Study in Taiwan: All the Rage!(Coral Lee/Translated by Jonathan Barnard)

Life at Taiwan’s universities has quietly been undergoing a transformation! Stroll through a campus and everywhere you turn you’ll see students with blond hair and blue eyes or coffee-colored skin and kinky hair. In the classrooms, English-language curriculum has been proliferating, both in general curriculum courses and advanced courses for majors only. Take a seat in the cafeteria and exchange students at the next table may well be speaking Mandarin in the accent of some inland mainland-Chinese province. Growing numbers of Vietnamese, Indonesians and Koreans are enrolled in master’s and doctoral programs….

According to the Ministry of Education, the number of foreigners enrolled as undergraduate or graduate students at Taiwan’s universities has grown 20–30% per annum over the last three years. In 2009 a total of 7764 foreign students, hailing from more than 110 nations, were scattered at more than 100 universities throughout Taiwan. Why have these foreign students come? What do they study in Taiwan? And how are they changing life at Taiwan’s campuses—both in quantity and in quality?

At the steps to the main gate of Ming Chuan University on Zhongshan North Road in Taipei, you see foreign students here and there, coming and going. You may even meet the gaze of their big eyes. At Ming Chuan’s International College building, which stands at the foot of a hill, flags of various nations flutter. When the bell rings at the end of class, students of varying ethnicities—black, white, red, and yellow—pour in and pour out. You can hear English, French, Japanese and all manner of languages beyond this reporter’s ability to identify.

Cut to National Sun Yat-sen University on the banks of Xizi Bay in southern Taiwan. A class in “Taiwan Government and Politics” is meeting. More than a dozen foreign students are scattered in every corner of the room as the professor, speaking English, leads a discussion on issues of ethnic identity in Taiwan. A French student expresses doubts about the quality of a survey conducted by National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations. He argues that the question “Do you identify yourself as Taiwanese, Chinese, or both?” isn’t precise enough, because it ignores the difference between cultural and political identification.

In reality scenes such as these have been playing out at universities throughout Taiwan for more than three years. According to the Ministry of Education, there are over 20 university campuses in Taiwan with over 100 foreign students. National Chengchi University, National Taiwan University and National Cheng Kung University have over 500 foreign students each. When you add overseas Chinese students, short-term exchange students, foreigners in Chinese language programs, mainland Chinese students and so forth, the sight of foreign students in classrooms, campus clubs and dormitories has become commonplace.

The earliest waves of foreign students came as a result of government policies encouraging them. Beginning in 2004 the government began issuing “Taiwan Scholarships” to attract talented foreign students to study in Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs targeted these scholarships at students from nations with diplomatic relations with the ROC. Meanwhile, the National Science Council, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Economic Affairs—and even the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission—offered other scholarships mainly to students from nations without diplomatic relations with the ROC. The full-ride scholarships were as long as five years for those earning bachelor’s degrees (for one year of a language course and four years of college) and three years for those earning master’s or doctoral degrees. About 400 of these scholarships were granted each year, and an additional 300 scholarships were granted for those enrolling in Chinese-language programs. With the large amounts of funding and active efforts by government agencies, “study in Taiwan” gradually began to take on traction with students abroad, and the number of foreigners pursuing their educations here began rapidly to rise.

Right time and place

Meanwhile, under the Ministry of Education’s policy of “internationalizing universities,” from 2005 various private and national universities as well as technical colleges began offering “university scholarships” to attract foreign students, via subsidies from the government supplemented by additional funds provided by the institutions themselves.

For instance, at Ming Chuan University, in addition to a 20–50% reduction in tuition and other fees for foreign students, depending on a student’s grades, scholarships range from NT$7000–20,000 per semester. At Tamkang University, it’s NT$40,000 (tuition at private universities is about NT$40–50,000 per semester). Some institutions established by corporate groups offer even better deals: The Far Eastern Group’s Yuan Ze University not only covers tuition and room and board, but it also provides an allowance of NT$6000–10,000 per month for living expenses.

Apart from the incentive provided by scholarships, the rapid economic rise of East Asia has created an ardent demand for skilled manpower among companies and industries throughout the region, and the magnetic pull of the mainland China market has made Chinese-language programs hot. Furthermore, Taiwan has many advantages in terms of its economy, technology and higher education, and it’s also a place abundantly imbued with the “inside stuff” of Chinese culture. Consequently, it’s attracted quite a few students from Southeast Asia.

According to the Ministry of Education, Southeast Asians constituted more than 60% of all foreign students in Taiwan in 2009. For those pursuing bachelor’s or master’s degrees, the top three countries of origin were Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In doctoral programs, students from India and Vietnam took the top two spots.

“Many people are under the impression that most of these students only thought of studying in Taiwan after learning about the scholarships, but that’s a misconception,” say  Ministry of Education officials, who estimate that when you take the more than 7000 foreign students and subtract the 1400 that have Taiwan Scholarships and the 2–3000 awarded scholarships by individual universities, the resulting figure shows that more than 40% of all these foreign students are completely paying their own way.

“I like to travel and wanted to get a master’s degree abroad, and tuition in Taiwan is one-third of what it is in France,” notes Fabien Laventureux, a French student working toward his GMBA at National Sun Yat-Sen University. “So I came here!” Chia Chee Pin, who earned a two-year associate’s degree in mass communication in his native Malaysia, worked for a year, and then felt that a higher degree would be a good insurance policy in poor economic times, so he applied to enter a joint degree program from I-Shou University in Kaohsiung and New Era College in Malaysia. After he gets his bachelor’s, he plans on working toward a master’s.

Zhou Shuyin, a third-generation Chinese Fijian, wants to master Mandarin. She had worked on the mainland for half a year, but didn’t like the conservative and closed-minded atmosphere there. Consequently, she decided to pay her own way to finish her university education in Taiwan.

The first key: language

When foreigners come to Taiwan, what do they want to study? And do they want their instruction to be in Chinese or English?

Currently, apart from a very few institutions that require their foreign students to have a mastery of Chinese, most universities actively try to accommodate foreign students’ needs by teaching courses in English. Among these, Taipei’s Ming Chuan and Kaohsiung’s I-Shou have gone so far as creating international colleges where English is the language of instruction in all four years. In other universities you find the foreign students scattered among various departments, with special courses or sections specially designated for instruction in English.

Yet, in a non-English-speaking nation like Taiwan, an English-language curriculum in universities may make things convenient for foreign students, but it poses enormous challenges for many of the instructors.

Chen Shu-heng, dean of international cooperation at National Chengchi University (NCCU), explains that establishing programs with English-language instruction is a major endeavor that’s going to require long-term effort. Among all of Taiwan’s universities, NCCU pushed internationalization first. In the last decade, it has offered more than 500 classes in English, but that number has still not been enough to meet demand among foreign students.

“The main problem is finding willing instructors,” says Chen. Many members of its faculty earned degrees in the United States and Europe. But reading English is one thing; using English to teach class and respond to students’ questions is quite another. Instructors have to spend large amounts of time to prepare lessons. When facing the varied backgrounds of foreign students, the constant mental adjustments that are demanded may end up feeling overwhelming. And the use of English constantly puts limits on the quality of instruction. For the instructors, it’s never going to be as easy to speak precisely or cite examples in English as it is in Chinese. And when neither the teachers nor the students completely understand each other, the problem of words not being able to convey exact meaning can become very frustrating.

That’s why of the six departments at NCCU that originally offered curriculums in English four (including diplomacy and journalism) encountered a dearth of willing and able instructors and consequently couldn’t offer enough required courses in English. Currently, only the departments of business administration and economics have been able to find enough instructors willing to teach in English, however reluctantly.

English immersion environment

Reflecting the bottleneck posed by a shortage of Taiwanese instructors that can teach in English, the International College of I-Shou University took a new approach: In September of 2009 it introduced three new departments: international business administration, international finance, and international tourism. I-Shou hired instructors from Europe, the United States and various Asian nations to teach not only the general curriculum courses but also advanced courses for majors.

“My goal is to get students to feel that coming to attend university in Taiwan is better than going to America, Britain or Australia, but it’s only one-fifth the cost of studying in America!” says H. Ruhi Yaman, the dean of I-Shou’s International College, who came to I-Shou from Victoria University in Australia. In an era when Asia is rising, Taiwan has excellent conditions to attract Westerners wanting to enter China. Based on his own experience of teaching in various nations in Asia and Europe for a more than a decade all told, Yaman says I-Shou’s environment meets top international standards, and it has excellent foreign instructors. He firmly believes that I-Shou can be turned into one of Asia’s top universities.

Yaman explains that in an era of global operations, if you want to cultivate international business leaders, language is the first hurdle to clear. Unfortunately, he has noticed that most of those Taiwanese who return from study abroad do not have particularly outstanding English. Consequently, I-Shou specially emphasizes language training, providing various kinds of media so that students can immerse themselves in an English-language environment. For instance, the college requires first-year students to live on campus, and the foreign instructors take turns visiting the dorms as tutors. If the students have any questions, they can take advantage of those opportunities. And all classes are recorded and available for viewing on the university’s website, so students can review classroom lectures and discussions at their convenience.

Going out or coming in

Behind the choice between English or Chinese instruction stands the issue of how international a university wants to become.

Business administration and finance typically feature the largest number of advanced courses taught in English, followed by engineering and applied technology, and then the humanities and the arts.

By encouraging foreigners coming to Taiwan to enroll in international business, trade and other “global mainstream academic departments,” most universities are taking the approach of “welcoming the world into Taiwan.” There are relatively few social-science or humanities programs open to foreigners, however, that “take Taiwan out to the world” by focusing on life in Taiwan.

Jamali Jack, who hails from St. Vincent in the Caribbean, was awarded a five-year Taiwan Scholarship in 2007. In St. Vincent he earned an associate’s degree and worked for many years in the advertising industry. He first studied advertising at NCCU, but after taking many classes there taught in Chinese that he couldn’t follow, he decided to transfer to Ming Chuan, which is less prestigious but has an international college. He feels that the biggest benefit of the move has been overcoming the language barrier, directly moving into more advanced courses, and interacting with students of many nations at the college, thereby expanding his horizons and making connections.

Likewise, Joagni Pare, a good friend of Jack’s who hails from Burkina Faso, is studying international business administration. He also believes that, apart from the advanced knowledge he’s learned, the biggest benefit of enrolling at Ming Chuan has been the contact with people of so many different backgrounds. It’s truly one of the keys of international commerce, but at university you usually don’t have an opportunity to gain that kind of “real-life wisdom.” Because foreign students from many different nations are gathered together here, they naturally undergo a baptism of multiculturalism.

Multifaceted education

Generally speaking, foreign students rarely participate in school activities—either because of language issues or because they feel that they are mere visitors who don’t really belong. But they thus lose out on a great opportunity to immerse themselves into Taiwanese society. Reflecting this, National Chengchi University, which has been pursuing internationalization for 10 years already, established the NCCU International Association in 2009 with the hope of building bridges of friendship between these foreign students and Taiwan society.

Wilfried Relwende Sawadogo, who hails from Burkina Faso and is the association’s president, says the club has three goals: First, members want it to serve as a bridge of communication between foreign students and Taiwanese teachers. Consequently, they welcome the participation of Taiwan students and faculty. Secondly, they want to work to integrate various resources for foreign students, including those held by foreign students, Taiwan students and various organizations and educational institutions. Thirdly, they hope to build bridges between the university and the local community.

Concrete steps they have taken include publishing a bilingual bulletin—NCCU United—so as to let faculty and students at the university, as well as people in the outside world, understand related developments. They have also established a student support group, which aims to help foreign students adjust to local food, clothes, living arrangements, transportation, and culture. If Taiwan students have the need, they happily share their resources and provide aid. They also put on various workshops, lectures and seminars. Because university funding is limited, they’ve gone off-campus to seek support from businesses, or have worked with other organizations as co-sponsors.

“One of the greatest things I’ve gotten out of coming to Taiwan is helping to establish this group!” says the association’s vice president Dale Albanese, an American. In the United States he majored in English with international studies. More than three years ago, because he was interested in Asia, he applied for a Fulbright scholarship to come to Taiwan, where he first taught for a year in an elementary school in Yilan before spending some time to focus on studying Chinese. He then won a Taiwan Scholarship from the Ministry of Education and entered a master’s program in Taiwan studies at NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Development. Albanese believes that he was fated to come to Taiwan. He’s very satisfied with the educational environment here, and participating in the international students’ association has provided out-of-the-classroom learning opportunities. It’s been a source of great satisfaction.

Strong and weak points

This reporter visited five universities in northern and southern Taiwan, and interviewed about 50 foreign students. Although some students have complaints, generally speaking most are positive about higher education in Taiwan. They are happy with the well-equipped campuses and well-stocked libraries. For instance, foreign students at I-Shou praise the photographic equipment and studios. And students at NCCU, Tamkang and Sun Yat-sen laud the holdings of their libraries and the excellent and varied academic lectures—all of which greatly benefit graduate students.

What’s more, the schools show great concern for the foreign students. They’ve developed “buddy systems,” matching foreign students with locals. They’ve met them at the airport, helped them find places to live, provided advisers, and generally demonstrated a welcoming vibe—all efforts at getting these students who are so far from their homes to feel comfortable.

“A low student-faculty ratio” and “friendly and open-minded professors” are other strong points that many students mention.

“Accounting is a pretty hard subject, and in Taiwan I’m not afraid of asking my instructors questions. And the instructors are very patient when they explain things to me,” says Helene Konkobo, who is enrolled in a program at Tamkang that is taught in English.

Of course, another big benefit of coming to study in Taiwan is that it can greatly increase one’s Chinese abilities and one’s understanding of Chinese culture.

“There were a lot of Chinese businessmen in my hometown, but I felt that they were an altogether different race of people, and I never felt that I wanted to chat with them,” says Tenga Taua from the island nation of Kiribati. Now she feels none of that sense of separation. Walking the streets here, she interacts with the locals left and right.

Unique Taiwan/Asian experience

Generally speaking, most foreign students have a positive impression of education in Taiwan when it comes to the facilities, the educational resources, the language, the friendliness of teachers and so forth. But when it comes to the core focus of academia—stimulating innovation and advancing academic knowledge—the praise is more muted. In the face of global competition in education, one can’t help but worry: What unique advantages does Taiwan have?

“Our strong suit ought to be in the realm of the humanities and social sciences. We should establish a unique Taiwan experience—or perhaps we can more broadly call it ‘the modern Chinese experience,’” argues Christopher Chang, director of the Chinese Language Center at NCCU, who has been among those guiding NCCU’s internationalization for many years. When setting their policy directions, both the government and universities ought to bear in mind that internationalization doesn’t equal the spread of English, and an international country isn’t one with an English-language curriculum. Rather, internationalization should mean developing curriculum about every area in the world, including curriculums that demonstrate Chinese cultural values and Taiwan’s experience at modernization.

“For instance, Taiwan’s graduate institutes of Taiwan literature and departments of Chinese, business and political science,” Chang says, “rather than establishing standard economics and behavioral science classes that one can study anywhere, ought to think about developing curriculum that has special cultural or regional emphasis, so that interested foreigners will feel that they ‘absolutely have to go to Taiwan.’”  

“At the end of the day, the Chinese language is an important medium for getting foreigners to understand Taiwan and Chinese culture,” says Frank Ying, dean of international affairs at National Sun Yat-Sen University. Both Chang and Ying believe that if government policy doesn’t set Chinese-language requirements for its foreign students, then it will be very hard for campuses to become truly international. Ying cites the example of Yu Kwang-chung, a “campus treasure of National Sun Yat-Sen University”: He has enormous literary and scholarly accomplishments, but if humanities students can’t understand Chinese, how can they enter the realm of Yu’s poetry? How will they gain a feel for the master’s literary models?

New selling point: Taiwan studies

Taiwan’s “cultural strength” is clear to those who come to Taiwan to earn master’s and doctorates in programs with Chinese-language instruction.

Nurni W. Wuryandari, a doctoral candidate in Chinese at Tamkang, taught Chinese at the University of Indonesia (the nation’s top campus) for 20 years. With the encouragement of the Indonesian government, she applied for a three-year Taiwan Scholarship to study here. Because the Chinese programs at National Taiwan University and NCCU emphasize difficult classical Chinese, she decided to take a more practical direction and enroll at Tamkang.

She’s been in Taiwan for more than two years now and feels she particularly benefitted from her “literary sociology” and “comprehensive research into Chinese history and literature” classes. She has a lot of respect for the professors at Tamkang. She says her own Chinese has plenty of room for improvement, but that she is sparing no effort as the first Indonesian to pursue a doctorate in Chinese in Taiwan. Not only has her Chinese writing ability made great strides, but she believes that she will be able to expand the horizons of the Chinese studies community in Indonesia when she returns.

Frank Ying says that history and literature aren’t the only areas where a Chinese-language curriculum can benefit foreign students. In social sciences and business administration, Taiwan offers unique Chinese points of view and experiences. He has taken students from third-world countries on tours of Taiwan’s major science parks, and seen their eyes widen. Likewise, he’s taken students from Belgium and Austria on tours of China Shipping, visits that have also broadened their horizons. If they can be better integrated into a curriculum, the many stages of Taiwan’s economic development experience are all potential academic “strong suits.”

Relying on higher education to push internationalization both offers a way forward for the education sector and helps the nation make friends and expand its influence. The number of foreign students is on the rise, and they’re making their mark in every corner of Taiwan. Nevertheless, in comparison with Hong Kong and Singapore, Taiwan has taken its first steps late. If we want to enjoy a reputation as a great place to study, we need to work harder. But in the process of welcoming and befriending foreigners, can we also ruminate on our own identity and values? That’s the still greater challenge!

Reference:

Lee, C. (2010, April). Study in Taiwan: All the Rage. Taiwan Panorama, 35(4), 70-79.

Language No Object for Taiwan’s Foreign Students! (Coral Lee/Translated by Jonathan Barnard)

For foreigners studying in Taiwan, language is the first hurdle. In the programs where English is rarely, if ever, used, how do the foreign students adapt?

Case No. 1: Antonio Beardall

Antonio Beardall hails from the Central American nation of Belize, which is a member of the British Commonwealth. He earned an associate’s degree there and worked in a museum and then in the National Institute of Culture and History before coming to Taiwan to continue his studies. His job involved the management and care of archeological artifacts, but the archeological research methods employed in Belize are rather out of date, and there are no related programs in the universities there, so he applied for a five-year Taiwan Scholarship to study at the Department of Information and Library Science at Tamkang University. He is the first foreigner ever to enroll in that department.

“At first, my instructors didn’t know what to do with me,” recalls Beardall, who is now in his third year. Although he had a year of Chinese study under his belt, he couldn’t follow his classes. Some kind-hearted instructors would stop halfway through a lecture or discussion and use English to explain to him. But he found it awkward and embarrassing to have all eyes on him, so he ended up devising a method that suited both him and his professors.

“When I was a freshman, I was 27 years old and had already worked in a related field, and my Western education was different from the experience of my Taiwanese classmates, so professors ended up giving me a lot of leeway and flexibility. They provided reading lists, and when I had questions I consulted with them. For exams, I mostly answered questions in English, or submitted papers in their place.”

Beardall says that after three years in the program, he has gained professional knowledge from his classes on library classification, databases and backup methods, and also taken great strides in raising his own abilities to do research. He is confident that after he returns home, he will be able to put his newfound knowledge and skills to work.

Case No. 2: Pavel Kocourek

Pavel Kocourek, a Czech graduate student at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung, offers another happy tale of productive independent study.

As an undergraduate Kocourek majored in math and won a prize at the International Math Olympics. After he graduated from college, he let the deadline pass for applying to graduate schools in Europe. But he loves to travel, so at the urging of his girlfriend, who was fascinated by Chinese, he applied for a two-year Taiwan Scholarship for graduate studies at NSYSU.

He himself had no foundation in Chinese. With an attitude that this was “adventure travel,” Kocourek didn’t have big expectations in terms of academics. He first found two foreign-national teachers in the department to serve as his advisors. Unfortunately, a Greek instructor who was a good fit with Kocourek resigned during the student’s second semester there. The other foreign instructor was Vietnamese, and Kocourek got on well with him too, but the instructor’s research focus was too theoretical to hold Kocourek’s interest. Kocourek felt bad that he couldn’t help the professor with his research.

As a result of a chance encounter, Kocourek met Frank Ying, the dean of the university’s Office of International Affairs and a professor of economics. Ying discovered that Kocourek was both naturally gifted at math and also motivated to work hard at solving problems, so Ying invited him to research under him.

“We were asked by the Council for Economic Planning and Development to carry out some research that required large amounts of mathematical computations,” Ying explains. The work involved dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modeling, a cutting-edge realm internationally. The aim was to develop a dynamic model to predict economic trends. For instance, how would releasing consumer vouchers at different times affect the Taiwan economy? Or if the exchange rate for the NT dollar went up by 1%, how would that affect the unemployment rate? Using DSGE you can design enormous models and account for multiple variables. The programs are very difficult to write, and the complicated software often causes computers to crash, but Kocourek, with his high level of mathematical ability, is highly skilled at resolving thorny problems like those.

“He’s the brightest student I’ve come across in 15 years. He’s practically a genius!” Ying declares. Kocourek himself feels that he’s found his path in life. He has thrown himself into the research, often working at his computer deep into the night, totally captivated by the task at hand.

“I’m more than just a student to Frank. Whenever I go to Taipei, I always stay at his place!” says the smiling Kocourek. By letting him make such a big contribution to the research, Ying has given the student a sense of his own true worth. Kocourek has ended up getting much more out of his trip to Taiwan than he had anticipated.

 Reference:

Lee, C. (2010, April). Language No Object for Taiwan’s Foreign Students. Taiwan Panorama, 35(4), 80-81.

Foreign Students in Taiwan’s Classrooms(Coral Lee/Translated by Phil Newell)

What happens when you throw foreign students, from many countries, cultures, age groups, and educational systems, into Taiwan university classrooms? It’s a bit like starting out with a very straightforward dish and then adding all of kinds of novel ingredients—the chef has to take into account the different ingredients, and tweak the flame, seasonings, and cooking techniques. If the chef performs well, the result will be haute cuisine. But handled badly it could turn out to be an unappetizing mishmash.

And how do Taiwan’s campuses, faculty, and students appear in the eyes of foreign students? Can their negative impressions give us some insight into the shortcomings of higher education in Taiwan and provide impetus for change in terms of both teaching and learning?

The first culture shock that strikes many foreign students is “students sleep, eat, talk on their cell phones, and send text messages in class, and the teachers seem to give their tacit permission to do so!” says Antonio Beardall, a student from Belize in the Department of Information and Library Science at Tamkang University. At first he assumed that collegians in Taiwan simply didn’t care about their schoolwork. It was only later that he learned that students are admitted into university departments in the order in which they placed on the national entrance exams, and a lot of students end up having to settle for fields in which they have no interest, and in which they have no intention of getting a job after graduation.

He wonders, “Why don’t they just transfer to another department?” Over three years, he observed many students who were totally uninterested in and distant from their subjects, but he saw only one who dared to leave school, first do his compulsory military service, and then retake the university entrance exam in order to pursue his real love, fashion design.

He feels that in the face of this reality, teachers should do all they can to make class lively and interesting, or focus on practical applications in order to get the students interested. “But some of the teachers seem to have lost their passion for teaching, and they stand at the podium for two hours without moving or asking the students any questions, without changing even their facial expressions or tone of voice!”

“If they have no interest in studying, why do they work so hard to get into university in the first place? Just to meet the expectations of their parents or other people? It’s just a waste of four years of time and money!” says St. Vincent’s Jamali Jack, a student of Journalism and Mass Communication at Ming Chuan University, who has the same impression as Beardall. In his country, if young people don’t want to study they just find jobs, where they can acquire skills and experience, so that they are just as competitive in the job market.

Q&A

One of the most common “adjustment problems” mentioned by students from Western countries is the way that professors teach.

Students we interviewed from several Latin American countries said the same thing: “Discussion and debate is the most important element in our classrooms back home,” but in Taiwan the teachers just scroll through their PowerPoint presentations and drone on about each page, without any interaction with the students. “Even if we raise questions, teachers generally don’t give very full answers, and rarely will go a step further to initiate wider discussion.”

So there are definitely complaints. But foreign students have mostly adapted to local culture and to Taiwan’s education model of “teachers only teach what they feel like teaching without any concern for what the students want to learn.”

“In class it’s always just the same few of us who ask questions,” says Jamali Jack. He really wants to know what his Taiwanese classmates think. It doesn’t matter to him if their English is fluent or not; the point of learning is to engage in a provocative exchange of diverse views.

“Taiwanese students don’t really have the habit of questioning their teachers, parents, or superiors,” says Jack, who offers the following example: If there is a problem with an exam grade, a Taiwanese student will normally just grumble and then quietly accept the result. But Jack lets the professor know his reaction, and will ask the teacher to have another look at the exam sheet to see if it has been misgraded by mistake. “Taiwanese have too much respect for titles. Professors, school presidents, and the nation’s president are just people, and they too can get things wrong!”

As for the Chinese tradition of respecting one’s teachers, he thinks that respect should be “mutual.” He was unfortunate enough to run into a teacher this semester who doesn’t have much respect for students. This professor of advertising, after listening to the students introduce themselves in the first class of the semester, said imperiously, “If you think you understand advertising, that means you understand nothing at all!” Jamali Jack, stressing that creativity, curiosity, and the art of collective brainstorming are prerequisites for success in the mass media and especially advertising, says that if there is no tolerance or sincerity in listening to the views of others, then genuine dialogue becomes impossible.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

“I worked in an advertising firm for several years, so this was the class that I was most looking forward to,” says Jack, with obvious disappointment in his face. He never expected the teacher to start off the first class with such an arrogant attitude. After a few weeks, he had the chance to talk with the professor one on one, and, sticking to his guns, expressed his views about mutual respect between teachers and students. He had only half finished when the teacher finally couldn’t control her anger any more and cut him off: “I don’t want to hear any more!” He was really dismayed.

Thereafter, Jack completely lost interest in the class, but couldn’t drop it because it was required. So he chose to “informally” drop it—he goes to class as required, but acts invisible, not asking any questions and avoiding any conversation with the teacher.

Jack’s example may be an extreme one, but according to many professors with experience teaching foreigners, international students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and teachers need to be psychologically prepared in order to meet the differing and contradictory needs and demands of the students.

Liu Lung-lung, a teacher in the Applied Computing Program at Ming Chuan, says, based on the students in his own department, says that there is often a big difference between the motivations and credentials of foreign students compared to Taiwanese ones. Some students from the Americas are 25 or 26 and already have some specialized training or working experience, and they have come to Asia to seek new opportunities in life. Many students from the Pacific islands or Africa, on the other hand, while very earnest about learning all kinds of skills, often have not been exposed to enough basic knowledge, so it is necessary to teach them from scratch.

Given this M-shaped see-saw with foreign students at the two extremes and Taiwanese kids in the middle, teachers must be flexible and break the students into groups depending upon level, with different teaching materials and grade requirements. There are also changes in attitude depending upon the student’s year in school. By their junior or senior years (years 3 and 4), foreign students are generally fully acclimatized to local life and are more concerned about pragmatic issues like securing their scholarships for another year, so are really picky about grades. Teachers have to use up a lot of emotional energy in dealing with these different demands.

Dialogue

In addition, because international colleges and programs are not restricted to foreign students, but are also open to Taiwanese students, in class students from Taiwan and Southeast Asia are often too shy to open their mouths, with the result that “discussion is dominated by students with the best English.” This is a common problem experienced by many professors.

Maria Huei-sheng Tu, chair of the International Business and Management Program at Ming Chuan University, says she has had complaints from Taiwanese students that she “favors” the foreign students because if she is not careful, it is quite easy to spend half the class in discussion with the vocal foreigners. It is really a challenge to figure out how to maintain interaction while not delaying the progress of the course and harming the rights and interests of the quiet students.

Over the last two years she has been deliberately thinking about how to help local students join in the discussions, and she has told her students, “Just give me a look and I’ll figure out some way for you to have your say.” Based on her own observations, after “working out” for a while, some Taiwanese are very active about talking in class, and no longer hesitant about using English to engage in discussions with students from all over the world, who anyway all have their own accents.

One teacher, Yu Pei-hsuan of the Department of International Trade at Tamkang University, avers that “forming mixed small groups of Taiwanese and foreign students is an approach that works quite well.” At first she just taught in a lecture format, but found that many foreign students fell asleep. So she switched to a diversified pedagogy including case studies, reports, practical applications, and videos, and the students’ response was markedly different. Forming mixed groups including both Taiwanese and foreign students, and including at least one Taiwanese student with good English in each group to act as a bridge, is equivalent to forcing them to interact, with very positive results.

Caught in the middle

Interestingly, students from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe have a different take on the methods used by teachers in Taiwan, which is essentially 180 degrees from the views of students from the Americas and Western Europe.

“In the Czech Republic, the professor is the leading actor in class, and students’ only role is to listen. But here teachers retreat to the second line and emphasize teamwork,” says Zuzana Krejci, an exchange student in the Department of Chinese at National Chengchi University, adding “this is a new learning experience for me.” Korean student Shin Ah Ram, a senior in the Department of Diplomacy at NCCU, says that at good universities in her country attendance is taken at each and every class, whereas some teachers at NCCU do not keep track, so that students have a relaxed attitude about attending class, which she feels is “not good at all.”

Another subject that gets of lot of discussion is, “Should schools treat foreign students exactly the same as Taiwanese students, or adopt a policy of ‘one country, two systems’?”

“We all hate the roll call system at Ming Chuan,” says Tenga Taua, who comes from Kiribati. Most foreign students have working experience and are a little older than their local counterparts, and the roll call system makes them feel belittled, as if they had to be compelled to go to class. Moreover, if students can study a specific curriculum more effectively on their own, why do they have to go to class at all?

Foreign students find physical education classes especially frustrating. Most have them have long been able to do the basic physical skills required for badminton, basketball, or whatever, and are familiar with the rules of these everyday sports, but teachers don’t make any flexible arrangements in class and the schools require that attendance be taken in these classes.

Stirring the waters

Looking at the issues from another point of view, what is the impact on Taiwanese students of being in classes that get “stirred up” by foreign students?

Michael Chu, a Taiwanese sophomore in the International College at Ming Chuan University, relates, “It used to be that whatever other people ‘stuffed’ into me, that’s what I would take.” After hanging out with foreign students, however, not only has his English improved at mercurial speed, the biggest change has been to spark a passion for learning actively, rather than just passively. Although he is not yet certain what he will do in the future, when he comes across something that interests him, he already knows how to boldly go out and pursue what he wants.

For example, now when he does a report he is no longer satisfied just doing cut-and-paste to pile up a bunch of facts into a PowerPoint presentation that he will just point to with his laserpen and read off mechanically. Now he takes the time to digest all the information so he can explain it in his own words. This makes it easier for classmates to understand and also gives him a strong sense of accomplishment.

“But there are both good and bad things about the way foreigners do things—you have to learn from the good and take the bad as a warning,” says Michael Chu. Some foreigners are just too easy-going, even irresponsible at times, and put themselves first in both their schoolwork and relationships, without regard for the convenience or feelings of others. For example, they might promise to come to a meeting, but arrive really late or not come at all. He used to feel hesitant to speak straight out, but now he will protest: If foreigners are arrogant and only do the easy things in meetings to organize events, so that there is an unfair division of responsibilities, he will fight for his point of view with reasoned arguments.

Beyond the fact that international students enter Taiwanese classrooms and stir up the waters, the rest of the school acts as if they weren’t even there. Chen Shu-heng, dean of international cooperation at NCCU, says that one time a foreign student was feeling suicidal and sought counseling, but the counseling center refused, saying “foreign students are not our responsibility.” The offices of academic affairs and student affairs have the same mindset, or criticize foreign students for “always bringing trouble” and “taking up resources,” which is very frustrating for him.

From this point of view, it seems that when the pluralistic values and hospitality that Taiwan has always been proud of are put to the test in university internationalization, and there is still much room for improvement.

An old Chinese proverb has it that “meeting friends from afar is a happy occasion.” Now that we have opened our arms to welcome foreign students to Taiwan, the real measure of our sincerity in promoting internationalization is whether we can listen to their opinions with an open mind and ungrudgingly respond to their needs and demands.

Reference:

Lee, C. (2010, April). Foreign Students in Taiwan’s Classrooms. Taiwan Panorama, 35(4), 82-87.