Taiwan residents who want to learn English can easily find a club, publication, or school that claims to meet their needs. But just how much practical help are they when it comes to mastering a foreign language?
The reasons why people study a foreign language are many and various, as a visit to Ta-An Night School quickly reveals. One of the oldest students, a grandmother in her fifties, has a straightforward aim--to be able to greet people in simple English. "It would make life more convenient," she says. "Some adults don't even know the alphabet, while their children do. How can they be expected to identify a car license plate?"
But a more typical response is that of Yang Shu-fen (楊淑棻), a thirtysomething mother. "I study English because I want to be able to help my son when it's his turn to learn it," she says. Today's children begin studying English at a much younger age than their parents, and this is making more and more adults feel that they are lagging behind the times. Many blame ignorance of at least one foreign language for lost chances of promotion, or even employment. Upward pressure from a better-informed, better-educated young generation is putting Taiwan on the fast track to internationalization, and generating a more urgent need to communicate with the rest of the world.
Plenty of companies and organizations are keen to meet this rising demand. In Taiwan, every large or medium-sized bookstore carries a wide variety of English-oriented audiotapes, books, and magazines. At least eight locally published monthlies, many of them linked to broadcast media, offer bilingual articles designed to help people master English. They range from Ivy League Analytical English, which lays emphasis on grammar and sentence-pattern analysis, through English Digest, largely consisting of conversations on various themes, to Time Express, which first appeared in 1996 and is probably the most difficult and sophisticated English-teaching periodical available, consisting as it does of excerpts from Time magazine and commentaries on them.
At a somewhat less sophisticated level come the hugely popular monthlies, Studio Classroom, with its basic and advanced lessons, and Let's Talk in English, which is simpler. Founded by Overseas Radio and Television, a Christian group dedicated to spreading the Gospel on the island, these two magazines have been bringing the English language to Taiwanese of all ages and occupations since 1962 and 1981 respectively. They sell better than any other competing periodical, with a combined circulation of more than 320,000.
Recognizing the increased demand for English, the publishers put out CD-ROM versions of these magazines in 1993 and 1994 respectively, and in 1997 Studio Classroom found an even wider audience via a cable TV program that attracts huge audiences both here and in Los Angeles, New York, and Vancouver.
How have these two monthlies managed to retain their popularity for so long? "We provide practical and useful English, but we also write about other places in a variety of ways so as to give people in Taiwan some idea of what's happening in the rest of the world," says Ruth Devlin, senior editor of Studio Classroom, who has lived in Taiwan for fifteen years. This consideration was particularly important in the years before the 1987 lifting of martial law, when residents did not enjoy the same freedom to travel abroad as they do now, and very few English-teaching magazines were available in Taiwan. "People learn faster if they're interested in what they're learning," Devlin points out. "That's our teaching philosophy."
Periodicals adopt slightly different techniques for getting the message across. For example, Studio Classroom provides all its Chinese translations at the back of the magazine, whereas some of its rivals print bilingual pages. Devlin believes that the latter arrangement is less than ideal, because it encourages people to think of the two languages as equal. "They're not," she says. "It's better only to think in English and then only to think in Chinese."
Not everyone is happy to pick up English from a magazine, however. A lot of people want a real live teacher standing right in front of them, ready to converse and explain. Taiwan now has an extensive network of classes where adults can choose a level in keeping with their abilities that fits their daily schedules. Cram schools have long been a part of the educational scene, but now university extension classes are mushrooming, and organizations like the YMCA and the Language Training and Testing Center at National Taiwan University have started to supplement them.
Except for supplementary night schools, where only Chinese staff teach, all these institutions hire both local and foreign tutors, usually insisting on a bachelor's degree as a bare minimum, although a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) qualification and teaching experience are decided advantages. Soochow University's extension school offers classes in English, Japanese, and German. Chinese instructors, most of whom also teach Soochow's full-time students, conduct the grammar and reading classes, although conversation classes are taught by native speakers.
But it is undoubtedly the big cram schools, ( buhsibans in Chinese), such as English Language School International (ELSI), Gram, Hess, and Jordan, all with established and well-deserved reputations, that dominate this market. These majors can afford to be picky when it comes to hiring new talent. Sarah Yin (殷彩鳳) is a project supervisor at Caves Educational Training Co., which sets out to improve the skills of local English teachers drawn from high schools, buhsibans, and organizations like the YMCA. "If a senior executive of a big company attending classes at a well-known buhsiban has an irresponsible teacher, the school's image is inevitably going to suffer to some degree," she says.
ELSI has taken that lesson very much to heart. It has fifteen branches around the island, nine of them in Taipei city. In this big cram school, which started its Taiwan operation in 1982, native Chinese teachers are required to speak fluent English, and those teaching entry-level classes must have good pronunciation. Yin regards these as basic requirements, but contends that the most important thing is to get students into the habit of using English in daily life.
In order to foster that approach, the teacher must constantly stimulate students to question and think for themselves. "I always tell my students that it's impossible to master English just by attending English classes at a cram school for, say, three hours a day, two days a week," Yin says. "If you want to speak good English, you also have to practice on your own."
Native speakers of English can nearly always land a job teaching English in Taiwan, as long as they have a B.A. and qualify for a work permit. Foreigners or overseas-born Chinese often teach advanced classes, using only English for instruction, with local teachers recruited to handle basic and entry-level classes, where bilingual exchanges are allowed. "If a foreign teacher can speak Mandarin or any other language apart from English, he'll find himself very popular," Yin notes. This is because such teachers are believed to have sympathy with Taiwan students, because they have first-hand experience of the problems encountered by those who wish to master a language not their own.
"I tell my students that I've studied Chinese and various other languages before, so I know what's it like," says Virginia Welch, an English Literature major from South Carolina who has taught overseas students at an English conversation laboratory in the United States. Welch has been at ELSI for the past four years, and apart from handling regular classes at one of the school's downtown Taipei branches, she teaches Citibank employees as well as English classes at one senior high and an English club at another. From her own experience, she knows that making mistakes is part of the learning process. It is particularly important to get this notion across to Chinese students, who often equate making mistakes with loss of face.
Not every native speaker of English qualifies as a teacher, but it all too frequently happens that overseas teachers who venture into the more remote areas of Taiwan find themselves in a commanding position, irrespective of ability. "In small places where a foreign face is a rarity, they can satisfy the students just by showing up in the classroom," Yin says. Inevitably, some of those who gravitate to the boondocks behave irresponsibly. "Foreign teachers find that the materials resemble those used in US elementary schools, so they can go into class totally unprepared and just read and explain the text in a mechanical way."
Assigning students to the correct level is another area where some cram schools are sadly deficient. "ELSI's strict about that," Welch says, "but I know of at least one other big cram school in Taipei that doesn't use oral tests to grade new students. They just have to wander around, trying different classes." She is of course aware that many people still choose that school, and other schools like it, simply because the tuition is cheap.
At a buhsiban, low tuition may result in low quality of service. But classes organized by a company for its staff can be free, good, and above all convenient. Major enterprises such as the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel, Citibank, and Sanyang Industry Co., which manufactures cars and motorcycles, all have a so-called "internal buhsiban."
Every year, Sanyang hires overseas teachers, mostly from cram schools, and offers its employees two courses, one in English and one in Japanese, each lasting about three and a half months. Employees attend three-hour classes twice a week after work. At present, the number of students in each class is limited to twenty, and the number of classes varies from two to seven. "The tuition is totally covered by the company," says Lin Jung-hwa (林榮華), director of Sanyang's Human Resource Division. "This is not a buhsiban you'll find on the streets. Sanyang invests money up-front to educate its employees. In the long term, the company is able to interact more easily with its foreign clients and partners, and that's the big payoff."
Another feature that marks out an internal buhsiban from its peers is that learning tends to focus on terminology that employees will need when doing business. "The goal of internal foreign language classes is absolutely practical," Lin says. "Employees can learn what they really need to know." The classes have proved so successful that Sanyang now occasionally sponsors classes in Thai and Vietnamese, the first because the company employs Thai laborers in Taiwan, and the second because it is starting to target the Vietnam market. Indeed, according to Lin: "Maybe there will even be Spanish classes, because Sanyang is branching out into Latin America."
In Sanyang, just as in many other large enterprises on the island, foreign language ability is a prerequisite for promotion. Students are not required to pay any tuition, but they do have to deposit a sum of money that will be refunded only if they pass the end-of-session exam. Lin says that almost everyone does pass, however, and he is under no illusions about the limitations of such courses. Total mastery is not the objective. "We just require them to be able to communicate reasonably with foreigners and read basic foreign-language materials. That's enough."
Another option for people who are more concerned about practicing their English than memorizing rules of grammar is membership in a foreign-language club or association. Of these, the best known locally is Toastmasters International, a non -profit educational organization that aims to enhance its members' communication and leadership skills. The US-based association has enjoyed a presence in Taiwan for more than forty years, and there are now thirty-five clubs scattered around the island, over half of them in Taipei.
Benjamin Lien (連仁宏), 36, president of one of the Taipei clubs, acknowledges that many Toastmaster members are unable to speak good English, but points out that this is really a venue for practicing the language, rather than studying it. Because he wanted to fill what he perceived as something of a gap, in July 1997 Lien founded the Flying International English Club, which owes its whimsical name to the fact that the club's premises are owned by the ROC Air Force--although Lien also hopes that his members will be able to master English as easily as a bird can fly. "At this club, the study of English is part of everyday life, and the idea is that you should feel relaxed when speaking it," he says--in excellent English. "You can also make new friends and broaden your horizons here."
Flying International's ideal is to provide its members with "a home away from home," so Lien has fitted it out with sofas, a TV, a Ping-Pong table, and a bar. He refers to it as a recreation center, and everyone who goes there is asked to use English and only English, no matter how badly they speak it. "I actually encourage people to make mistakes," he says. "That way, nobody feels uncomfortable."
Lien spends as much time as possible in the club he founded, and on Saturdays he invites guests to come and talk about their experiences, with questions from members afterward. Every day he sets a topic for discussion--the club is open from four o'clock in the afternoon until ten at night--and once a month there is a special activity, perhaps a potluck supper or a dance. Overseas native speakers of English conduct classes there at fixed times, one of them being Marcy Huber, an American in her sixties, who is a member of the National Speakers Association of the United States. A co-founder of Flying International, she is responsible for training four other foreign teachers, or facilitators, as Lien likes to call them, for the club.
Members--at present, there are about ninety of them--have to pay club dues to cover the cost of classes, the rent of the club's premises, and other basic expenses. According to Lien, most of them are well-educated people living near the club who want to improve their career prospects by learning English. "I hope to develop Flying International into a community club and set up more like it," he says. Last November, one of Taiwan's most popular newspapers ran an article on the club, commenting favorably on its atmosphere, and many people from all over the island called the paper to inquire about it.
There is obviously an enormous demand in Taiwan for good English learning environments. But are the local facilities able to compete with quality study time spent in a country where the target language is spoken? "English teaching in Taiwan's schools puts too much stress on reading and writing," Virginia Welch says. "As a result, even those who teach English can't speak the language well." Sarah Yin agrees. Her own experience leads her to believe that many Taiwanese try to land teaching jobs at cram schools because that way they can improve their own English through association with native-speaking teachers.
Welch is well aware of "the cultural issue," which inevitably comes to the fore in any discussion of the difficulties of teaching English to Asians. She does not deny the proposition that Western non-native speakers of English speak that language better than Asians do because there is at least some degree of kinship among all the major European languages. But it is also true that Westerners are more accustomed to expressing themselves freely in the classroom than their Asian counter parts. She notes that Asian teachers enjoy relatively high status and are in complete control of everything that happens in class, so that students would be highly unlikely to do something without first being told to do it by the teacher. Welch cites an example. "If a teacher said 'It's hot,' a Western student would stand up and open the window, whereas an Asian would merely say 'Yes, it's hot.'"
It is possible that the cultural burden weighs more heavily on adults than on children. "Adults get embarrassed more easily about making mistakes," Lien says. "And because they concentrate too much on the English grammar they picked up at school, that interrupts their natural way of speaking." As anyone who has studied Chinese knows, the grammars and syntaxes of the two languages are wildly different--an often-heard comment from frustrated Westerners is that Chinese has no grammar--and it takes years of study before one can just "slip into Chinese" in the same way that, say, a native French speaker learning Spanish might suddenly start thinking and speaking in the target language.
Many people still view a long stay abroad as the best way of learning good English. Ruth Devlin of Studio Classroom thinks it is possible to learn a foreign language faster by visiting a country where it is spoken, "because culture and language go together--the more you know the country, the easier it is to learn the language." Maybe. But what happens if the student is reluctant to break out of the comforting cocoon of Chinese-speaking societies in, say, California? "I've seen too many of that kind of Taiwanese applying for a position in the local language cram schools," Sarah Yin says dismissively. "Their English is almost incomprehensible."
Yin and Lien have never lived or studied abroad, but they are living proof that it is possible to learn to speak English fluently in Taiwan. "When you're studying a foreign language, it all comes down to attitude and skills," says Lien.
Welch has a few genuinely bilingual Chinese friends who picked up all their English in Taiwan. How did they manage it? "You can create an English learning environment in Taiwan by reading books, listening to the radio, or even by talking among yourselves in English," she says. What is her definition of "good" English? "If you can make yourself understood, that's good English. Generally speaking, Westerners don't mind the grammatical mistakes that Chinese people make."
Is it difficult to learn English in today's Taiwan? English-learning channels are not hard to find, so the answer should be no. Language students have an enormous range of options. Perhaps the root of success is a determination to make English a part of daily life, and be ruthless in one's determination to speak with foreigners at every opportunity. Given that kind of attitude, the means chosen may be secondary.