Taiwan Bilingual 2030: Is English needed after AI takes hold? 

Hi ...I taught English conversation in northern Taiwan 2 times. It is a great country.

I teach English at a junior high school in Taiwan. I see the greatest skill deficiencies in the production skills of speaking and writing. The kids generally have better reading skills than speaking or writing skills, to a large degree because of various traditional, cultural, and social pressures inhibiting self-expression and because the test-centric educational system focusing only on selection for advancement to better schools incentivizes learning only for short-term memory and then a practically immediate lapse into forgetting just about everything after the exam. I absolutely agree that reading (massive, extensive reading with compelling interest and pleasure, that is) will help students acquire proficiency and should be the main tool of learning in the early stages of learning a language. But one of the goals of all that reading should be so that eventually students will acquire proficiency in speaking and writing, as well. There should not be any encouragement to make students into speechless mimes good only at reading. A functional communicator needs to have output as well as input skills. Output skills can be and perhaps should be placed on the back burner in the beginning, but they should not be totally ignored, as the professor seems to suggest.

I don’t think that the policy is feasible but it’s a good goal to try to aim for. I do disagree that learning two languages at the same time will make a person be unable to master neither languages. Europe is a perfect example of many people being able to speak multiple languages and still be master of their native tongue.

I'd recommend having the name of the guest in your description boxes under your videos

If we are worried that relying on one language will limit our perspectives, that's even more reason to learn English so that Mandarin Chinese does not limit the perspectives of the people in Taiwan. And by all means, learn other languages: Taiwanese, Hakka, Austronesian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Korean, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Swahili, Arabic, Pashto, Persian, etc. Why limit the language of common communication in the nation to only Mandarin Chinese? Change the Bilingual Policy to an International Policy. What Taiwan needs is not to limit itself to the perspectives and language skills present only within Taiwan under the excuse that we are already multilingual. Taiwan needs to become international to reach perspectives and foreign capital and trade and technology and international recognition and support outside of Taiwan. Staying essentially monolingual in Mandarin Chinese is not going to do that.

Wish he had a Twitter

A translation is never perfect, especially AI translations now. Even if AI technology gets better, perhaps only a tiny minority of translations can ever convey the full meaning and import of the original, especially between languages that are vastly different. This is because language is more than just words with definitions. A word can often have connotations and an emotional, historical or cultural significance. These are not things the AI can translate without taking up several minutes to explain. How is instantaneous, simultaneous translation then possible? How is a normal conversation or social interaction possible if you have to pause constantly for several minutes to wait for the AI to explain everything? Besides, more knowledge never hurts. Moreover, language shapes the way one thinks. Not learning other languages and limiting oneself to only one language also means one will never think outside of the box made up of rules of one's language. Such a person is bound to be more inflexible in thinking and less able to adapt and solve problems creatively. If Taiwan wants to be competitive in creativity and problem-solving, language learning needs to be a priority. And Taiwan should not remain with Mandarin monolingualism or just aim for bilingualism: it needs to aim for multilingualism to become fully internationalized. That's what will give Taiwan a competitive edge and help its survival.

Q6: “You have to be able to good in one language” perhaps using the verb structure “to be able to be good at one language” would be more accurate. Still, let the blind know best. 加油！ And you only need to look at many multicultural and multilingual countries like Malaysia where English is just a part of daily life to know that this isn’t really true.

Q3 response : “you can’t really master two languages, you can only master one language.” Malaysian Chinese: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yGczYLKdq2A.html Maybe if you just wish to retain a mandarin monoculture

Nopes, which language you speak is irrelevant ;) Each culture has uniqueness that takes at least a decade to really understand/use-well. Becoming a synergetic/pragmatic/poly-cultural takes a live time of socializing with them all (ex: become one instance of a bestest combination of them all). Learn to speak a language just take a few months of class study & relatively simple. If that's all you do, it's very shallow.