form of words shifts, and time is expressed in ways that don't come naturally to Chinese speakers.
In Taiwan, recent years have seen more of a push towards composition by teachers of Chinese. These teachers realize that many students are struggling to make themselves understood in written characters. Whether this renewed emphasis on composition will have an effect on how English is taught remains to be seen.
Time is another factor. Many students in Taiwan just don't spend enough time learning English. Most elementary schools in Taiwan only teach English twice a week, during two forty minute class sessions. This is not enough time to learn any language well, and certainly not enough time for English teachers to monitor their students' progress.
Students whose parents want them to succeed in English invariably enroll the students in after school English classes, creating a disparity between the students who go to cram schools and the students who don't. This disparity means that the cram school students are bored with their public school English classes, and these cram school students also tend to have a false sense of confidence in their English ability. This disparity also means that students who don't attend cram school feel frustrated by their public school English classes, and these students struggle with feelings of inferiority.
The curriculum is another issue. All English textbooks in Taiwan follow guidelines set by the central government, and these guidelines have some serious flaws. One of the more obvious flaws is the lack of "carry over" between textbooks or even units in the same textbook. In other words, what students learn during their first year of English is seldom applied to their second year of English. Worse still, what students learn from month to month is often disregarded later. The English tests in most public schools reflect this trend, and among many Taiwanese teachers there is the unspoken assumption that students have forgotten everything that has come before. With students studying English in discrete, month-long units, it is no wonder that their English level is very low.
Schools in Taiwan also need to decide how important English is to their overall program. Many public schools are teaching an excessive number of subjects, and English is often lost in the shuffle. It is only ever possible for a school to teach four or five subjects well, yet many schools are attempting to teach ten or more subjects, and expecting students to master each of these subjects. In my school, many students contend with Chinese, Taiwanese, English, and their aboriginal language - and these are just the languages. They also have to study Math, Social Studies, Computers, Science, and whatever other subjects the school has tacked on.
Environment plays a role here too. Taiwan is not a English-rich environment by any means, and classrooms reflect this fact. Many students struggle with English because they never understand the underlying "why" of English: they never understand the reason they are studying it. When they look around themselves, they see no purpose behind the English they are learning. Even in the classroom, their homeroom teacher will often treat English as a subject that is well outside his or her expertise, almost as if it was being studied for purely aesthetic reasons. Kids need to know why they are studying English, and they need to see palpable evidence of this reason in their environments. Most of this evidence is reducible to the attitudes of those in the school faculty, but it should also be reflected in more physical, concrete things like signs, community resources, and other facets of their environment.
One of my biggest complaints about English instruction in Taiwan is the dual-language approach. The government doesn't seem to be pushing this as hard lately, but it is still a prevalent point of view. The dual-language approach essentially consists of teaching English in Chinese. I think this approach is valid for very young children, or those just starting out, but it is completely counterproductive at higher levels. People (not just children) need to learn English IN English, and without the agency of their native language. This strategy is key to developing fluency and confidence. Otherwise, one's native language becomes a crutch, and false confidence is the result. Many Taiwanese English teachers amplify this problem by encouraging students to translate everything back into the students' native language. Many of them recognize that this isn't the best way to teach English, but they fear the repercussions of making a change. This anxiety among teachers needs to be addressed by the system, and it needs to be eliminated if English-language education is ever going to improve.
Which brings me to my last point, that many of those teaching English in Taiwan are also products of the system. They learned English largely through memorization, they learned English for short spans of time (at least before high school), they learned English bit by bit, they grew up in an English-poor environment, and they grew up learning English in Chinese. None of these aspects of their own English education are their fault. What is important is that they recognize these faults in the system, and work towards better methodology in the future.
All in all, I wouldn't say that Taiwan is a bad place to learn English, though there are obvious flaws in the system. Like many Asian nations, Taiwan is continually working to define what role English plays in school life, and what role it plays in the lives of all citizens. Economics certainly influences this process, and fluctuating trade relationships with the United States and China often have a dramatic effect on Taiwan's approach to learning and teaching English.
English-language education in Taiwan is improving, even if it has a long way to go. There are many good English teachers in Taiwan, and many parents are concerned about this issue. Yes, there are also bad teachers, and parents who couldn't care less, and people who are just using this system to make money, but I like to think that in the end the better informed, more responsible sort of people will have their say. This is one of the reasons I teach English in Taiwan, and this is one of the things I look forward to.
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