Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-d8cs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-11T07:03:53.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Preparing English Teachers in the Twenty-First Century: The Case of Taiwan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2020

By
Hsi-nan Yeh  and
Chiou-lan Chern
Edited by
Amy Bik May Tsui
Amy Bik May Tsui
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
Get access

Summary

English has served to facilitate the internationalization process in Taiwan; English education, at the same time, benefited enormously from internationalization in terms of the great emphasis attached to it. In order to ensure the quality of English instruction, English teacher education needs to respond to any changes in the national primary and secondary school curricula as well as changing demography, which may influence English teachers’ instructional practices. In this chapter, an overview of the teacher education system in Taiwan is first introduced as the background. Following that is a discussion of local responses to globalization, which include making English a second official language; the promotion of English for communicative purposes; new policies in major cities regarding foreign language education; an English proficiency benchmark for English teachers; and further teacher professional development for international mobility and global competitiveness. Addressed in the next sections are some critical issues in teacher education that demand further research, such as the power relationship between English and local languages, the belief in native-speakerism, and the promotion of English as the medium of instruction. Some suggestions for future directions in language teacher education are also provided.

Keywords

globalizationteacher educationsecond official languageinternational mobilitycurriculum guidelines
Type
Chapter
Information
English Language Teaching and Teacher Education in East Asia
Global Challenges and Local Responses
 , pp. 175 - 194
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Canagarajah, S. (1999). Interrogating the “native speaker fallacy”: Non-linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results. In Braine, G (Eds.), Non-native Educators in English Language Teaching, 77–92. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Chang, S. C. & Wu, J. J. (2011). From “learning” to “progress”: On the mechanism of teaching and advising of the Nine-Year Compulsory Curriculum. Journal of Educational Resources and Research, 98, 101–124Google Scholar
Chang, Y. C. (2016). Prospect for teacher education reform in Taiwan (1996–2016). School Administrators, 104, 39–57.Google Scholar
Chen, F. (2017). English teachers’ perspectives on implementing English-taught programs in Tainan City, Taiwan. English as a Global Language (EaGLE) Journal, 2(2), 91–118.Google Scholar
Chen, S. (2003). The Spread of English in Taiwan. Taipei: Crane Publishing.Google Scholar
Chern, C. L. & Curran, J. (2017). The impact of ELF concepts on pre-service English teachers: Instructor and student perspectives. English Today, 33(2), 25–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chern, C. L. & Hsu, H. M. (2009). Trainer training innovation: The trainer training programs in Taiwan. In Enever, J & Moon, J (Eds.), Young Learner English Language Policy and Implementation: International Perspectives, 158–162. Reading: Garnet Publishing.Google Scholar
Choi, Y. (2008). Proficiency-differentiated and discipline-specific student needs for English-medium content-based courses. English Language and Literature, 54(6), 953–985.Google Scholar
Dearden, J. (2014). English as a Medium of Instruction: A Growing Global Phenomenon. Oxford: University of Oxford.Google Scholar
de Jong, E. J., Li, Z., Zafar, A. M. & Wu, C. (2016). Language policy in multilingual contexts: Revisiting Ruiz’s “language-as-resource” orientation. Bilingual Research Journal, 39(3–4), 200–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graddol, D. (2006). English Next. London: The British Council.Google Scholar
Huang, J. L. (2016) State control vs. market mechanism: Taiwan’s experience with teacher education. In Yang, S. K. & Huang, J. L. (Eds.), Teacher Education in Taiwan: State Control vs. Marketization, 260–274. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huang, Y. P. (2012). Design and implementation of English-medium courses in higher education in Taiwan: A qualitative case study. English Teaching and Learning, 36(1), 1–51.Google Scholar
Kachru, B. B. (1992). The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kachru, B. B. (2006). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In Bolton, K & Kachru, B. B. (Eds.), World Englishes: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, Vol. 3, 241–270. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (2014). Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 296–311.Google Scholar
Larsen, M. A. (2016). Globalisation and internationalisation of teacher education: A comparative case study of Canada and Greater China. Teaching Education, 27(4), 396–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2016.1163331Google Scholar
Law, W. W. (2004). Translating globalization and democratization into local policy: Educational reform in Hong Kong and Taiwan, International Review of Education 50(5–6), 497–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liaw, M. L. (2016). Reality or rhetoric: The changing mindset of English learners and non-native English-speaking teachers in Taiwan towards English as an international language. English as a Global Language (EaGLE) Journal, 2(1), 1–25.Google Scholar
Lin, H. Y. (2018). Moving toward a bilingual country: Teaching English in English at primary and secondary schools, contact hours increased at middle and upper grades. Liberty Times Net, October 1. http://news.Itn.com.tw/news/focus/paper/1236132Google Scholar
Lin, Y. B. (2013). The global vision of international education: Introduction to Taipei Municipal White Paper on Global Education. Elementary Education, 53(3), 80–88.Google Scholar
Lin, Y. & Wu, J. (2017). Trends in teaching materials and teaching methods. Paper presented at the Books on Materials and Teaching for 12-year Basic Education Workshop, October, Taipei.Google Scholar
Llurda, E. (2004). Non-native-speaker teachers and English as an international language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(3), 315–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luo, W. H. (2017). Teacher perceptions of teaching and learning English as a lingua franca in the expanding circle: A study of Taiwan. English Today, 33(1), 2–11.Google Scholar
Ma, L. P. (2012). Strengths and weaknesses of NESTs and NNESTs: Perceptions of NNESTs in Hong Kong. Linguistics and Education, 23(1), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ministry of Education. (2012). The ROC White Paper on Teacher Education. Taipei: Ministry of Education.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education (2016). Yearbook of Teacher Education Statistics. Taipei: Ministry of Education.Google Scholar
Richards, J. C. (2015). Key Issues in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, J. C. (2017). Curriculum Development in Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ruecker, T. & Ives, L. (2015). White native English speakers needed: The rhetorical construction of privilege in online teacher recruitment spaces. TESOL Quarterly, 49(4), 733–756. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.195Google Scholar
Schleicher, A. (2016). Global competency for an inclusive world. OECD.org. www.oecd.org/education/Global-competency-for-an-inclusive-world.pdfGoogle Scholar
Scott, C. L. (2015). The future of learning 3: What kind of pedagogies for the 21st century? UNESCO working paper. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002431/243126e.pdfGoogle Scholar
Shih, Y. H., Chou, C. T., Chen, S. C., & Chu, H. M. (1998). The status quo and prospects of English teaching in primary schools. In The Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on English Teaching, 759–775. Taipei: Crane Publishing.Google Scholar
Tainan City Government. (2017). Office of English as the second official language, http://oeasol.tainan.gov.tw/index.phpGoogle Scholar
Tse, J. K. P. (1986). Standardization of Chinese in Taiwan. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 59, 25–32.Google Scholar
Wei, J. M. (2006). Language choice and ideology in multicultural Taiwan. Language and Linguistics, 7(1), 87–107.Google Scholar
Yang, S.K. (2002) Exploring the revision to the Teacher Education Act in Taiwan based on new developments and professional beliefs. Journal of Education Research, 98, 79–90.Google Scholar
Yang, S. K. (2016). Ideologies and theories influencing the development of teacher education in Taiwan. In Yang, S. K. & Huang, J. L. (Eds.), Teacher Education in Taiwan: State Control vs. Marketization, 67–86. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yang, S. W. (2009). Report on (English) Discipline-Specific Courses in Pre-service Education Programs for Primary School English Teaching. Taipei: Ministry of Education.Google Scholar
Yeh, H. N. (2016). Prospects of English textbooks for elementary and high schools in view of draft curriculum guidelines for Twelve-year Basic Education. Journal of Textbook Research, 9(3), 143–168.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×