Spreading the Word

This article was written by Oscar Chung and published by the Taiwan Review on April 1, 2007. It reports that although in recent years China has created a global interest in studying Mandarin, Taiwan is actually the best place to do so.

Studying Chinese is now becoming something of an international vogue. Following the opening of China in the late 1970s and its subsequent rise as an economic power, interest has soared. In the United States, for example, there is a growing demand for teachers of Mandarin, especially in high schools. The Advanced Placement (AP) program offers American high school students the opportunity to receive university credits before they go to college. Chinese language was added as a new course in 2006, and the AP test in Chinese will take place for the first time in the United States in May 2007.

In Taiwan, systematic education provided by language institutes in Chinese as a foreign language can be traced back to the early 1950s, when several Americans arrived at the National Taiwan Normal University in the hope of learning Chinese. The university's Mandarin Training Center was established in 1956 and soon became the Mecca for people wishing to learn the language. The Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 are two political events in China that have been contributing to the surge of interest in learning Mandarin in Taiwan. Student numbers at the university reached 1,200 in the mid-1990s, but were boosted to about 1,500 since early 2000s.

According to this article, by the end of 2006, universities and educational associations in Taiwan had set up 27 centers for learning Mandarin, up from 13 in 1996. These centers are teaching a total of more than 15,000 foreign students. In order to train teachers for this rapid expansion, some 25 universities and associations in Taiwan have opened classes for cultivating human resources in Chinese teaching. Both foreign students studying Chinese and local students seeking to learn how to teach their language to foreigners are seen as potentially lucrative revenue streams.

For example, the National Taiwan Normal University established the Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in 1995; it began to provide a bachelor's degree in the subject in 2002 and to recruit doctoral students in 2003. The Chung Yuan Christian University's Department of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language was established in 2002 and began to recruit students in 2003. These diploma-granting departments and graduate institutes require students to study classic Chinese literature and attain fluency in English, in addition to learning Chinese teaching methodology and doing internships in teaching Chinese as a second language. Indeed, the National Taiwan Normal University is scheduled to establish a department of international Chinese language and culture in 2007 to grant diplomas exclusively to non-native speakers of Chinese studying in this field.

In order to further promote Chinese teaching and learning, in 2004, the Ministry of Education set up the Office for the Promotion and Globalization of Chinese Language and Traditional Characters to provide licensing test for teaching Chinese as a second language. Some 2,000 people entered the test in 2006, and those who passed the test received officially endorsed and widely recognized certification that ensures their quality as teachers.

Also in 2006, the first Test of Proficiency-Hanyu (TOP-Hanyu) was held by the Ministry of Education through the assistance of the National Taiwan Normal University. (Hanyu is the Chinese name of Mandarin.) The test aims to be a Chinese version of TOEFL, a test conducted both at home and abroad that qualifies the proficiency of non-native speakers. More than 1,400 people took the test. Meanwhile, the National Taiwan Normal University is also assisting the Ministry of Education in a project for designing AP teaching materials for teaching Chinese to American high school students.

The government in China established an Office of Chinese Language Council International in 1987, which is responsible for promoting Mandarin as a foreign language. In 1990, the office began holding the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, or Mandarin proficiency test. In order to further enhance its stature in the Chinese-language market, in 2004, China set up the first Confucius Institute in Seoul, South Korea, to promote and teach Chinese abroad. By the end of 2006, the institute reportedly had more than 120 branches in more than 50 countries.

Because Taiwan cannot compete against China in terms of government subsidies and the huge number of teachers sent abroad, all it can rely upon is the quality of its teachers. The government in Taiwan insists on strict screening for people who apply for jobs of teaching Chinese. All the aforementioned diploma-granting departments and graduate institutes in Taiwan also try to further consolidate their reputation by ensuring the quality of their students through joint tests, which started in 2006. Failure to pass the tests will prohibit one from advancing to a higher level, and three failures result in expulsion from the departments and institutes.

More importantly, the cultural legacy of traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan is also a competitive edge in winning the attention of foreign students. Not only are the traditional Chinese characters beautiful and culturally sophisticated, but it is also very hard for one to understand classic Chinese literature without learning the language in its traditional form. Those who learn traditional Chinese from the beginning often find that they can learn at a faster pace than those who learn simplified characters. This is because the system of traditional Chinese characters has been developed as an organic whole, unlike simplified Chinese characters that were created at random.

Furthermore, the Mandarin Phonetic Symbol system used in Taiwan has many advantages. Nicknamed "bo po mo fo", the system was formulated in 1913 and is as a great way to learn the pronunciation of the Chinese language. Learners of Mandarin can pronounce the language more correctly if they use this system, when compared to those who use romanized transliteration systems such as the Hanyu Pinyin system used in China. (Hanyu Pinyin was adopted by China in the 1950s.) Specifically, with the Mandarin Phonetic Symbol system, students can be free from the influence of their mother tongues when speaking Mandarin.

Nonetheless, Taiwanese teachers are advised to learn Hanyu Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters -- particularly if they want to connect with the global trend and teach Chinese abroad, where China now has substantial influence on how Chinese should be taught. One has to be realistic about the situation.

Since 2005, the Ministry of Education has been giving scholarships to foreigners studying Chinese in Taiwan. In 2007, 265 foreign students are receiving them, up from 103 two years ago. Now that the Chinese language is increasingly making a great impact globally, Taiwan needs to take advantage of its many strengths in providing quality and culturally sophisticated Chinese language education to international students.