In the mere 4 months that I have lived in Taiwan, I have formed the impression that Taiwanese universities will accept just about any foreign applicant with a pulse into their English programs…am I wrong to think that?
I have been recently tutoring a SEA student that is doing a PhD in Arts Management (or something to the like) on reading comprehension and writing. While the student is knowledgeable in her field, as she should be, I am quite shocked at how she managed to be accepted to a postgrad-level program with her current English ability. Her comprehension of the academic articles she is assigned is rather low and her writing skills are non-existent - I have yet to see the student write a single grammatically correct sentence. In fact, I often find myself scratching my head trying to decipher what she meant to say in her writing.
Is it common to see students like this in IMBA and other programs?
Twenty years back Taiwan opened a bunch more universities - and now, with the declining birth rate, there are too many universities. This means that lots of schools are desperate for students, any students, because if there are no students, the graduate programs - and eventually undergraduate programs - are going to shut down.
So, yeah, standards sometimes aren’t what they should be.
Taiwan (rightfully) thinks it needs to make social connections with other countries since it’s being blocked from politically doing so. So welcome all ye foreign outcasts, come study at will.
I work with NTHU, NTHU and NCTU and most graduates I come across can function in academic situations. Vietnamese students in Taiwan usually have the worst English in my experience. Granted those are the top unis so there is no way that’s representative of the whole country.
I applied to grad school at a national university near me (in the boonies) and was “waitlisted” twice. This is a school where 99% of the students show up on campus once in September and sometimes just go home to Kaoshuing or Taipei or work full time for the entire school year and never, ever show up to class but somehow still graduate. I am close friends with at least 10 professors there and have known many students over the years. I was actually asked by a professor to apply because she was worried about not having enough students. Being waitlisted was just awkward as someone with an ACTFL score of Advanced- high in Chinese, who graduated cum laude from a well-ranked American university and has a good chunk of very nice internationally recognized awards on my resume. I don’t mean that to brag, I mean that as “I know for certain that virtually no one else in the school has a CV anywhere near as nice as mine, and I’m a white, native-English speaking American, what else do I need to ‘qualify’ for your school?”
The reason? Priority always goes to people with local 戶籍, regardless of their qualifications. So be careful what department you apply for.
Reminds me of this one Vietnamese student in my seminar who pronounced “between” like “bitch” . Had to read the slides to understand what she was talking about.
But I find Taiwanese pronunciation also difficult to understand. I’m Taiwanese but I had only spoken to mostly native speakers when I was a kid. Did take English classes in middle and high school but never paid attention. Went to grad school few years ago only to find out that I couldn’t understand a thing my classmates and professors were talking about… I’m tutoring English now, and most of the time I couldn’t understand what my students saying. I have to correct their pronunciation one by one. And some of them are just so reluctant to speak English they’d just drop out. Sometimes it’s the parents who strongly request me not to teach their kids pronunciation. They thought speaking English is stupid and unnecessary. But i just don’t understand why would anyone want to learn a language without speaking it? I mean, if you’re gonna learn, might as well learn it the right way, right?
If it’s an academic context, then reading may be much more important than speaking. I imagine that’s the case for Latin, for example. But such cases are definitely going to be unusual.
And there is of course the often-encountered mindset that learning is just for exams and credentials.
Is she Taiwanese? Btw what is an SEA student? Is that the abbreviation of some university?
Well if she’s Taiwanese, then she probably didn’t read enough. Our English education is full of articles that’s written by Taiwanese. And most students would try very hard to squeeze every fancy words they know into their writing, and most of the time that wouldn’t make any sense in English context. I always start with the first chapter of a tale of two cities. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. You don’t need nothing fancy to make it beautiful
But they also have to take listening tests. One of my students thought “bright” was pronounced, I don’t know… something like “bat”, anyway she thought it was just something that wouldn’t make any sense. And when she heard it in the test,of course she couldn’t link it to “bright”.
Plus, how else could you memorize the vocabulary? Caught her memorizing the word “healthy”, without saying it, but spelling it “h, e, a, l, t, h, y”. And because she refused to read it out, she can’t tell that “healthy, healthier, and healthiest” has the same root.
But if you know how to say those words, you wouldn’t bother to memorize all 3 of them. I taught her how to spell, And yet I still catch her memorizing the spelling every once a while.
I even asked some psychologists friends about whether it is possible to memorize this much words without giving it a sound. They said nope.
Wonder if Vietnamese students have the same idea of studying English. Or its just that English is more difficult for Vietnamese to pronounce.
I disagree , the SEA students I’ve met are smart and hard working, they have to be outstanding in their home country to get a scholarship to come to Taiwan.
most of the white ones I’ve met were the mediocre ones and basically only had to show minimal qualifications to get accepted to university.
you can see the same in working Visa criteria. as long as you have an english speaking passport and a pulse you can apply for work visa here, no one checks if you can work with kids or if your degree is any good.
vietnamese (not foreign spouses or blue collar jobs, white collar employees) have to jump through hoops to get a visa.
I’ve met some hard working SEA students and some mediocre ones, also some hardworking and some mediocre white students, also Asian students. Don’t really know any black students but I think I’ve made my point here. People are people.
Ridiculous. Are you one of those Taiwanese that asks foreigners “why would you come to lame ass Taiwan?” The answer is obvious Taiwan is a great place. It’s not top tier (yet) but it’s not far off.
My experiences range from studying, teaching, and participating in oral defenses at the post-grad level. Students (SEA, TW, Western) can be lazy and incompetent or hardworking and clever. Ethnicity is not an accurate predictor. At both a top 3 national university program and one of the shittiest private schools (which survives on SEA students), quality varies vastly. Entrance qualifications, however, were weak at both.
In the Sino world, Taiwan’s schools are probably the weakest overall. Do any elite schools really do much exchange at NTU? Never seen any students from global elite schools here.
