International University Rankings

In Taiwan’s academic world, university rankings used to be like popular TV-shows: nobody found them very important, but many would like to see themselves featuring in them. With the government’s current injection of NT$50 Billion to force/squeeze one of the island’s elite universities into the top 100 academic hit parade, change is in the air (see Fili’s world, 15/7/2008 entry, or copy of the report on the Australian government’s website – links below).

University rankings are supposed to tell us which academic institutions are most prestigious. The World Higher Education Database (WHED) contains close to 18.000 institutions. A selection of universities on a few pages will still only show the top of the iceberg. Many interesting institutions will stay out of the picture, whether or not the WHED-data are the result of a meticulous ranking.

Different university rankings systems each have their own methodology and focus. Some rankings I am familiar with:

- The criteria of the World University Ranking, appearing in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), are related to a university’s quality and do not take the institution’s size into account. They intend to reflect objectives that universities should normally strive for: appreciation by peers, student/teacher ration, citations per staff member, percentage of foreign staff, and number of foreign students.

- Somewhat controversial at its launch in 2004, but of growing importance in the EU: the Webometrics Ranking (WR) of World Universities compiled by the Cybermetrics Lab (CINDOC) of the National Research Council (CSIC) of Spain. This ranking takes into account the volume of Web-content as well as the visibility and impact of Web-publications, based on the number of external links (“citations”) referring to those publications.

- The criteria of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. This ranking intends to reflect quality and prestige but, contrary to the THES-ranking, does take volume into account: number of Nobel Prize- and Fields Medal winners, number of highly cited researchers, number of publications in Nature and Science, number of publications included in the international citation indexes of Thomson Scientific. Only ten percent of the score is based on a comparison of staff performance and size/volume of a university.

It seems obvious that ranking results for a particular university will vary. For example, one ranking takes volume as primary criterion, the other does not. If volume does not count, the quality of a medium-size university can show itself better compared to large universities. Volume is, after all, not synonymous with quality.

Unfortunately, these global academic hit parades do not tell us that much. A university can excel in certain areas and less in others. Rankings completely ignore a university’s strongest domains, as well as the size of assets (human and otherwise) in these domains.

And yet, even in Europe where most universities have long shunned such rankings (for some of the above reasons I suppose), academic hit parades are becoming “in”, a yearly hot item. But this also why criticism from many of these institutions is and should be growing on the accuracy and value of these scores. This also seems to be the case in the United States. After all, once a university has received a “good ranking”, what do prospective students do with that information? Or does each university not have its limitations in available funds or its proper mission and vision on higher education? Or do rankings provide information on how quality of education and students’ performance can be improved?

In countries of Western Europe, an accreditation system is guarding the quality of higher education. This system is, in principle, somewhat similar to Taiwan’s MOE academic evaluation system. In Belgium, for example, universities obtain a detailed comparison with the country’s other institutions in order to take corrective action, if necessary. The education ministry then provides a long list of numbers related to students’ performance, and staff background and performance. International rankings, on the other hand, only include a small fraction of such numbers, with insufficient nuances to support changes in the university’s policy, let alone a shift in a specific department’s strategy.

As many others skeptical of such international rankings, I believe that these should rather function either as a kind of extra “congratulations”, or as an “alarm bell”. And this only in case of starkly varying results in comparison to universities with which one’s own institution should or can be compared. Still, if a university finds itself in the middle of a certain ranking, close to nothing can be learned that could have any positive change in policy for that institution. Unless, of course, a university believes in academic fairies and would like to find itself in a “top 100” or better position.

Does a student wishing to study abroad really get useful information from looking at university rankings? How, for example, would one put into numbers something like “satisfaction of student body” or “best match for your specific academic needs”?

The U.S. News, which is generally the “golden standard” for US university rankings, have previously come under fire for putting in false information for colleges that refuse to participate in the rankings (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-sacks/americas-best-college-sc_b_45064.html). Also in the US, there is a growing backlash of universities against such rankings (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-06-backlash-college-rankings_N.htm).

Are rankings necessarily useful or reliable for students? A university having a Nobel Prize or Fields Medals winner earns a university extra score. But how, for instance, does it possible help a prospective student if that distinguished professor is now concentrating on research-only and traveling the world attending conferences, thereby spending minimal time in giving classroom lectures?

My or your university might not rate very high in the international rankings. But does this mean it is not worth looking at? I am certain that there are many brilliant universities, particularly in regions like Western Europe, Scandinavia, New Zealand and other places that do not figure into traditional rankings. Isn’t it rather stupid to think that only a handful of universities are able to provide a top-notch learning environment?

Who, then, is to benefit from international rankings? Countries counting on an increased influx of foreign students, like Taiwan, for one. Or those expecting large shifts of students between neighboring countries, in particular those sharing a common regional lingua franca, like …, yes you guessed it. But in such cases, wouldn’t students be able to easily find the necessary information themselves, without rankings - provided universities freely publish that information, of course.

University rankings need to be looked at vigilantly and with a healthy degree of skepticism. Academic hit parades are fun, as are music hit parades. But what exactly is their informative value? And in the case of the former, what is the informative value for students?

Nevertheless, I do believe academic rankings can be a suitable indicator for change in the case of universities which are similar in their mission / vision. But in order to draw conclusion about the quality of a university, or how that quality can be improved, much more detailed and nuanced analysis is needed. No university or education ministry is worthy of its name if, apart from focusing on international rankings, it does not make such analysis an integral part of its policy.

REFERENCES

Fili’s World (Blog): http://www.filination.com/blog/2008/07/15/reaching-for-the-leading-100-world-universities-taiwans-aim-for-top-university-program/

Australian Government Educational Publications: http://aei.dest.gov.au/AEI/Shop/Products/Publications/PublicationDetails.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID={22972CF2-9325-4D30-AD56-0B8036204B16}&NRORIGINALURL=%2fAEI%2fShop%2fProducts%2fPublications%2fPublication632&NRCACHEHINT=ModifyGuest

Times Higher Education Supplement (THES): http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/

Webometrics Ranking (WR) of World Universities: http://internetlab.cindoc.csic.es/

Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Shanghai Jiao Tong University: http://www.arwu.org/

Survey Data (4)

Some more raw data from our "attitudes and perceptions" survey part [current number of surveys: Taipei (389), Taichung (195), Tainan and Kaohsiung (426 combined) - results converted into percentages from five-point Likert scale - written questionnaire offered in Chinese to equal cross-sections of respondents aged 16 to 70].

  

1. Children with Taiwanese as first language must attend Kindergartens where teachers use Taiwanese, not Mandarin.

Agree: 13.6 Disagree: 60.5 No opinion: 25.9

2. Children with Taiwanese as first language must attend Kindergartens where teachers use Mandarin and English, not Taiwanese.

Agree: 43.4 Disagree: 24.2 No opinion: 32.4

3. Primary schools should teach in Taiwanese and Mandarin.

Agree: 5.7 Disagree: 72.9 No opinion: 21.4

4. Primary schools should teach in Mandarin and English.

Agree: 45.6 Disagree: 25.1 No opinion: 29.3

5. Primary schools should teach in Taiwanese, Mandarin, and English.

Agree: 74.6 Disagree: 6.2 No opinion: 19.2

6. Primary school pupils with Taiwanese as first language will learn faster and better

if teachers use Taiwanese to explain all courses.

Agree: 44.7 Disagree: 28.9 No opinion: 26.4

7. Primary school pupils with Taiwanese as first language will learn faster and better

if teachers use Mandarin to explain all courses.

Agree: 36.7 Disagree: 25.1 No opinion: 38.2

8. I agree with the current situation in most primary schools: one weekly lesson in Taiwanese

for Taiwanese first-language pupils is sufficient.

Agree: 53.2 Disagree: 17.3 No opinion: 29.3

9. The Taiwanese language is doing fine; it is not threatened by other languages.

Agree: 30 Disagree: 39.7 No opinion: 30.3

10. My parents speak/spoke better Taiwanese than I do.

Agree: 77.4 Disagree: 9.2* No opinion: 13.6

* mainly in 50 to 70 age-group

Language Researchers' Big Mistake?

As a ‘sociolinguist’ I am supposed to study and report on language use. The language I use in doing so is English. After all, this gives my work the best chance of being accessed. But it is probably ironic that I am studying languages that do not give such opportunity to its users: Taiwanese and European languages of smaller communities.

Like most of my fellow-researchers, I apply sociolinguistic principles to determine the status of smaller languages. The purpose here is to illustrate how these languages are dominated by larger official or national languages. And yet, I would not consider writing about this in my own language, Flemish or Dutch. In Taiwan, most linguists supporting Holo (Taiwanese) or Taiwan’s indigenous languages will use Mandarin or English to do so. I also write all of my research on minority languages in English, the language often blamed for dominating smaller languages.

But what does it actually mean when we say that English or Mandarin threatens a smaller language? And what does it mean when a language is disappearing or threatened? It means that the people who know to speak such language are using it less and less, are neglecting its subtleties, and are increasingly using another language. That other language is rivaling their own mother tongue, with the probable outcome that the same people will choose not to transfer their mother tongue onto their children. Some might even forget most of it before they reach retirement age.

A language does not die, nor is it eradicated or killed by another language. Instead, people speaking a smaller language gradually stop doing so. So we should, in fact, not talk of ‘language death’, but of language abandonment.

People abandon their language for a variety of reasons. Those reasons have one certainty in common: the shift from a mother tongue to another language is accompanied and often preceded by other (political, economic) events. It is therefore not always appropriate to talk about language abandonment in negative, regrettable or even protesting terms.

Nor is it appropriate to continue blaming history and past governments for people’s decision to abandon their mother tongue. In some cases, language abandonment has been a liberation and enrichment, ‘ a sigh of relief’. So, in talking about ‘language loss’ or ‘language death’, one inevitably has to take into consideration societal circumstances that contributed to or even caused such change.

A recent argument from a number of sociolinguists is that the disappearance of smaller languages does not affect cultural diversity. Different cultures are always dying while new ones arise (Ladefoged 1992, Swaan 2002) has become a popular though controversial catchphrase: although most of us witness that the world is becoming more homogeneous, that may be because we fail to see new differences that are arising. These linguists also contend that granting a member of a minority language group the right to speak his or her mother tongue does not in itself empower him or her.

Although I have reservations about such views, I agree that academics involved in most language movements against dominant languages (i.e. in favor of minority languages) have distanced themselves too much from the original aim of sociolinguistics as a science: describing, documenting and researching language use between people. Instead of linguistic theory, many linguists use metaphors and emotional appeals. Much like: “The panda, that huge and cute black-and-white pet is almost extinct”; “the poor Chinese River Dolphin is endangered”; “Hakka, that beautiful language is slowly disappearing…”

To save an endangered species, people simply have to leave it alone in its habitat. To save a language, people have to do the opposite: keep on using, shaping, changing it – but never leave it alone. Languages are, in other words, made and abandoned - by people. Parents have a pivotal role here: they will normally choose the language offering their children the best chances on the job market. And this choice, more often than not, is the country’s official language and/or English, not the children’s mother tongue – as most linguists (like myself) would like to see.

So why do linguists still bother? Why not accept the majority’s choice if that majority prefers to abandon its language? Because I am convinced that those children who, at home, speak another language than the official language in school notice that they can do something more than other children. And most of all, allowing children speaking a smaller (minority) language to receive kindergarten and primary education through their mother tongue holds crucial cognitive advantages for their later education.

But let us not become overly sentimental in defending languages by completely identifying the minority language with the community in question. One can be a very loyal Taiwanese citizen without speaking Taiwanese, Chinese without speaking Mandarin, and Belgian without speaking Dutch or French. To be able to speak a language is proof of an identity. Language itself is an insigne of one’s own identity. But it is not the sole function of a language. Languages are also tools for communication and personal/professional advancement.

Language sentimentalists decrying the abandonment of smaller languages often neglect this function. “The more languages, the better” seems to be their straightforward message. Plus: all those languages have to be treated as equal and taught in school. Some linguists even oppose using one single language as a tool for international communication (lingua franca).

But if we insist on promoting such a multitude of smaller languages, could not the opposite result be achieved? Could we, albeit unwillingly, contribute to a scenario of “The more languages, the more English”? If a country like South Africa, for example, cannot support treating all of its 11 official languages as equal, will it not choose English as the only logical solution for its linguistic confusion? The same question goes for the European Union, where even the tiniest community languages are being promoted and protected by law.

It is feasible that English will become the big destroyer of languages, not merely because people are abandoning their own smaller language, but because academic researchers have become overly protective and sentimental. If a minority group in Taiwan has decided to abandon its language in favor of Mandarin, they have done so not only because of past KMT language repression. Most likely, they made a conscious and pragmatic choice in order to better empower the ethnic community they belong to.

The mistake of a good deal of language research is therefore an ironic one: academics fighting against English cultural and linguistic imperialism might actually achieve the opposite of what they strive for. By trying to give all smaller languages a higher status and more equal rights, it is instead the domination of English as well as the country’s official language that is strengthened.

REFERENCES

Ladefoged, P. (1992). Another View of Endangered Languages. In: Language 68, 809-811.

Phillipson, R. (2003). English Only in Europe; Challenging Language Policy. Routledge, London.

Swaan, A. (2002). Woorden van de Wereld: Het Mondiale Talenstelsel. Bakker/Prometheus, Amsterdam.

Survey Data (3)

As follow-up on the 2/14 and 2/24 posts, some more quick stats from an ongoing language survey (over 1000 valid questionnaires; ca. 400 from northern Taiwan, 450 from southern Taiwan, 250 from Taichung – with equal [and various] occupations from various age groups). Taiwanese in the south seems in a weaker position than generally believed, while residents in Taichung reported to use Mandarin more often than Taiwanese compared to Taipei residents. Have a look (with my apologies for not using tables or figures here):

At home, more people use Mandarin in Taichung than in Taipei: 64% vs. 45%. The same difference is more pronounced at the marketplace, 83% for Taichung vs. 59% for Taipei, and in communication with friends, 91% for Taichung vs. 58% for Taipei.

At home, less men use Mandarin in Taipei than in Kaoshiung and Tainan (combined): 42% for Taipei vs. 49% for the south of Taiwan. In the south, more men use Mandarin than women: 49% for male vs. 35% for female respondents. At the marketplace, more men use Mandarin in the south than in Taipei: 76% for Tainan and Kaohsiung vs. 52% for Taipei. In communication with friends, men in the south use slightly less Mandarin compared to women: 69% vs. 71%. Compared to the north, the use of Mandarin in the south is still higher: 71% (south) vs. 64% (north) for women, and 69% (south) vs. 51% (north) for men.

At home, more people use Taiwanese in Taipei than in Taichung: 46% vs. 35%. In Taichung, as many men as women use Taiwanese (35% for both genders) and Mandarin (64% for both genders). Far less women use Taiwanese in Taipei (37% vs. 54% for men). In the south, women use more Taiwanese than men: 54% vs. 48%. At the marketplace in Taipei, far less women use Taiwanese than men: 19% vs. 46%. In the south, the respective numbers are 66% vs. 76%. Taichung respondents report the lowest use of Taiwanese in the marketplace: 14% for women, 16% for men.

With friends, more people use Taiwanese in Taipei than in the south: 35% vs. 27%. If one breaks down the same numbers according to gender, in Taipei 21% of women and 48% of men use Taiwanese. In Kaohsiung and Tainan, 24% of women and 29% of men use Taiwanese in communicating with friends. In Taichung, a mere 5% of female and 13% of male respondents report to use Taiwanese with friends.

Will Chinese Rival English as International Lingua Franca?

THAT IS CHINESE TO ME!

If you hear a Dutchman or Fleming say “Dat is Chinees voor mij”, he is telling you that he has no understanding of what you are talking about. The French use the idiom “C’est du chinois” in the same sense. And so do nearly all western countries. The old (Roman) expression “That is Greek to me” is occasionally still heard. But the Greek language has made itself much too accessible for this expression to be maintained. It has turned its back on ancient Greek and has, in 1976, officially adopted a simplified Greek language, Dimotiki (“people's language”). The Greek themselves now use the idiom “That is Chinese to me” for things that are totally incomprehensible to them.

On my first visit to Taiwan in March 1989, I was introduced to a Dean at a national university in Tainan. Eager to brief a Belgian about Taiwan’s and ‘Greater China’s’ future, he urged I should start learning Chinese immediately. This language was destined to become “within 20 years” the most powerful lingua franca in Asia. Not doing so would “harm” my academic future. I almost believed him, considering the little I knew about the language situation here, as well as the status of the person bestowing this advice upon me.

Nineteen years onwards Chinese is not, by far, Asia’s lingua franca. Many people might be trying to master spoken and written Chinese, but it is English they use as language of broader communication. Although I speak Chinese, I have not been able to master it’s writing system. I have used and still use English in my daily life in Taiwan. And I am doing fine. Nothing ‘harmful’ has happened to me, professionally speaking. When attending conferences in Taiwan or elsewhere in Southeast Asia, it is English and not Chinese or the local language that I hear most. When I start a conversation in Chinese, it is my Taiwanese interlocutor who most often switches to English. From personal experience, I do not believe that most Taiwanese care much about uplifting Chinese to an international lingua franca. More importantly, I believe it lacks the linguistic ingredients and planning to become a lingua franca beyond China and Taiwan.

Will Chinese overtake English as the global language? No. This is, of course, my view - as a language teacher, linguist, and taxpayer of Taiwan. I do possess an admittedly limited insight in the roll of economics vis-à-vis a people’s choice in adopting a lingua franca. Yet, I do not underestimate such factors. But beyond economics, people’s patience in learning a language, even when great benefits awaits them for doing so, is usually very limited. The foreign learner of Chinese outside Taiwan is not as motivated as the foreigner within in trying to master Chinese - and much less patient. And note, I say ‘trying’ to master. Ironically, it is in Europe, not Taiwan, that I heard and saw westerners speak and write the most fluent and authentic Mandarin: students from Sinology departments having been taught pronunciation by using Hanyu Pinyin and writing the language by using the simplified Chinese script.

Before heading out to settle in Taiwan, one such student and friend of mine recommended two textbooks to me (by John DeFrancis). After having followed 6 months of daily Chinese classes using the ‘bopomofo’ system, it was those books that saved me from quitting that class altogether. Mind you, I love learning languages. My Chinese instructor at that time was visibly disappointed when I started consulting my DeFrancis in class. How could one, after all, prefer to use “Mainland Hanyu” to learn how to speak “proper” Chinese? But again, that was 18 years ago.

I was highly motivated then, wanting to live and work in Taiwan. I also wanted to add an eight language to my list. In retrospect, I failed. After having blamed myself for a decade or so for not having learned to write Chinese properly, the linguistic properties of the language made me understand (mainly by reading comparative linguistic analyses) that the Chinese language, too, is to ‘blame’ for many foreigners’ failure in mastering the language.


LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: CHINESE vs ENGLISH

Comparatively speaking, English is a far simpler language to learn. The novice English learner will quickly pick up vocabulary and syntax patterns, also quicker than in the case of French, for example. It is only after a year or two of intensive study that the semantics of English, a highly idiomatic language with a record number of metaphors, start to get truly challenging.

Still, it is this inherent quality of being a simple language that can be acquired rather quickly that has contributed in making English the lingua franca of the world. As the western idiom “That is Chinese to me” illustrates, Chinese is probably one of the most difficult languages ever created by man. Also, unlike Japanese in Asia or Greek in Europe, it has undergone but little modification. Notwithstanding the simplified characters, it largely retains its classical format as it was in the times of ancient history. The format of Chinese, instead of making things easier to a learner, hinders one from forming clear ideas about an entirely new language.

Chinese is a hieroglyphic language, employing pictures to exemplify an idea. Significantly, it is not an advanced hieroglyphic language like Egyptian, where the pictures were attributed phonetic values, but rather like the Indus Valley script which, barring a discovery of an Indian version of the Rosetta Stone, shall remain indecipherable as the key to the language is lost.

A short and rudimentary linguistic comparison of the Chinese and English languages:

1. English has 26 letters in its alphabet. Twenty-six symbols to master its complete writing system. Traditional Chinese has about 13.500 characters, simplified Chinese about 6000 all of which are basically picture. Each has to be memorized to ensure comprehension of a concept. It takes a Chinese learner of English a few days to master the alphabet. It takes anyone starting to learn Chinese up to a few months to get the basics down.

2. The phonetic values of the English symbols (letters) are variable as we take into account the regional variations (BBC southern standard as opposed to the Australian accent, for example). But there is a universal value that does not change and only varies in representation. An Australian may say “A slaice of kike, mait”, but shall write “A slice of cake, mate” when called upon to put the words he spoke into the English script. Chinese has no “script” as such, and “words” are not formed by a combination of phonetic values, but on the basis of the significance given to it by those who created the characters. A vast amount of memorizing is involved in its learning, and this practice of memorization for children in elementary schools contributes, I believe, to future cognitive patterns of subject-content memorization throughout high school and university (but this bit of psycholinguistics probably belongs in a different blog entry). Fact is, memorization is the most boring and difficult aspect of mastering a language and is generally not valued by Westerners in learning any new discipline.

3. The phonetics of English, even if it varies at points, has an international standard. A person who knows this language is able to understand a speech by any person educated in the English medium, even if one originates from Nigeria and the other from Finland, provided they speak English of course. The phonetics of Chinese is dependant on tones. This means that for over the 6.000 or so simplified characters, one also has to memorize the four tones in which each is spoken. A task of gigantic proportions, even to young Chinese learners – if one cares to make a comparison with their native English counterparts.

4. English has spread via the media of religion, trade, conquest and has ultimately been adopted as the language of many non-native speakers. Chinese has never spread in a similar fashion and very few non-native speakers have adopted Chinese as a language of expression.

5. Chinese does not have cognates for westerners. An American can pick up a French newspaper and still make some sense out of an article. A German can do likewise with a Dutch or Danish newspaper article, an Italian with a Spanish article etc. English stands out as containing the most cognates of any other western language, mainly because the language is highly flexible and has never been linguistically xenophobic to allow borrow-words to enter its lexicon. Chinese, on the other hand, hardly contains any cognates except those taken from English, making it a highly inflexible language.

6. On a semantic (meaning) and morphological (word formation) level, Chinese is also extremely user-unfriendly. Looking up a word in a dictionary is not merely an exercise in speedily reciting one’s A-B-Cs as with English, it is a skill in its own right. Figuring out all the radicals and their variants, plus dealing with the ambiguous characters with no obvious radical at all is a wasteful time-consuming chore that slows the learning process down by a factor of ten as compared to English and most other languages.

If a language teacher is called upon to measure the level of difficulty involved in teaching Chinese and English, he would be bound to accept that the level of the former far supersedes that of the latter. Also, if one were to consider the business aspect, English has been established as a language of commerce for quite a number of years. If Chinese were to displace it, it would also have to bring about a linguistic revolution which would stand probable only in the delirious dreams of some extremist nationalist ruler.


NO LINGUA FRANCA WITHOUT ‘CULTURAL REVOLUTION’

Admirably, perhaps, the general attitude in China and Taiwan is one of pragmatic closure. China and Taiwan are actively demanding of their scholars and students alike to acquire a more than rudimentary grasp of English. There is a continuous acute demand for English teachers who can make the Chinese and Taiwanese students better equipped for modern-day business and life. There is an equal huge demand for English speaking professionals in China and Taiwan who can facilitate international business. Also, we do not see attempts by China at the international level to produce another “Cultural Revolution”—so there is no active interest in spreading Chinese as a common international mode of expression. English is gaining popularity in terms of usage and adaptability, particularly so within China.

So why do so quite some westerners believe Chinese will overtake English as lingua franca? The debate likely arose from the sheer number of the people who speak Chinese. Also, since China’s manpower far surpasses that of the EU or US, the question of the world’s ‘Most Spoken Language’ also becoming the ‘Global Language’ might have arisen. But, as far as logic, common sense and past history (i.e. China never ruled outside its perceived own territory) depicts, such an occurrence is far-fetched and unrealistic. Chinese is already the most widely spoken language in the world, but that is because of the vast population of China. Outside the Mainland, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, one wonders how many people have a basic or working knowledge of Chinese, either by choice or by compulsion.

English is spoken by roughly 2 billion people across the world, 350 million of whom are English mother tongue speakers. The former number for Chinese stand at 1.4 billion speakers, not taking into account that the term “Chinese” includes language varieties in China other than Mandarin that are often mutually incomprehensible. Simply put, many of over a billion people mostly referred to as “Chinese speakers” are not Chinese mother tongue speakers.


CHINA'S ECONOMY vs ENGLISH LANGUAGE FLEXIBILITY

While it seems quite evident that Chinese is not poised to overtake English as a global language, the Chinese economy is certainly bound to become strong enough to boost the cause and popularity of its language - just like the English did and Americans are doing now. But is it is not more probable that China’s resurgent economy is a result of its ability to adapt to the English language and to the western way of work rather than the imposition of the Chinese language on other countries? Above all, China is adopting and adapting the English language. I deem it not unthinkable that, because of its inherent flexibility, English could become an Asian language in its own right, much like ‘Singlish’. This vibrant variety of English spoken in Singapore, rather than Chinese, is increasingly perceived as Singapore’s lingua franca.

In Singapore as anywhere else in Asia and the world, the flexibility of English earns it tremendous points by virtue of that one hallmark that ensures the universality and popularity of a language: flexibility. The English language is extremely dynamic in that it keeps changing according to the tastes and preferences of the English speaking population of the world. Given its origins, where it borrowed freely from all languages of the world, modern day English has no qualms either about borrowing words from all over the world. Any word that becomes popular or assumes cult significance in any country inevitably finds its way to that ultimate tome of approval: The Oxford English Dictionary. The latter indeed is British, but only in name!

We find words in the English language that have been incorporated from French, German, Italian, Dutch, Hindi etc. without even the slightest of modifications. This dynamism of the English language is what keeps it thriving. Chinese badly lacks a similar dynamism. While this might please language purists (esp. in Taiwan) fearing an erosion of a more archaic form of Chinese, it hardly makes an ingredient for a future international lingua franca. As was the case with Sanskrit and Latin, when the perimeters of a language become too rigid so as to forbid free lending and borrowing of words, it turns against itself and achieves nothing but its own gradual extinction. Mandarin might well be challenged itself by a much more dominant English language through a mere lack of such vital flexibility.

Indications suggest that English will remain relevant in every sphere of human life and activity throughout the globe. China’s economy is strong enough to put its weight behind its national language. Yet, I believe it is highly unlikely that Chinese is going to displace English as a global or even Asian language. If that were to happen after all, it would entail an entire linguistic and cultural revolution, which does not seem feasible or practical. The Chinese and Taiwanese themselves are quite content to be able to speak Mandarin, but when it comes to international communication and business, they choose the way the world does - the English language.

Laponce's Law at Work in Taiwan

LAPONCE'S LAW: “The kinder the people, the unkinder the dominant languages.”

Jean Laponce: former Director of the Institute of Interethnic Relations at the University of Ottawa, former President of the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada and Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Sociolinguistic fieldwork shows that languages can coexist for centuries when there is little contact between the parts of the population who speak it. But as soon as people begin talking, trading, working with each other, courting each other and having children together, the weaker of the two languages will slowly be driven out by the other, by the one that people have a stronger incentive to learn because of it being more prestigious. Such is the relationship between Mandarin and Taiwanese in Taiwan.

Laponce’s law was seen in a fairly pure form in Quebec, Canada, until 1975. It was also witnessed in Flanders, Belgium, until the late 1960s. In the first instance, French was close to being wiped out by English; in Flanders, the Flemish language was shunned in public even by its own speakers (who tried, often in vain, to use Dutch as spoken by their northern neighbors). What changed after 1975 for Quebec, and after 1968 for Flanders, was the realization by mother tongue speakers that they could not continue to be so ‘kind’ to the other (dominant) language in their countries, while voluntarily degrading the language they spoke at home.

The French Canadians and Flemish in Belgium became aware that “laisser-faire” would lead to the gradual erosion of their mother tongue. It also became increasingly difficult for those who identified with their mother tongue not to feel despised, treated unjustly and denied equal dignity when they were not allowed to use their home language.

Whether Taiwanese speakers will one day react in a similar fashion because they too are overly ‘kind’ to the dominance of Mandarin remains to be seen. Fact is, Mandarin will increasingly treat Taiwanese and Taiwan’s indigenous languages unkindly, to use Laponce’s expression.


MYTH: USING A LANGUAGE = SURVIVAL OF THAT LANGUAGE

According to the philosophy of governments like the ones in Switzerland, Canada, Spain and Belgium, language rights for all can only be provided by linguistic territorial zones (see my 25/4 post). But is there really no alternative? After all, if people do not want Taiwanese to die, is it not simply up to them to use it? The answer, unfortunately, is negative. Two features prevent such alternative from holding much promise.

The first is education. Taiwanese-speaking parents may realize that if everyone sends their children to dominant Mandarin/English language schools, their own language will gradually whither away. They might then want to prevent that. But if other parents do not opt for the dominant Mandarin/English language school, Taiwanese would not whither away, and it would then be in the interest of each family to send its children to such a school. If others do defect in this way, on the other hand, no particular family will make a difference and each may therefore just as well send its children to Mandarin/English language schools.

To illustrate this feature, consider the case of a Taiwanese first-language shopkeeper in an area with many customers who speak Mandarin-only. Whether the shopkeepers’ competitors comply or not with the voluntary policy of speaking Taiwanese-only in order to safeguard his or her language, it will be in any particular shopkeeper’s interest to try to gain or retain customers by defecting: by accepting to use Mandarin when talking to customers!

The second feature that prevents the Taiwanese language from being maintained by merely speaking is even more crucial: it is the kindness of the people that provides the stronger language, Mandarin, with its unkind claws. Speakers of the weaker language can, in order to block the process leading to its disappearance, insist on speaking their own mother tongue in the many informal contexts in which Mandarin is the one that makes communication most fluid and mutual understanding least problematic. But implementing the will to maintain Taiwanese through such stubborn and ‘unkind’ insistence on using it would unavoidably generate a permanent climate of face-to-face tension between proponents of Taiwanese and Mandarin. It is such ‘unkindness’ that is currently not supported in Taiwan’s linguistic settings, not in the least because it is often confused to be as politically incorrect.

Imposed rules to use either Mandarin or Taiwanese in certain schools or areas, even imperfectly enforced, would have the advantage of reducing such strains: it is less ‘aggressive’ or ‘divisive’ to say “Sorry, I know it’s stupid, but the law does not allow us to provide schooling in your language only” than to say “Sorry, I refuse to listen or speak to you in your language, even though nothing but my bad will prevents me from doing so”.

For the two reasons stated above, voluntarily speaking Taiwanese does not provide a serious alternative to save the language. Some set of coercive rules regulating the teaching and public use of languages is required, rules as embedded in the EU-constitution, or in the constitution of Canada.


MYTH: LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL DIGNITY FUELS SEPARATISM

If Laponce’s law is to be counteracted, linguistic territorial zones are more convenient to implement in Taiwan’s linguistic setup (see post ‘Changing Taiwan’s linguistic landscape’). But they are also far better suited to enable each protected language to sustainably function as a political language, and hence to be granted the correct degree of dignity.

Implementing a linguistic territorial system has generated a set of tricky difficulties - as witnessed in Belgium, Spain, and to a lesser degree Switzerland. These difficulties are related to the fear of certain central governments that such systems might eventually ‘grab’ a territory as well, thus ‘breaking up’ the country. France, for example, is currently the only EU-country not officially recognizing its regional languages. Another difficulty is the costs resulting from the adoption of linguistic territories, in particular the training of fully bilingual teachers serving schools in such communities.

Still, EU states (with the exception of France) are going ahead with applying the linguistic zones principle for all official and regional languages. This is seen as a minimal part of what is needed to achieve equal dignity among ethnically diverse people. Taiwan, much like France, still adheres to the symbolic assertion of ‘equality’, which is bound to keep losing significance to that of equal dignity (including in the realm of politics). No equality without dignity is fast becoming the global catch phrase.

Linguistic territorial zones provide the only proven effective and admissible way of preventing Taiwan’s weaker languages and indigenous cultures to fade away further. Linguistic and cultural diversity will be served, which in turn contributes to the pacification of potentially strained ethnic relations, which ultimately will favor any political entity having initiated all this. Political leaders and academics wanting to see Taiwanese and Taiwan’s indigenous languages disappear will be presented a heavy price tag for such outdated anomaly.

REFERENCES

Laponce, Jean (2003) "The Case for Ethno-linguistic Federalism in Multilingual Societies” in: J. Coakley, ed., The territorial management of ethnic conflicts. London: Cass.

Laponce, Jean (2006). Loi de Babel et autres regularites des rapports entre langue et politique. Presses de l'Universite Laval.

Laponce, Jean (2007). "Frontiere ou libre circulation: dilemmes de la diversite linguistique". In: La Geographie, 212-219.

Taiwan's Low Quality and Elitist Education System

In previous posts, I have written about Finland’s successful language immersion education programs (in Vaasa). Forty years ago, this country was completely dependent on Russia with its only main industry wood-working. Just over 30 years ago, Finland started investing heavily in upgrading the quality of their education. Now, it is widely envied for having the most successful and effective education system in the world.

I will use Finland’s education as backdrop to contrast with Taiwan’s education. Some will deny it, while efforts to change the situation have been made - and have achieved the opposite: Taiwan’s education is elitist.

WHY FINLAND?

Finland’s – and most education systems in EU-states – are opposite of elitist and see to it that every child has an equal opportunity to receive equal-quality education.

Most important in Finnish education is the policy of raising the abilities of slower learners. Taiwan education tries to achieve the same by allowing slower learners to join mainstream education, often turning them into slow learners compared to their class-peers. Finland’s teachers offer remedial plans (one-on-one) for about 20% of its total high school students, paid for as overtime work by the government. Taiwan’s solution to the problem is sought in cram school education.

Primary and junior high schools in Finland have an average of 150 students per school with no more than 20 students per class. In Taiwan, schools use advertising slogans such as “Excellence, Vitality, and Soul Education” (a school’s slogan in Kaohsiung City). In Finland, one doesn’t find anything similar; the Finns think that when (e)quality is served, excellence and vitality will take care of itself.

Rather than Taiwan’s practice of increasing the number of schools and throwing money at education, Finland has put considerable efforts into improving its junior high school education. The Finns judged correctly that children at this stage are developing their own methods of learning, so that they need the most resources.

Taiwan’s junior high school children are, instead, cramming (as in "memorizing content") the five core subjects: Chinese, English, math, science and social studies. Moreover, a significant number of students is doing so in a language different from their home (first) language, Taiwanese.

With al its disadvantages, one might argue that Taiwan’s elitist system gives quick learners what they deserve. Finnish education logic is different: faster learners can study on their own or have more free time for other activities; slow learners need more help - and Finland does not have cram schools. Taiwan’s logic is that quick learners need to be rewarded by getting into the best schools, while slow learners must join schools with lesser prestige.

Taiwan’s education system is tuned at only investing in its best students. It forces schools to invest limited financial resources in the top students who scored highest in the near-repulsive Basic Competency Test (Taiwan’s standardized high school entrance test), which leads to vital lack of fairness in education.

Finland (and other EU-states) persistently opposes any form of divisions or ranking. “Elite” divisions are major taboos. In Belgium, to take another EU state, entrance exams for high schools and universities are non-existent, except for art education and medical studies. Finnish primary and junior high schools are furthermore free to determine class size, course content, curriculum, and even the number of semesters in a school year. Teachers are free to decide what to teach, how it is taught, and what texts to use. Belgium has a similar system in primary education, with mornings set aside for the study of core subjects and afternoons for extra-curricular activities encouraging the pupil to express himself creatively.

TAIWAN’S EDUCATION DEFORMATION

Taiwan has partly deregulated textbook use in 2005. This has left many students no choice but to attend profit-making cram schools to prepare for entrance exams. After all, students often complain that not a single text from their schoolbooks is used in the exams. So they refuse to memorize anything and are not aware of other techniques to master subject content. Since Taiwan’s system demands memorization to pass entrance tests, the situation after 2005 is worse than before.

Taiwan has implemented a comprehensive curriculum from 1st to 9th grades. But the MOE conveniently forgot to demand that teachers be trained to teach students certain things beyond the core subjects. This, of course, would have involved investing even more in primary and high school education.

Cram schools have moved in to fill this gap: their number has increased fourfold to almost 17.500 in less than a decade. The government has quietly given its consent: it is, after all, better to collectively confine Taiwan’s youth to cram schools than to loose face by admitting that educational reform has been a failure.

Hence, high school students spend 8 hours a day at school, with many students sacrificing their entire summer vacation and most weekends in cram schools “filling the gap” left by Taiwan’s appalling education strategies. A faulty educational system and 17.500 “Robin Hoods” eager to “save” Taiwan’s youth from a substandard education system (getting rich while doing so). Spare a thought for the pupils caught up in this system!

UNIVERSITIES

Taiwan’s tertiary educational system is a copy from a country much richer in resources: the US. The latter spends an average of NT$ 1.7 million per year on each university student. The EU-average is much lower: NT$ 418.000. Taiwan: NT$ 130.000, that is per university student per year, for a system favoring the best students only.

The unemployment rate among university graduates in Taiwan is peaking. For graduates aged 20 – 24, it stands at almost 13%, three times the national average. Taiwan counts 162 universities and technical colleges. Finland, for example, while having four times less people (5.3 million) than Taiwan, has seven times less similar institutions (22).

In one decade, the number of university students in Taiwan (not including those in technical schools) has risen from 380.000 to 1.12 million (2006), with 90% of all high school graduates going on to undergraduate studies at a university. Simplistic and thoughtless educational reforms led by Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tse then led to an excessive growth in the number of universities. This eventually led to a decline in the quality of university students and the quality of university education, in particular for those schools with declining student numbers.

Some university programs in Taiwan do not reject a single student. If only 20 students apply for a program able to take in 50 students, why turn them away? One might argue that European Universities also admit all students (without admission test). In those cases, however, students are far from guaranteed to pass all subjects, as is the case in Taiwan. If a student at a Taiwan university is failed, parents increasingly demand to talk to university authorities, ultimately putting pressure on the teachers to choose the least hassle-free option: to pass students. Profit is increasingly the new name of the university game, with student recruitment having become a war between schools and departments.

The MOE adopts their trademark approach: hands-off. They allow free competition among universities that have increasingly become diploma-manufacturers rather than institutions of teaching excellence. Teachers retreat into their offices concentrating on research – which keeps authorities content. This rather than facing the increasingly ugly reality of entering the teaching battlefield. Hence, a university with poor teaching records can survive merely by improving the research output of its academic staff. Where does all this leave the university students?

The MOE has tried to react, in part, by starting a system to assess university departments as of 2006. But seeing their extremely poor record in effectively implementing its own policies, I (and others, I suspect) strongly doubt they will have the guts to ask a university to close down in case it fails the final evaluation. Also, a new (KMT) administration will eventually come up with different measures to achieve similar goals, possibly putting further pressure on already de-motivated teachers.

WHY THIS MESS?

The fundamental cause, I believe, is that parents in Taiwan judge a university’s ranking to guarantee academic achievement. Although Europe and the US have similar educational branding for selected schools, it is by far not as intense as is the case in Taiwan – especially not in Europe.

As many other things in Taiwan, higher education and good universities are status models. In most (if not all!) other countries, a good income and academic background is not as important as it is here, on Isla Formosa.

Much like teachers are struggling to uphold academic standards, students (and their parents) are involved in a battle of their own: gain admission to Taiwan’s top-ranked universities. To achieve this, a student first had to gain access to one of the island’s top high schools. And for this to happen, that same student had to spend many evenings, weekends and summer holidays cramming away during his or her junior high school years.

Are we surprised that Taiwan’s kids excel in math but are weak in coming up with new hypotheses and creative ways to, for example, write a simple essay? And do Taiwan authorities really care?

Instead of acknowledging all problems in education, education officials hold up Taiwan children’s scores at international competitions to prove (to themselves?) that we are indeed producing competitive students. Few things are further from the truth. If they don’t know, they are incompetent. If they do know, they are hypocrites. The ultimate truth is that, because of the pressure of their daily examination battle, Taiwan’s youth is gravely lacking chances for exploration, adventure, and creativity.

A TEACHER (NOT EXAM)-DRIVEN NON-ELITIST EDUCATION

Only by upgrading the quality of Taiwan’s schools can the pressure on students be relieved. This then would be the beginning of a more humane education system for Taiwan’s youth, providing that a future MOE will not shy away from a thorough overhaul of, in particular, the primary and junior high school education system.

Encourage and convince parents in poorer rural areas that they don’t have to send their kids to “quality” high schools elsewhere. Do so by upgrading rural schools. And start doing this by building a system to further educate teachers. Give incentives – financial or by providing paid leave - to teachers wiling to continue education.

Finland, the country with the world’s best education system, also has the world’s strictest teaching standards. Primary and junior high school teachers must have research-oriented backgrounds (MA-degree combined with relevant research publications), which explains the almost complete freedom teachers have, as explained above.

Taiwan’s education reforms did not make any attempt to train teachers. Whatever changes the MOE was hoping for were destined to fail. In 2005, the MOE allocated NT$ 50 billion for a five-year plan to bring Taiwanese universities up to the highest world standards. It should not come as a surprise that in an anonymous survey, 67% of professors believed this plan would not succeed.

Taiwan’s public and policy makers might want to look beyond the economy to uplift its people. In 30 years, Finland grew from a relatively poor wood-working nation to one of the world’s foremost electronics exporter.

The Finns did not do this by making their children cram textbooks or by emphasizing sciences. They did so by improving the overall quality of their education system - a non-elitist education putting, the slow learner first. And although the Finns’ household wealth is ‘only’ at the average level for member states of the European Union, a Cambridge University survey shows them to be the “happiest” people in Europe, after the Danes.

Taiwan should take note, since its mal-functional education is contributing to widening the gap between the poor and the rich and producing increasingly worthless diplomas.

What can our education system offer poorer or slower students, except for force-feeding them and stealing a substantial part of their youth and creativity?

REFERENCES

CommonWealth Magazine: http://english.cw.com.tw : edition no. 360, articles by Hsu Kuei-ying and Sherry Lee; no. 384, article by Hsiao Fuyuan; no. 395, articles by Sherry Lee.

Finland Ministry of Education Website: http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/?lang=en

Cambridge University Website, “Happy Danes are here again”,
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/press/dpp/2007041601

Reshaping Taiwan's Linguistic Landscape

In this post, I propose a language education system for Taiwan's primary schools regulated by a so-called “Taiwan Language Law”. Such law would be modeled on the language law (1986) in the Basque region of Navarre in northern Spain. The education system here has been a model for multilingual regions throughout Europe and has recently been awarded the most innovative and successful education in Europe (see later in this post).

A similar Taiwan language law would divide Taiwan into five different education zones:

• A-Zones: the Taiwanese-only zones, 
• B-Zones: the mixed Taiwanese/Mandarin zones,
• C-Zones: the Mandarin-only zones,
• D-Zones: the mixed Hakka/Mandarin zones,
• E-Zones: the mixed Aboriginal/Mandarin zones 

These education zones (areas within Taiwan) will have different population densities, different urban and rural characteristics, as well as different percentages of people who are bilingual or monolingual in Taiwanese (Hakka or Aboriginal) and Mandarin.

I will limit this post to consider the status of Taiwanese language education in the proposed educational setup: the A-, B-, and C-Zones.

A QUICK LOOK AT THE EDUCATION ZONES

The Taiwanese language will first have to be recognized as an official language, but only in the A-Zones. In these zones, a mostly rural population lives in smaller villages who are Taiwanese / Mandarin bilingual – predominantly on the southern part of the island.

Over half of Taiwan’s population will have access to the mixed Taiwanese / Mandarin B-Zones. These areas include the major cities on the western part of the island, including Taipei and its neighboring areas. The remainder of Taiwan’s inhabitants, living in either the A- or C-Zones but not having Taiwanese as home language will equally have access to the Mandarin-only education zones. If people’s home language does not correspond with the education zone in which they live, they will have two options:

• Have their children follow education close to home but accepting them to be bilingually educated, or
• Send their children to a school further from home in the education zone they choose.

In public life, the Taiwan language law will recognize that the inhabitants of the Taiwanese A-Zones have the right to use the Taiwanese language in their dealings with the administration in those zones. In the mixed Taiwanese / Mandarin B-Zones and in the Mandarin-only C-Zones, this right is also recognized, although the measures prescribed by the language law will be limited and most probably not always implemented in practice. This, however, has not proven problematic in similar zones in the Basque Country (Euskara).

As far as teaching is concerned, the language law would only fully recognize the right to receive education through Taiwanese in the A-Zones. In the mixed B-Zones, this right will be subject to choice. Those who express a wish to study in Taiwanese can do so, but only if there is sufficient demand for to start such classes within that education zone. In the Mandarin-only C-Zones, this right will be more restricted and will also depend on social demand.

Not surprisingly, the Taiwan Language Law will be harshly criticized by different groups within Taiwan because of the “separation” of the community into language-education areas. They will also object to the “legal” obstacles the law will impose on the teaching of Taiwanese in the mixed and Mandarin-only zones. At first, such criticism might originate within rightist elements from the KMT. It might then spread to other groups (parents, teachers, public opinion) not familiar with the benefits of the system elsewhere and only susceptible to political (nationalist) “centralizing” policies.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE EDUCATION ZONES

In the Taiwanese-only A-Zones, most of the population will be bilingual, a minority passive bilinguals (i.e. able to understand but not speak Mandarin proficiently) and a yet smaller minority Mandarin-speaking monolinguals.

In the mixed B-Zones, the estimated percentage of bilinguals will amount to 30 – 50%, passive bilinguals to less than 20%.

In the Mandarin-only C-Zones, the bilinguals will represent an estimated percentage of less than 10% (including passive bilinguals), and 90% or more Mandarin-speaking monolinguals.

Parents choosing A-Zones education for their children are the ones showing attitudes in favor of Taiwanese. The reasons for preserving the language and giving it greater value are generally of the historical, affective type, born out of a sense of attachment to one’s Taiwanese language and culture. Taiwanese first language speaker opting for Zones-A education will tend to attribute a great value to their mother tongue. But they will also keenly feel that Taiwanese has not been valued enough in Taiwan’s social and working environment.

Unfavorable attitudes on behalf of monolingual Mandarin speakers will also be linked to criteria based on usefulness. Those who are above 50 years old, who are monolingual Mandarin speakers, who have not completed their education, and who are living in the mixed B-Zones or Mandarin-only C-Zones are the ones who will be most indifferent to a possible increase in the use of the Taiwanese language.

By implementing the zoning education system, Taiwan society will opt for the recognition of the Taiwanese language as an integral part of Taiwan’s culture. Recognition would be much greater among Taiwanese first language speakers and in the Taiwanese-only A-Zones. In the Mandarin-only C-Zones, Taiwanese might not be greatly valued because of low levels of competence, fewer opportunities to use it, and the lack of support Taiwanese has enjoyed so far.

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES

In the distinct zones established by the Taiwan Language Law, different language education models will be applied which will regulate the use of Taiwanese and Mandarin in the education system. Through the application of these models, the teaching of the Taiwanese language will be obligatory in the A-Zones, but optional in the B- and C-Zones.

In the mixed B-Zones, the teaching of the Taiwanese language is guaranteed as long as two conditions will be met:

(i) That there are sufficient requests made by parents to allow the formation of a bilingual class or even school, large enough to set up B-Zones type education
(ii) That there is availability of trained bilingual teachers for this group. In the Mandarin-only zones, the only possibility that is considered is the teaching of Taiwanese as a subject, which will also depend on the condition in specified in (i).

The most direct consequence of the education zones is that parents in the Mandarin-only education zones will not be able to choose education through the medium of Taiwanese. To some extent, this situation is mitigated by the fact that private schools, which can offer Taiwanese-medium education, could be set up with financial assistance from interest and business groups.

So although some Taiwanese-medium schools can exist in the Mandarin-only C-Zones, they will be considered as officially unregulated, and will therefore not receive government funding. Such schools are exactly those which are flourishing in Spain’s autonomous regions (called “Ikastolas”). I will talk about them later to criticize those in Taiwan claiming that a pupil cannot handle learning in three languages.

The A-Zones will use Taiwanese as a medium for teaching, offering Mandarin as subject at all levels of compulsory education. The A-Zones will use Taiwanese-only as a vehicle for teaching all subjects (courses) in the first five years of primary education. Beyond those five years, Taiwanese will be used as medium to teach two subjects. This education model is aimed at those pupils coming from a totally Taiwanese-speaking background. This model will become a maintenance program for the Taiwanese speaking pupils and an early total immersion program for those Mandarin-speaking pupils opting for this kind of education.

For those who are confused by the term “immersion”: this kind of program is an education model which uses the child’s second language as a teaching medium for a very significant part of the primary school’s curriculum. These programs are based on the principle that knowledge of the contents and the second language gradually develop throughout the curriculum, thereby generating a special educational situations in which the Mandarin-only pupils will have to learn Taiwanese and the curricular contents at the same time. Such models are successfully implemented in multilingual countries in Europe, as well as in Canada.

English as foreign language will be introduced in all the education zones. This would equal so-called trilingual education from the second or third grades of primary school onwards. Such has been the traditional learning method of most European states since the early 1970s. Claims made by some academics and politicians in Taiwan that this would be too much to handle for Taiwan’s pupils are denigrating to Taiwan’s youngsters. Furthermore, in the light of ample research into multilingual primary education elsewhere, these claims are unsupported, speculative and plainly wrong.

But let’s get back to Taiwan’s proposed education zones. It is important to understand that the criteria used in these zones would not be the pupil’s mother tongue per se, but the predominance of Taiwanese or Mandarin speakers in certain areas within Taiwan, as well as the parents choice of education model for their children. In other words, education through Taiwanese will take place subject to three different sets of conditions:

1. The majority language in the different language zones
2. The parental choice of education zone
3. The resources made available by the Ministry of Education to support the long-term development of education through languages other than Mandarin

ZONE-EDUCATION MODELS IN EUROPE

The A-Zones education model (mostly in smaller villages in Taiwan’s rural south) would be the only model guaranteeing a greater competence in Taiwanese and a level of Mandarin similar to the B- and C-models. This fact is supported by research done into Basque- and Catalan-only education models by comparing primary school exit results of their respective A-, B- and D-models.

Based on such exit results of implementing zone-education elsewhere, Taiwanese students from the A-Zones would not lag behind in acquiring Mandarin skills, provided that fully bilingual teachers will be available. In European countries, this is often the responsibility of “Language Academies” as found in The Netherlands, Finland and Spain.

Recent research data from similar education zones in Spain shows a growing social demand for instruction in the mother tongue – next to Spanish. Such growing education through the medium of the pupils’ first language suggests an important movement for the revival and normalization of local and native languages in countries like Spain, Ireland, Finland, and the United Kingdom.

For Taiwan, a similar feat is overdue for Taiwanese, as well as Hakka and Aboriginal languages. From the establishment of the Basque law in 1986 until the school year 2005/2006, the Basque-only education model (similar to the A-Zones above) has increased five-fold in the Navarre area, going from 5.48% to 27.19%.

On the other hand, enrolment in Spanish-only medium schools (similar to the C-Zones) has declined sharply during the same period, falling from 81.18% to 46.53%. Parents have increasingly witnessed the benefits of local / mother tongue education in areas where most of the public still uses the mother tongue. More importantly even, they have witnessed for themselves that teaching courses through the child’s home language has positively influenced the child’s performance in school.

Beyond Navarre, enrolment Basque-only schools for the whole of the Basque Country in Spain has doubled in 18 years, from 43.37% to 88.12%, with also a considerable increase in the mixed Basque/Spanish education model from 13.36% to 30.13%. In 1992, a mere six years after the establishment of the Basque language law, the demand for the Spanish-only model was practically non-existent.

Quite contrary to public perceptions in Taiwan, parents in Europe’s multilingual regions are showing more and more interest in teaching (at primary school level) through the mother tongue (A-Zone education), or in those programs in which the curriculum is taught through the country's official language, but with inclusion of teaching the local mother tongue as a subject.

What, then, seems to convince parents in Taiwan to stick with an outdated Mandarin-only primary language education for their Taiwanese, Hakka and Aboriginal children?

DEBUNKING THE ‘THREE LANGUAGES IS TOO MUCH’ CLAIM

Since I feel quite strongly about this, let me repeat an earlier statement:

Claims made by academics in Taiwan that three languages throughout primary school is too much for pupils to handle are denigrating to Taiwan’s youth. In the light of ample trilingual research data available, such claims are unsupported, speculative and plainly wrong.

And prompted by political considerations?

The teaching of English as first foreign language in Taiwan has seen a dramatic increase. The advance in the introduction of English has already become widespread in the final years of infant education (in Kindergartens) and in the first stage of primary education. This early introduction is the sole and most striking feature of Taiwan’s recent language education.

The proposed bilingual A- and B-Zones will have the potential to become centers of innovation in Southeastern Asia by implementing multilingual teaching, based on the mother tongue and with the early introduction of English as a third language. New teaching methodologies based on fully bilingual (read: mother tongue & Mandarin, not Mandarin & English!) teaching models will, if similar efforts in Europe can repeat their success here, revitalize Taiwan’s current stagnant language education.

Imagine a newspaper heading “Taiwanese schools’ English teaching program awarded in London”!

Wishful thinking?
Still, this happened to the Basque-only education on which the proposed education zones are based. In 2006 they received a Royal award for their “innovative development of English and Spanish teaching materials” – for use in Basque-only mother tongue education! It was the first time a non-British entity was awarded the prize; universities such as Cambridge and Oxford had previously also been awarded the prize.

The mechanisms applied by the Basque Autonomous region for use in their Zones-A type education fall beyond the scope of this post, as well as the author’s field of expertise (i.e. CLIL or Content and Language Integrated Learning). But the fact that no academic ‘expert’ in Taiwan seems willing to even look into this pedagogic mechanism (because it would involve giving Taiwanese prominence in primary education?) does not bode well for Taiwan’s language education. At least a comparison of “our” outdated language education with the results obtained in these kind of schools could be informative – if not highly enlightening.

Above all, one should make this comparison: the importance most multilingual European countries give to bilingual (mother tongue + official language) education against Taiwan’s current monolingual + English submersion education (unanimously agreed to be ineffective). Currently, the Taiwan public is mislead by academics and poorly informed by the government into believing that a bilingual or trilingual education are overly burdensome to Taiwan’s pupils.

The public tendency in Europe to a heightened interest in bilingual and trilingual education is reflected in the considerable interest and acceptance that such education arouses in parents. I propose the following reasons:

• The advantages that bilingualism entails. These are largely unknown or frowned upon by Taiwan’s academic elite. The public, preoccupied with their children’s English language education, meekly concurs.

• The benefits of bilingual education in the areas of more effective and creative communication within Taiwan.

• Its importance in the development of thought, personality, and creativity. Could it be, I cannot help but wonder, that Taiwan’s academic community is purposefully shunning this kind of development in its students – ‘docile students, less problems for the teacher’?

• Cultural enrichment and identity-building. Yes, that politically-loaded “ID” word, often abused to promote or discredit purely political agendas.

• The ease of entry into, I dare imagine, an officially multilingual Taiwan job market

• The much-needed respect and tolerance towards other cultures Taiwanese / Mandarin bilingual education would foster within Taiwan (or Hakka and Aboriginal bilingual education)

IMPACT OF EDUCATION ZONES ON THE FUTURE OF TAIWANESE

Implementing an education system similar to that of multilingual societies in Europe will influence the image of the Taiwanese language in Taiwan. While maintaining and revitalizing the language in the A-Zones education models, the Mandarin-only zones might increasingly perceive Taiwanese as an alien element.

The mixed Taiwanese / Mandarin B-Zones, where the greatest number of Taiwan’s pupils would live, will know an increase in the number of Taiwanese speakers. This will be a consequence of the language being introduced into school education, starting with first and primary school grades, as well as a consequence of teaching the complete primary school curriculum through the medium of Taiwanese for the first four or five years.

However, the proposed Taiwan language law would not include regulating the possibility of Taiwanese being used in dealings with government, media, and in further education (high schools and universities). The language rights of the inhabitants of the Taiwanese-only A-Zones going to visit the B- or C-Zones (like Taipei, for instance) would, in other words, still be restricted. This, however, would not necessarily be a negative consequence.

While it might be considered politically disadvantageous to people in the A-Zones, it might also appease those opposed to Taiwanese being used as a political tool. The issue, one should not forget, should be the maintenance of the Taiwanese language, not the bestowment of more political power upon Taiwanese mother tongue speakers.

In the Taiwanese-only A-Zones, the Taiwanese language would continue to have great ethno-linguistic vitality, although only a minority of the population of Taiwan will live in these zones. They will be mainly rural areas, as is the case in Spain and Ireland’s educational systems, areas with small villages and a lower birth rate.

Yet, by giving exactly these areas a proven bilingual or trilingual education system, people here stand to gain. They will enjoy a more effective and innovative language education, as well as their basic right to receive mother tongue education. Hence, the gap between the poorer Taiwan countryside and the richer urban areas will diminish by bringing education to the people, not be virtually exporting, for instance, Aboriginal students to urban settings – settings in which many can only succeed by receiving remedial courses to make them “catch up” with more privileged students.

CONCLUSION

Zones-A based education models in Europe have become those that revitalize mother tongue education. Also, mother tongue education has been given standing in communities that were previously indifferent or even hostile to the often much less used mother tongue.

The success of Zones-A models in Europe has not been limited to the field of language education; the total cultural and social education of its pupils has benefited. This education model has helped maintain the native language and culture of people in areas where the language rights of its inhabitants were severely restricted. In C-Zones, non-native speakers stand to gain a certain familiarity with the Taiwanese language, even if they consider it remote from their everyday lives, or are even hostile to it.

Finally, the early introduction of English offered through immersion courses (e.g. arts or other creativity-orientated) throughout primary school will break with the existing ineffective and extremely time-consuming submersion techniques used throughout the island’s primary schools.

The prevailing message in this post, besides concrete proposals to reinvigorate language education based on proven models, is identical to the idea of other posts on this blog: it is in schools that Taiwan’s linguistic reshaping must take place.

And it is only through education that Taiwan’s public will be willing to accept the mother tongue as something normal. What would Taiwan stand to lose from starting to experiment and implement

(a) comprehensive training for fully bilingual Taiwanese / Mandarin primary school teachers, and
(b) a new and proven language education system?

Not much, I believe.

REFERENCES

Basque Language Law (1986). 18/86 de 15 diciembre. Boletin Oficial de Navarra, n. 15.

Blake, W. D. (2004). Euskera as a defining feature of Euskadi. Ph. D. Dissertation. Interdepartmental program in Linguistics. Louisiana State University.

Iulen, U. (2005). Legislation and practice in the usage of the Basque language in the Foral community of Navarre. Mercator Working Papers. International Center for Ethnic Minorities and Nations. Barcelona.

Ruiz P. & Breton N. (2008). Bilingual Education in Navarre: Achievements and Challenges. Journal of Language, Culture and Curriculum. Vol. 21, No. 1.

The Unbearable Rigidness of Being an Academic in Taiwan

I’ve been down with a lingering flu lately, hence the delay in putting up a new post. For a change, I am presenting an academic “rant”. Not to be taken too seriously by the overly serious at heart.

Why do I enjoy being an academic? Anything less than a simple answer would be hypocritical: I enjoy teaching young people on something (I believe) will change their perspective, if not their lives.

The way I try to do so is two-fold: transmit my enthusiasm for linguistics into the classroom, and keeping myself pepped-up by indulging in research - which, in turn, might also encourage students to become academically engaged.

After having taught in Taiwan for thirteen years on university level, here’s a personal “Top 5” of phenomena that, I feel, work against academic goals even as modest as mine:

1. Some highly influential morons working at Taiwan’s Ministry of Education (MOE). For the past eight years, not ONE constructive or proven measure has come out of Taipei visibly improving language education at universities. Departmental meetings in many a language department have, for the past 4 years or so, been limited to damage control. Threatened by MOE punitive measures for ‘underachieving’ departments, some ambitious university authorities saw this as a justification to “push” lecturers into increasing their performance – even if only to increase their administrative services for the school itself, thus saving the schools money. Lecturers once hired without as much as a departmental interview during the KMT heydays of the 90s now find themselves under siege to increase their “performance”. Not that this so-called academic ‘quality control’ is negative per se. But it should have been accompanied by concrete and proven proposals to better Taiwan’s poor record in language education. The MOE limited its involvement to a “trace and punish” the weak lecturers-tactic. They thereby seemed to imply that Taiwan’s pedagogues, rather than the incompetence of the MOE itself, were responsible for language education’s woes. Doesn’t this amount to political cowardice?

2. The ambitious and self-centered academic aspiring to make a name for himself with the MOE, thereby placing the students’ interest a far second. I am not saying that there are no competent academics perfectly capable of combining personal ambition without neglecting their teaching duties. But most I know or have met are not up to this academic utopia and make a conscious choice for personal advancement, while alienating students in the process.

3. The academic for whom obtaining money for personal projects is more important than teaching or research contributions. The latest wasteful MOE “Teaching Excellence Award Projects” have given previously unpublished academics an outlet to become involved in pedagogically unproven schemes. The latter are more at place in commercial language schools rather than university language departments. Highly encouraged by university authorities (who appreciate the inflow of extra MOE money and exposure through a newspaper article or two), English Community Centers seem particularly popular as “Teaching Excellence” projects. Departments are given outrageous amounts of funds by the MOE to kick start schemes that strongly resemble the unproven “English villages” (in S. Korea and by the King Car Private Foundation in Taiwan). Departments’ main concern is on making sure to spend all of the money allotted to them, and on having enough community center participants and visitors, the two main MOE criteria according to which the project is ultimately judged. Where these participants come from and whether or not their participation results in effectively improving students’ English skills is not the issue.

4. Private universities that, although quite independent from the MOE’s influence in the mid- and late 90’s, now have as sole priority to please the government in order to get more funds - for often wasteful projects. Departmental and College meetings are often dominated by the main concern of proposing new projects and programs. The name of the MOE-sponsored exercise is: suck up to educational authorities, thereby putting additional pressure on lecturers to become involved in – for them – largely unknown ventures.

5. The fear and spirit of sheer self-preservation as shown by university authorities and academics alike vis-à-vis the MOE’s academic witch-hunt. This witch-hunt is officially known as ‘Departmental Assessments’ – done by selected academics appointed by the MOE. I am not, in principle, against such evaluations, provided they are not quietly manipulated: intensive rehearsals before the actual assessments, showing evaluators what you want them to see, and being able to hide what they should not see. The ways for doing so are ingenuous, to say the least, and I won’t be surprised that this type of ‘departmental assessment’ will prove undesirable in a new MOE administration.

What suffers most here, I believe, is a free and creative academic spirit at Taiwan’s language departments. Strong, stupid, or both – is the academic willing to resist Taiwan’s rigid academic climate. Blessed seem those academics with a blasé attitude toward it all. And may financial fortune be conferred upon Taiwan’s students – so that even more may go abroad to receive the education they deserve.

Taiwanese, the Most Dangerous of All Things?

After the defeat of the ruling party in Taiwan’s latest presidential elections, some pro-green opinions reflected the view of the nationalist press that, somehow, the elections were lost because of an overemphasis on the past and on the “Taiwan identity issue”. Also somehow, the use of Taiwanese-only at political meetings was, in part, to blame for disappointing election results for Taiwan’s incumbent party. As if a language should serve political agendas instead of the other way around…

The poet Friedrich Holderlin wrote: “Language, the most dangerous of all things, was given to man so that he could testify to having inherited what he is.” An ambiguous quote. It could mean that language itself, irrespective of the particular language one speaks, is a dangerous thing. Unlikely. Or, it intends to stress the importance played by the particular language a community speaks in the transmission of historical memories. Memories only transmitted by language, and meant to increase that community’s sense of identity.

What follows is a brief comparison between Belgium and Taiwan with the above issues of language and identity in mind. Language is unavoidably at the core of a multilingual and complex state like Belgium. Unless we don’t mind to see Taiwan become a monolingual and mono-cultural entity, we might want to observe relevant events in Belgium.

Belgium, a country with 13 political parties, and where politics often resembles sheer chaos. But a country with a thriving economy nevertheless, and a successful educational system fully respecting the linguistic rights of all its peoples. A country, also, where four million Flemish voters often consider the identity issue as their priority.

BELGIUM’S FRENCH-FLEMISH BILINGUALISM

Belgian speakers of Flemish and of French alike must abide by law to accept bilingualism as the institutional order of the day. This law came about after student revolts in 1968 against the dominance of French at the largest Flemish university.

Now imagine a situation in which the DPP would equally have institutionalized, successfully, Taiwanese as the institutional language of the day. True, efforts were made, but they were often insufficiently thought-through measures lacking respect for Taiwan’s non-Taiwanese speaking population.

In case successful measures for fully bilingual Mandarin/Taiwanese institutions had come about, would we still blame those exclusively using the Taiwanese language at political or other official meetings? Or would we consider blaming those who did not respect the official – stipulated by law - Taiwanese/Mandarin bilingual language policy?

Moreover, in the absence of such bilingual policy (due to eight years of completely lackluster DPP language policies), are people speaking Taiwanese-only to be blamed? What about those politicians who just “forgot” to give the language of over 15 million people on Taiwan what it deserves: full official status and a firm place in education?

The appropriate question should, therefore, not be how many votes the DPP has lost because of its Taiwanese-only language policy, but how many it might have gained if it had implemented a balanced bilingual language and education policy.

LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY ISSUE

Like the Taiwanese, Belgians do not have a single view of their history. Throughout the 19th century, French was the dominant language, with Flemish consigned to a back-seat role. In the 20th century, the assertion of Flemish in the public life of Flanders and Belgium became a primary feature of Belgian politics.

Yet, language is not the only variable of identity. Religion played a leading part in Belgian identity throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, like the past and current “status quo” with China which still dominates Taiwan politics. Territory has its own importance. This is no less true for the Taiwanese as it is for the Flemish within Belgium. Even though the Flemish now form a plurality, they have maintained – as have the Taiwanese from decades of linguistic and cultural repression - some of the complexes developed during their former marginalized status as the inferior Germanic culture vis-a-vis a superior Francophone one.

At the heart of the existential reality of multilingual entities like Be