Chinese is considered one of the most difficult languages in the world. Yet in the 1968-69 academic year, nearly 1,000 foreign students were studying Chinese language and culture at Taiwan schools of various levels. Two hundred and ninety-two of the students were enrolled at 17 institutions of higher learning accredited by the Ministry of Education. The rest were enrolled in language schools or in primary or secondary schools.
Of the 292 in colleges and universities, Americans topped the list with 80, followed by South Koreans, 68; Japanese, 53; Malaysians, 16; Thais, 14; and South Vietnamese, 11. Others came from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, England, France, Holland, India, Iran, Italy, Laos, Liberia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Ryukyus, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and West Germany.
Humanities ranked first among the fields of study with 183 students. Then came social sciences, 51; engineering, 25; agriculture, 13; medicine, 8; education, 4; fine arts, 4; law, 2; and natural sciences, 2. It is interesting that 77 of the 80 Americans (46 men and 34 women) majored in the humanities. One man was enrolled in law and two in the social sciences.
Of the 17 schools with foreign students, National Taiwan Universitv had the lion's share of 116. Taiwan Normal University enrolled 111 and Chengchi University 28. Seventy-one of the students received scholarships from the Chinese government.
Three Taipei schools - Taipei Language Institute, Mandarin Center and Stanford Center-specialize in teaching Chinese to foreigners. The Taipei Language Institute is the largest with consistent enrollment of between 300 and 400. It was founded at the Wanhua YMCA, Taipei, in September of 1957 by the Taiwan Missionary Fellowship with the Rev. Egbert W. Andrews, former professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, as the director. Students in the first classes totaled some 50, mostly American missionaries.
To meet the increasing demand from other than religious sources, the school was renamed the Taipei Language Institute in 1960 to accommodate foreign diplomats and their dependents, businessmen and graduate students from abroad. In August of the same year, the Taipei American Embassy signed an agreement with TLI for the language training of its personnel. All newly arrived embassy officials must attend at least 100 TLI class hours in Mandarin conversation, Chinese history and newspaper reading. The period may be shortened for those proficient in the language.
TLI now has three campuses in Taipei plus a branch in Taichung, central Taiwan. To facilitate teaching and increase administrative efficiency, the three campuses in Taipei soon will be amalgamated in a single building on Nanking East Road. The Taichung branch was opened in 1963. Since 1968, it bas been sending four instructors to teach foreign students at nearby Tunghai University.
TLI has 30 fuil-time and 70 part-time instructors. A third of the faculty teaches Amoy, a dialect of Fukien spoken by some 70 per cent of Taiwan's population. Hakka, a dialect of Kwangtung spoken in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli and Pingtung counties, is taught at the request of students. All instructors are college graduates and speak the standard dialect of their specialty. Before formal employment, they are trained in the Yale system of romanization, comparative linguistics and teaching methodology. Ten of the incumbent instructors did graduate work at American universities. Ten former faculty members are teaching in the United States, Hongkong and Malaysia.
The TLI academic year lasts from late September into early July plus a summer session. Students may enroll in full-time, part-time or special courses. A full-time course consists of 25 class hours a week plus at least 15 hours of home work. The requirement for part-time students is 10 to 15 class hours and home work of 7 hours. Special courses are arranged according to the student's need.
In principle, TLI follows the tutorial system. Group teaching also is conducted but never with more than five students. The average student will be able to converse in Chinese three months after enrollment, if he practices sentence making five hours a day.
Continuous experimentation is carried out to improve teaching and make learning more efficient. In one recent experiment a group of Mandarin beginners was given textbooks with words written in the Yale system of romanization. A second group learned from the Mandarin phonetic symbols. At the end of three months, the romanization group was ahead in comprehension and speaking and the phonetic symbol group was better in reading. As in the case of Chinese children learning to read, the characters appeal more to the eye than to the ear. Members of the phonetic symbol group could read the Mandarin Daily News and other juvenile reading materials marked with the phonetic symbols.
TLI now uses Yale romanization for Mandarin students in the first three months. Thereafter, they study the phonetic symbols and then go on to the Chinese characters.
Asked which system would be preferred if the instructor had to choose between them, Director Ho Ching-hsien said: "Linguistically, there isn't much difference. Romanization and phonetic symbols are merely tools that help the learner pronounce words correctly. Nevertheless, the beginner must not assume that the English how is equivalent to the Mandarin hau (good). The former is a glottal while the latter is a velar sound. Furthermore, he should not pronounce the Mandarin fan (cooked rice) in the same way as he pronounces the English fan. When pronouncing the English fan, he produces the vowel a by passing the tongue tip against the lower teeth. The a sound in the Mandarin fan should be produced without stretching the tongue tip."
All TLI teaching materials are tape-recorded and the student may take the tapes home for practice. After basic training, missionary students study the Bible, religious conversation and sermons. Topics for non-missionary students include Chinese history and culture, modern literature, newspaper reading and public speaking. Curricular progress is decided by the needs and the ability of each student. Director Ho recalled that the brightest student he has had started on the difficult I Ching (Book of Changes) after less than a year of study.
Ho Ching-hsien has been associated with TLI since its establishment. In that year (1957), he was a junior at the Tamkang English College (predecessor of the Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences) in Taipei. He was made supervisor of the Mandarin Department in 1961 and deputy director of the Institute three years later. In July of 1966, Ho became the first Chinese to assume the TLI directorship. His predecessors were six Americans and two Canadians.
In 1964, Ho was sent to Brown University in Rhode Island for graduate study and Chinese teaching and then to the University of Michigan. In 1967, he helped the University of Delhi train Indian teachers of Chinese at the request of the Ford Foundation. During his Indian tour, Ho was elected one of the "10 outstanding young men" of the year by the China chapter of the Junior Chamber International. He is concurrently a commissioner of the Compilation and Authorization Committee of Chinese Language Materials, Chinese Ministry of Education.
Besides the University of Delhi, TLI has cooperated with more than a dozen American universities and several local institutions. In the summer of 1968, TLI trained 250 students from various countries in cooperation with the China Youth Corps and 97 students from 18 Japanese universities in cooperation with the Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences. The number of trainees in summer sessions this year totaled some 300, mostly from the United States and Canada. In the last 12 years, more than 4,000 students have been enrolled from Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Japan, Madagascar, New Zealand, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, United States and West Germany.
TLI operations are financed by church donations and subsidies from interested organizations. Tuition is calculated on the basis of NT$36 (US$0.90) per hour for a group student and NT$60 (US$1.50) for an individual student. In Hongkong, the going rate for high quality Cantonese tutoring is US$2.50 per hour.
The Mandarin Center, an affiliate of Taiwan Normal University, was established in the fall of 1956 at the request of the Ford Foundation. In the last 13 years, enrollment has increased from 3 to 100. About 70 per cent of students have come from the Americas, 20 per cent from Japan and the rest from Europe and Southeast Asia in recent years. Most have a rudimentary knowledge of Chinese and study under Chinese government scholarships.
The Mandarin Center currently has six four-student classes and two three-student classes. Other students learn from tutors. Classes begin on the first day of each month and class hours per week range from 4 to 30. Tuition is paid monthly according to the following rates: NT$40 (US$1) per class hour for tutoring, NT$30 (US$0.75) per person in a two-student class, NT$25 (US$0.625) in a three-student class and NT$20 (US$0.50) in four- and five-student classes.
Volume 1 of the textbook is annotated in both Yale romanization and the Mandarin phonetic symbols and is finished in 100 hours. Students may choose either of the pronunciation guides. Those studying 10 hours or more a week are taught in the phonetic symbols.
The average student stays at the Center about eight months, then undertakes graduate research in Taiwan or at home. Most of the Japanese study for two years. They do well because of their Chinese cultural roots.
Trainees have totaled 600 in the last 13 years. They came from every part of the free world, including Africa.
The Stanford Center is officially known as the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies Administered by Stanford University. It was established at National Taiwan University in September of 1963 by these nine American universities: California, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, Washington, and Yale. Except for the director, all faculty members are Chinese. The director is nominated by one of the nine universities in rotation and serves for one academic year.
The school year consists of four quarters beginning in late September. Students spend an average of 20 hours in class weekly. For the first quarter, 13 hours is devoted to the spoken language and the rest to reading. In the second quarter and thereafter, the time devoted to spoken Chinese is reduced and other activities are added. In the fourth quarter, students are expected to make independent use of what they have learned. All teaching is by individual tutors.
Students are tested at their home institutions before coming to Taiwan. They must have successfully completed a minimum of two academic years or equivalent in Chinese language at the college level. Enrollment normally is for four quarters. In special cases the period may be adjusted with the consent of the Inter University Board. The longest time was two years.
In its six years of operation, the Stanford Center has trained 260 students. There were 47 in the fall of 1963 and 35 at the end of the 1969 summer quarter. Those who complete the course can speak Mandarin fluently and read some of the Chinese classics. A number stay in Taiwan to continue their studies at local universities or to collect materials for dissertations.
Taiwan has two Chinese language schools outside Taipei. That in Hsinchu, 45 miles south of Taipei, is operated by the Roman Catholic Church and teaches Mandarin, Hakka and Amnoy. That in Taichung is sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
Before World War II, Chinese studies for Westerners were of interest mainly to missionaries. With the increasing number of students from other circles now learning Chinese in Taiwan, a Confucian saying of 2,500 years ago seems to have come true. "In education," said the Sage, "there is no distinction of any kind."