I debated whether to post this here or in the teaching English forum. Here is where I ended up.
I teach an adult conversation class and the school gave me the topic “Money, Banking, and Investing”. I can share oodles of information with my students about investing in the US. That would be quite easy. However, I know nothing about investing in Taiwan and I think I should at least give them some information about that. Are there any websites or other places that I could go to to read as a primer for myself?
For example, I don’t know which, if any, stock indexes exist. Where would one go to buy mutual funds? Do the strategies I use for my US investing even apply here?
Actually, since I’ll be living in Taiwan for the long term, I should probably brush up on this for my personal knowledge, too.
Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) has a weighted index, the trends of which are reported daily over at http://www.focustaiwan.tw. However, your students will doubtlessly know much more about Taiwan stocks and investment than you (since you say you’re a short-term resident), so you might as well give them access to information they don’t normally get. I would personally suggest focusing on what you know – US investment – since they probably don’t know much about the realities “on-the-ground” so to speak and are likely eager to learn.
Just out of curiosity, did the students request to discuss this subject matter?
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but if I walked into a Chinese class and the teacher said “Hold onto your hats, we’ll be discussing the exciting topics of investments and banking for this term, and doing so in a language you only marginally understand while being taught about it by a teacher who doesn’t actually know anything about the investments and banking systems here!” I might not be exceptionally enthused about it.
Perhaps I’m entirely misunderstanding, but if not I’m incredibly interested in how this turn of events occurred! Not taking a shot at you or anything, merely bemused and hoping there’s an interesting story in the makings.
Hokwongwei, thank you for your suggestion. I visit Focus Taiwan daily and do use their stories as discussion starters in my classrooms. Actually, my wife’s response to my question was the same as yours: talk with them about what I know as many are already interested in Americana.
skoster, your question is quite valid. This is the school’s advanced conversation class and they have given me a list of topics they want me to teach for the term. They also provided me with a very modest textbook that has almost no useful information on any of the topics, all of which are business-related. For example, it lists “postage” as one of the seven suggested vocabulary words for this lesson topic.
I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle. Your class shouldn’t be focused on individual stocks or markets but much broader. Why is money money? Does money need to be backed by gold? The history of money. Is gold a worthwhile store of value? Bitcoin? Gambling and odds analysis. Long term investing vs short term investing. Asset allocation in your portfolio. The real estate market in Taiwan…
Obviously the students not only need to be very advanced but they also need to be interested in the topic.
[quote=“Abacus”]I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle. Your class shouldn’t be focused on individual stocks or markets but much broader. Why is money money? Does money need to be backed by gold? The history of money. Is gold a worthwhile store of value? Bitcoin? Gambling and odds analysis. Long term investing vs short term investing. Asset allocation in your portfolio. The real estate market in Taiwan…
Obviously the students not only need to be very advanced but they also need to be interested in the topic.[/quote]
Actually, I intend to touch on many of the things you mentioned. What I was/am looking for is some Taiwan-specific information to help make the topic more relevant to the students.
Maybe I’m missing the point of the class you’re teaching and your role there and if so I apologize in advance, but aren’t you supposed to be teaching them English? You can certainly use banking / investments as a backdrop for the vocabulary and grammar and how to speak business English correctly, but as far as actually teaching them anything meaningful about investing, I’m not sure that’s your mandate.
Also just advice, but if you are going to be giving investment advice to people who are actually paying money to listen to you speak, I’d first have them read and understand a legal disclaimer stating in clear and plain English you are not qualified or certified to be giving any personalized financial advice. I know it may sound pretty silly now but believe me it’s a big enough deal that you’d want to make sure you and the school are legally separated from any future investment decisions these students make.
it is a good idea to just teach them about US investment. although it might help your student understand the difference if you know somethings about investment in Taiwan as well. for example, in the US people buy stocks in shares, whcih is called 股 (Gu) in Mandarin. Here in Taiwan, the standard practice is to buy stocks in 1,000-shares unit called 張(Zhang). This often confuses first timers when they go to oversea markets.
