Taiwan Aims To Go 'Bilingual' by 2030 | TaiwanPlus News 

Yes. How is one supposed to entertain something like a "hobby", when one spends virtually all "free time" either in cram schools or working overtime...

We quit the job, we put pressure on the government to not let companies exploit people, we vote for the right people, in general we do something about it... I had a life like that in my country, now I dont...@@martinfiedler4317

While I am all for better English proficiency in a non-English speaking country because of English's importance as the lingua franca of many fields, I seriously doubt the practicality of this policy. "Stress-free multilingualism" is possible but with a crucial requirement: cultural exposure. To this day, all non-English speaking countries with high English proficiency either have geographical proximity to the UK, the OG English-speaking country (e.g. Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Nordic countries) or are former British colonies (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, Kenya, South Africa, India). In the second situation, the high English proficiency is actually a legacy of British colonialism and often results in uncommon varieties of English and English-based creole languages (Google yourself for what this term means). Taiwan is not a former British colony (it was a Japanese one!) so there are no cultural backgrounds to play with. Even if Taiwan tries the way Dutch people do it, broadcast English films & TV series subtitled rather than dubbed unless you use some accessibility features for the blind, start English lessons early in compulsory education, etc. People still don't have that advantage of literally have Britain at your doorstep, looking similar to Britons (for most people), and speaking a language that is linguistically similar to English... The only way to achieve high proficiency in English without such cultural exposure is the hard way, explict instructions. You have to learn grammar. You have to use flashcards, but don't remember words for the sake of remembering them, use them instead. There is also the question of how proficient the government wants an average citizen to be. If C1-C2 (CEFR level) is unrealistic for most, how proficient is enough? The English lessons showed in the video also frustrated me. It seems that they are teaching Taiwanese content (geograhy? culture?) in English. The only place for such lessons is university foreign language majors in which students are expected to be the super-advanced learners. Before that, the topics should either be universal (e.g. school life) or focus on culture of major English-speaking countries. You are learning their language and you have to follow their way first.

@@cfromnowhere Regarding: " Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Nordic countries" All of these countries speak Germanic languages - thus languages highly similar to ... English. In Belgium, the romance language France is also widespread in the southern parts. French and English have a large overlap in vocabulary, due to the Norman invasion of England in the 11th century. So, it has nothing to do with geographical but with linguistic "closeness" that people there are more proficient in English.

Totally agree that most Chinese/Taiwanese people don't seem to have hobbies, as indicated by their lack of hobby shops, their CBD districts seem to only consist of malls for clothes, bakeries, and other eateries, which is great for a foodie but awful for everyone else who is just not THAT into food. However, I doubt that English learning can be achieved by hobbies alone such as watching movies and playing games in your targeted language, since I've already tried these methods of learning a third language. And yes while you can learn a few words there and then, the efficiency of this method is so low, I'd rather just get a former education on it, since most of what I've remembered and retained of my third language is from formal education, not from playing games. Also, 1-2 hrs/week of studying in a new language is a pretty short amount of time being indulged in the language compared to native speakers, and if they are reading the wrong things, that makes it even longer for them to be proficient in their targeted language. So I don't think it's the reading method that is wrong, just that they are not spending enough time on it.

Dutch language obsolete is something i never heard, its seems fake because i live in Belgium and we speak Dutch

@@1chibanKasuga The issue with Dutch does not seem related to everyday common language but specifically to higher education. Academic lexicon and specialised vocabulary in various scientific fields are no longer used, and thereby declining. But if Dutch universities are highly internationalised, maybe it is indeed different in Belgium?

@@1chibanKasugaIf we lose Dutch, so what. Too many languages in the world.

My ancestors came from Ireland they left in the 1870s and went to Canada. It's hard to keep your culture and a feeling of who your ancestors are if you don't speak the language. Irish is disappearing and not an easy language to learn. The First Nations/Native America people here too are losing their languages. Language is a power anchor to who you are.

I have an extended family living in the Netherlands as an expatriate for decades and they tell me they never have to use Dutch there as everyone is great at English and they like using it themselves as well (they take pride in it).

Same in Philippines. Most people speaks and writes in English and native language become like a side language, lol.

@@RaveMasterr they're not side languages. it depends on demographics in the philippines. english is mostly just used by upper middle class and upper class filipinos for colloquial purposes. most other filipinos of lower classes still treat local languages as their casual speech and have english just as a second language they sometimes cant find words to be comfortable with. that's why mixed taglish or bislish or etc are the popular advertisement language choice. english serves a more formal or highly educated dimension in life in the philippines. countries just need to maintain the proper roles in life for each language they have per region so languages do not wither away from disuse.

Thats sad to hear. Dutch has an impressive history. I hope more people speak, read and write in Dutch.

Oh most definitely, it lowers risk of dementia... I mean if u forget a word in your Native language u got the other lang to compensate

The so called "distinguished professor" Liao Hsien Hao from this video peddles outdated unscientific facts (now deemed as myths) about "language stunting" due to bilingualism, it's not real. The "at the expense of" part is just not supported by facts, science shows bilingualism positives faaaar outweight the "downsides". And on the social side, the acquisition of a new language is not a threat to the native's language, that would be like implying that having a few extra Spanish classes a week is a threat to the nation's culture, like the amazing The Onion skit "Patriotic Teen Fails Spanish".

@@VersusThem I agree with your statement, however I'm more so speaking about the global impact of English and how colonization has resulted in the widespread use of English. One language dies approximately every two weeks and I think that's a great loss to the diversity in our world.

English is a pidgin language that developed as a bastardization of romance and germanic languages. It is a language of Anglo imperialism. English is a simple language, hence why it is a global language. However, Americans and Anglos have a supercilious mentality and arrogantly believe that all languages are below English and that English is a complex language due to the fact that pronunciation as native may be difficult as a result of Anglos being toxic to people who are learning English. There is no standard English, but Americans tend to believe that their English is the correct English. It is more of Asians idealizing anything Anglo due to media.

⁠​⁠@@jacqueslee2592woah bro calm down. I would say English is an easy to learn hard to master language. Compare to other European ones where a lot more time has to be spent to be “decent”at it. As for pronunciation I don’t know personally if I get what you’re saying I don’t care what someone sounds like.

As if being bilingual is a bad thing?

@@codybagelstein2235I don’t think you fully understand….

It really is sad, how people thousands of years ago has always cared more about communication than the preservation of languages. As a result, the amount of people that the average person can communicate with might be ever increasing, but at the inexcusable cost of disregarding the previous languages that people once used, simply because they no longer "further the degree of communication with others", as if that was even a goal worth seeking the first place. Even to this day, certain people and their foolish ambitions sadly haven't died down. There are many people who strive for global communication, for every single person in the word to understand one another. It seems like a noble goal at first, until you realize it's at the cost of not preserving the current languages of our time. They fail to realize the inherent beauty of language, that lies in the exclusive culture and community created by having a mode of communication that only the in-group understands. Instead, they think the purpose of language is communication, like so many ignorant people have done before them. If they continue, their current languages well be gone as well, just like the languages that came before. But luckily, people are starting to wisen up. I'm happy to see so many of my people in this comment section, taking a stance against these dangerous idiots who prioritize communication over the true beauties of language. I hope we manage to stop them before it's too late, and manage to preserve our languages just as they are, forever unchanging, lest they join the ranks of dead, past languages.

the trick is to assign roles in life for each language you know and plan to mainly use. in my country, the languages have a good balance for harmony. english is mostly used for international, formal, national lingua franca means, while local languages are used nationally, regionally, or with family and relatives or with certain subculture one is a part of. one should not give too much primacy to a lot of foreign languages and just give it attention for practical purposes. just maintain the traditional roles of the main languages so they do not drop out of mainstream use at least in each community or family.

That fairly normal, I’m Italian and I use my own language plenty, but sometimes the same thing also happens to me 😅

I think it is a good thing, finnish is overcomlicated, irregular and archaic.

@@p4nd4b01 I live in finland tho so I need it sometimes.

lnteresting to know what reactions could be happening in a multiligualist while learning several different languages at the same time.

It is brainwashing program by ukus. Commonwealth ,long uk colonial time is easier to be colonized again. Now Singapore is more more like horrible philippines.because those west wants to steer you, and against mainland,to prepare for w4r. 🙏

Could Taiwan copy Singapore's education system to become bilingual in English and Mandarin?

@@ChaosPod bilingual means weaks in English and Mandarin at same time

@@frankfleming1103this varies from person to person.. imo some people lean towards chinese / their mother tongue, some towards english, and a small portion fare well in both.

​@@ChaosPodI hope not. The reason is because with Singapore, you don't actually have a lot of people who are balanced in Mandarin and English. A lot of the Singaporean Chinese can speak Mandarin conversationally, but it gets more difficult for speaking about more complex topics like science and government, because the language we use to talk about these things is English, our de facto professional language. Second, I came from an English-speaking home and went through the bilingual education system in Singapore; it didn't work and I failed Mandarin every year until my last year of secondary school. I ended up coming to Taiwan to finally learn how to read Chinese characters properly. So the system is not balanced nor tailored to individual students' needs. Third, the Singapore system is designed for a multicultural society, not just to provide Mandarin-English education. It also aimed to provide Malay-English and Tamil-English bilingualism for the Singaporean Malay and Singaporean Tamil people, and hence to allow the three main ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, and Tamil) to share English as a common tongue. The context is completely different from Taiwan, which has many indigenous groups who speak different languages and currently use Mandarin as the common language. Taiwan needs to build a policy unique to its own context, and sensitive to its own cultural complexities.

Not Tawainese (I'm Filipino), but I agree. It isn't impossible, just very difficult to do. You'd essentially be forcing Taiwanese to "think" differently because language acquisition does that. If you look at the Asian countries with the highest English scores, you'd notice one thing in common- they were former colonies of Anglo nations. Singapore and Malaysia were former British colonies, and the Philippines was a former American territory. All three were forced by colonizers to "think and act" differently and through the years, it slowly Anglo-ized our cultures.

do not worry, changes to society are best done gradually. it will not change suddenly automatically. english can slowly build its grasp in taiwan's practical purposes for it. taiwan should see the example of singapore, philippines, malaysia, and this time, dont be like japan in terms of english where they are bad at it because they dont practically use it as much.

yeah just practicing english during english lessons is not enough, immersion is the key.

Malaysia is a good country 🇮🇳❤🇲🇾

and this is why malaysia is ranked no 25 in english proficiency while the Philippines is at no 20 and Singapore is at number 2.

It really depends but usually that’s the case. In Sweden I’d say they speak English with hardly any accent (Filipinos have a very think Fillipino accent, same with Indian) and they speak perfect English but their movies, their books, their signs are all in Swedish.

and thanks to that, your culture is almost non-existent. It is a terrible path

The high English proficiency of Swedes and the rest of Scandinavia is indeed the product of immersion of the English language. But the other dude was wrong to think it had to be everyday items like signs. You say their movies and books are Swedish, and it's true, the native ones usually are. But luckily, like the rest of Scandinavia, the amount of Swedish speakers is relatively low. As a result, the market for producing and translating entertainment to Swedish is quite low. The result is people starved of more choice in the entertainment they consume, seeking out entertainment in other langauges - where the primary language is English. And it's not exclusive to entertainment, it happens to other things as well like information. If a Swede only looked for Swedish stuff on the internet, they simply wouldn't have a lot to choose from. That's when they come across videos like this one, where they practise listening skills. Look through the comments, practising their reading skills. And maybe even add to the comment section themselves, practising their writing skills. And it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop too. As people's proficiency in English improves because of their consumption of English products, the market for producing and translating products to English increase. So not only can Swedes enjoy content from natively English-speaking countries, they can also enjoy translated content from the rest of Scandinavia, from France, even from across the entire world from Japan. If Taiwan wants to improve their English proficiency, the answer is oddly enough just to get some hobbies to enjoy in English.

As a Portuguese-speaking English teacher, and having taught English for a few years now, I have come to the realization that shoving English down students' throat just like it's done with any other subject is but counterproductive. Students will hardly ever have any regard for the language if it's being offered as an obstacle they need to get past in order to achieve a greater, often uninteresting, goal (e.g. to pass exams or even to accomplish a simple non-English-related task in a bilingual class). It has to be brought closer to students as if unintentionally, but still provokingly. I'm a strong believer that to a great extent this soul-consuming schooling system is to blame. Most of my students are overwhelmed with school and extracurricular activities that their parents sign them up for (in hopes they'll become well-rounded, competitive beings in the market) and so English is just one more thing they need to get through. And even if they enjoy it, they have little to no drive to get themselves immersed in engrossing daily activities that will involve the language. Most of them just want to do whatever in their free time because anything that resembles studying just instantly turns them off, and that's because their relationship with learning couldn't have been more negatively affected. So it's only natural that they will push away learning for the sake of learning.

Why Philippines is still so poor if its big money? And why arw you thanking colonisation your ancestors would be ashamed of you

But what if students hate to read?

A very small percentage of students will choose to read for leisure, you can pack the libraries with "good" books, most students will still use the libraries to do homework and then browse internet. Not to read.

@@earlysda Then, obviously, they would not benefit from it. But many students would hate it, if they had the time and the leisure to explore it free of stress? My little boy is not yet school age and already tries to read with great interest...

@@martinfiedler4317Yes, martin, sadly, most people under age about 30 in the world will not crack a book open if they aren't forced to. I've travelled to many countries, and spend a lot of time with kids, and basically everyone is just doing stuff online (not much reading either) now. They won't even go outside to play. . I asked 7 junior high school students what kind of books they like to read, and 5 of them said they don't read anything other than textbooks, and 2 said they read comic books.

@@earlysda That is indeed sad. Maybe I am getting old, but it reinforces my slight feeling that modern technology and globalization is doing more harm than good..

Yeah. It’s hard to aim high when the bare needs are not being met

You pretty much answered your own question. If the schools are failing to educate students in English, math, and science then what good will adding bilingual education do. Children have to learn to walk before they can run.

Right now English is the closest we have in the world to a lingua franca. Having that as one of the primary languages is very useful. If that is the primary language then French, Mandarin and Spanish are all good candidates for a second language but none are as universally useful. In the US we have close ties to countries that speak all three, so it becomes really hard to choose what to adopt at any sort of a policy level.

When I was a kid I a lot of problems with the mechanics of English, it was by learning Spanish that helped understand the mechanics of language, I had a lot of learning disabilities growing so when I was in grammar school I never could grasp the difference between verbs, adverbs, adjectives etc. studying Spanish helped me make sense of my first language english. Later in life I worked in law enforcement working as a Parole Officer I was in a lot situations where I had conduct investigations, interviews in Spanish. On the downside since many coworkers did not speak Spanish I would get called on to do a lot of extra work.

To learn Chinese for example, is not hard. Only the pronunciation is difficult. Took me three years to learn, but I was living in HK and China. If you really want to learn a foreign language you need to immerse yourself in the language country of origin.

Guilt? Don't waste your energy. Surely it's the multilinguals who feel sorry for you (no offense!)

@@ActiveAussie2024 Sadly, I'm too lazy to learn another language. I'm more into eating. I do love the food scene in HK. Fortunately, I live in the SF Bay Area, and we have AWESOME Burmese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese (my favorite), Korean, Japanese, and Indian restaurants. It doesn't matter how expensive it gets, I simply cannot move out of the Bay Area.

English speaking people have made it the lingua franca, the language of trade and science, you better be proud rather than feeling bad :)

@@p4nd4b01 C'est la vie!

I'd even say there are ideas, feelings, and even full-on discussions that just comes more naturally to Chinese than English. I used to believe that I almost had to switch personalities every time I switched languages. Now, I've found that there are insights in Chinese culture that just cannot be translated into English, let alone to a Western individual.

@@wolong925 personally I think Chinese is more convenient and more flexible language than English so looking at English as the « future » is actually funny because Chinese is the future. English is the present international language just like French was in the past so all of this is just geopolitical just like how the province of Taiwan allies with the west rather than its own country. Anyway, us simple people can’t change it but the world will tell us.

I speak Chinese, although I don't really like China, I lived and worked there for quite a while. I d consider Taiwan for living if an invasion threat were to dissipate. Chinese actually is a convenient language, it's a more to the point type language. Sometimes I even prefer to send and email or text message to Chinese people in pinyin instead of English. If most Taiwanese could speak English though that would be a big advantage to them. For example, most people in Thailand, China, South Korea, Japan, they can't speak English outside of the biggest cities and tourist areas.

Many paid comments here, to force tw to be coloni.ed by that country,bcause all brain of human developmnt is CHINESE but in CONFUCIUS, now that country wants to force tw to be in their REal LIGIONnaire🤣.when tw convert into that cross, tw brain also same as other cross later, bcause cross real ligion naires changes mentality to be more ignorant

stay away from east asian countries man(japan,china, taiwan,korea) these places will work you to the bone and pay you peanuts.@@ActiveAussie2024

yeah reading 'bilingual' as implying the native language is Mandarin and a second language would be English is somewhat disheartening many are already making an effort to be bilingual so they can fit into society and the government does the opposite of appreciating it once again ignoring this fact by describing investments into foreign language-learning as becoming 'bilingual'

​@@aiocafeamandarin is the simplified Chinese made the Prc and Taiwan macau and Hong Kong speak Cantonese the actual chinese

​@@newmapper5939??? Simplified/Traditional Chinese (or CHARACTERS) is a simplification of the WRITING and has nothing to do with the spoken language. And also, Taiwan don't even speak Cantonese at all. (you seem to confuse traditional characters = cantonese)

@@marcusong6355 i think you fed a troll my friend, be calm, there are people everywhere willing to say nonsense for a tiny crumb of attention

What are you talking about

many young taiwanese can't even speak minan now lol....so you can expect the situation with the aborigines to be even worse..

Why I mean you wrote a lengthy paragraph in English, surely it’s better than America teaching Chinese? Lol

Another comment claims that Philippines have the best English in Asia, which is it?

use google my brother and you'll be enlightened..@@Timothee_Chalamet_CMBYN

⁠@@Timothee_Chalamet_CMBYNIts definitely Singapore. While filipinos are very proficient in English, they speak with a lot of local influence and informality. Singaporeans are incredibly well versed in their main languages (Mandarin, English, Malay, and sometimes Tamil) to a professional level.

I almost must point out in the OP is that there is no “3 main races” in Singapore. All that was mentioned is part of one race. Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, is all under the “Asian race”. That’s 3 different ethnicities/ nationalities. 3 different races would like someone from Germany, India, Somalia.

​@@Timothee_Chalamet_CMBYNThere is no such thing as "Asian race".

Better not , if it is west.no use

No need to force anyone, just encourage them to play video games in English servers and talk to people via VOIP

Where did you get those percentages from? From personal observation, I would’ve guessed much lower.

@@artugert Not an official data. I saw it from a local newspaper couple years ago

oh how did we do it in singapore, philippines, malaysia? the organic natural learning is to engage with english media. the english speaking internet is the first step. dealing with english speaking foreign tourists, businessmen, exchange students is another. watch english movies, tv shows with no subtitles or dub. you can practice english reading skills as well from watching let's say anime with english subtitles. all these, we do not need historical colonizer to be there. many european countries learned english that way by their own choice. do not be harsh on yourself if your english is bad, trying is best, eventually, with enough exposure, english will be very normal to anyone.

@@xXxSkyViperxXx singapore and Malaysia were British colonies, the Philippines is the one and only officially recognized former US colony Kinda different when there were people forcing them to learn English at gunpoint

There are many voices in our community. We think school education should use our national language to teach students.

@@cs0312000 why learnn english and english speaking is bankruot full of gsng rapist.

Far from it lol

nah, young singaporeans are pretty bad when it comes to speaking mandarin, if you are talking about reading and writing then it's even worse and there's plenty of them who cannot speak or understand their own dialects anymore, which is their true mother tongue...bilingualism ain't easy to achieve for a country imo..

@@lyhthegreat​​⁠that all comes down to which language flows better and has the biggest vocabulary. I speak 4 languages but my mind mostly goes to English as it flows quite well and has vocabulary words not found in other languages. Naturally that’s what the mind will do.

@@lyhthegreat​​⁠I speak Spanish, Chinese, English, and Tamil but my mind almost always goes to English. I’d say I am most comfortable speaking in English and then Spanish, Spanish is a very close runner up to English while Chinese is very simple, it’s almost like words are missing, things are missing in the Chinese language when compared to English and Spanish.

Almost every major economy on the world teaches English in its schools as either a compulsory subject or a highly demanded/reccomended one

@@Blaze6432 English is a mandatory subject in Taiwan since primary school - it has enough education. What they are pursuing is turning every subject other than Chinese into English teaching. This might not worth the cost as it doesn’t mean MNC will expand to Taiwan. Spending the resources to hone the technical capability of students will be a better path.

@@Blaze6432 It doesn't necessarily mean that people in these countries can actually speak English. It really depends on the approach their education had and how they studied or just used English by themselves

​@@Blaze6432Yeah but then you have France being the worst country in Europe at speaking English only above Ukraine and Armenia (Armenia is in Europe... right?) Brazil being the worst in South America only above Colombia and Ecuador. China and Japan being below everyone in Europe and South America, and even below everyone in Asia except Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar. It's hard to establish that there's a correlation between English proficiency and economic growth with this data. Source: EF English proficiency Index.

Taiwan is doing much better than mainland China right now though, largely in part due to its international connections.

This happens to singapore, too. In1980? After meeting with west politicians,if i m not wrong, Lee Kuan Yew started English program, REASON SAME AS TW, GLOBAL TRADING,ETC. AFTER THAT,many x tian priest/ something like that coming. but they already planned (since their b1ble exists , colonized while, building many x.tian univ/school. Brainwashing youth Chinese there) so it is easy to make them x.tian. See it, singapore more and more become third country mentality because they are NOT /MANY NOT in Confucius Tao anymore. They oppress suppress insult non ×.t1an now. Actually anywhere in RICH SE ASIA but Thai saves now (the newPM not u$4 allies). I feel heartbreaking, too.Chinese the creator of Confucius, would it be the k1ller of Confucs, also,?

yeah imagine going to indonesia and branding an english-language program as them 'becoming bilingual' it's good to support learning an international language but i fear this will simply encourage the government to ignore the native languages of Taiwan even further

sadly, there are certain parts of taiwan where the Gen X, Y, Z only know Mandarin and no longer Hokkien nor Hakka. I heard it is usually just boomers and silent gen elderlies who know about it, but younger generations only know a little or none, so it's ridiculous sometimes they wonder about why certain places are named in hokkien, but they think in mandarin logic and sometimes try to correct things from mandarin perspective.

not anymore, most young taiwanese people can't speak their own dialects, some will understand but most can't speak, so if you tell me that they should speak more english i can't imagine the damage it's gonna do to their cultural identity lol.

@@aiocafeathose would be “dialects of Indonesia” some would say like how there are “Chinese dialects”.

Every major coding language is in English only.

Waaaaaaay big up England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿. Honestly tho maybe it will be the case it’s just not much entertainment, which is shown to English speakers, is in other languages. Nowadays there is a lot more but back in the day Dora the explorer was the most you were going to get.

I bet you’d want Spanish to have the same power world wide. You wouldn’t be saying the same things here . Some people might say it’s a shame Spanish is all over Latin America, maybe give way for other languages.

*español, se escribe en minúscula, al menos si te refieres a la materia de lengua.

That's his point though. Books aren't interesting, Mangas are. Book writers and a lot of book readers seem to be stuck-ups who think less flowery styles of writing means low quality junk when a lot of people just don't like pretentious shit. Take Fahrenheit 451 for example, there's like paragraphs after paragraphs full of verbose descriptions about literally nothing. Kids always go for books like "The Hunger Games" for a reason. What's up with schools always putting books of white old men writers on the shelves anyway? The topics of those books are irrelevant at best, misogynistic at worst. Books need to step up their game to be more interesting like mangas are. Kids also never liked books, so this is not anything new.

That's the way it's always been. That's nothing new.

he's parroting the discredited Lucy Calkins nonsense

@@Leyichen-pe2wgLeyichen, you sound like you were probably born in the 21st century, and think that there is nothing to learn from any prior century. Crack a history book open some day and learn about life.

​@@bobsands3557Not really sure how you're drawing a connection between her and Krashen, who has been active longer and has focused primarily on the field of language acquisition. His Input Hypothesis has been supported by tons of experimental data. Check out the videos on the topic made by What I've Learned and Matt vs Japan if you're not familiar with the topic.

The English class sounds super fun!

cause they're learning traditional chinese..just the strokes alone is enough to give you a stroke.

@@lyhthegreat I think you’re overrating the difficulty of traditional vs simplified

@@lyhthegreatthe difference is not a big deal

@@davidmella1174 not really, I don't know if you've tried writing out characters using traditional chinese, there are many characters that have significantly way more strokes than the simplified ones.

Malaysia boleh 😅

So basically you were trolling them? Please don't look down upon others because they don't know English. 入鄉隨俗。

Kids will use their smartphone

@@1chibanKasugaPolicies on electronic distractions should be developed to address such problems, not just for the sake of English learning, but all learning. TikTok is training kids to have only 3-second attention spans. Students addicted to video games can learn nothing else.

If Taiwanese can speak both Chinese and English fluently that will be a huge advantage to them. Taipei could become a leading international city. Philippines threw away their English speaking advantages, but I guess corruption is the worst problem there. Taiwan has a lot more to offer than either HK or Singapore. I can speak Chinese ( putonghua) but if most Taiwanese could speak English too that's a massive advantage. Most people in Asia have crap English, so this is a winning move.

India however has preserved its local languages while being the second largest english speaking country. They teach both english and the local language in schools there and there is not a lot of 'english based media' that they watch. So it is not impossible for a country to achieve that kind of balance

They can always use hokkien as national language lol

exactly, learning english as a frenchman or a german is way way easier as compared to learning english as a japanese or chinese person...tbh an english speaking german guy don't impress me as much as a japanese/chinese speaking german guy due to the amount of xtra effort they have to put in to get fluent even tho both are their 2nd language.

Austronesia taiwan no longer exists, taiwan is chinese land

Exactly. People like to bring up Krashen all the time, but the idea that comprehensible input is all you need is absurd. You get good at speaking by speaking. You improve your listening skills by listening. I don’t understand why that isn’t blatantly obvious to everyone.

throw them in america for a few years and they'll be able to speak it, might even acquire an accent too, one example is the basketballer yao ming, he came to america and don't speak a single word of english.

There is no such thing as Taiwenese language though. Unless you are talking about indigenous Austronesian languages in taiwan

@@figulapt3784 "Taiwanese" is short for "Taiwanese Hokkien" which is the version of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan.

@@alan85 ahh i didnt know that

@@figulapt3784 why did you state this as a fact when you clearly don't know 🗿

Omg! So true!!! I wonder why they spoke Japanese before the end of WW2, though. Hopefully it wasn’t because of imperialism xD

"Make English the lingua Franca" in that case, would taiwan still be taiwan lol?

@@lyhthegreat Canada recognizes English and French as their two official languages. Everything public is published in those languages. I don’t see Taiwan adopting English officially but a broader implementation of English would do them some good. After all a wise teacher win realize in that side of the earth you’re biggest client will be the U.S. and of Commonwealth nations, particularly India. So English will come in handy.