Not allowing foreigners to teach in kindergartens has been going on for some time now. It was banned because a bunch of ‘experts’ in the government determined that having foreigners teach English in the kindergartens is bad for the children because it screws up their ability to learn their first language.
Well, since it has been a long time the imperical evidence should be coming in showing how much better a young generation of students is for not allowing English in the kindergartens. The people who were for this legislation based their decisions on ‘studies.’ Well now they should be able to create a study that shows how much better off children are for not having to learn a second language while they were in kindergarten.
So, why doesn’t the government devise a study to show how much better off children are for this? They were certain that it would improve the Chinese ability of children. They should be able to make a study to prove it. They relied on ‘studies’ to get the legislation passed. Now they should be able to make a study to show how right they were.
C’mon what is the government afraid of? That the studies might actually show that they were wrong 
?
Maybe they looked at your posts and saw that the average foreigner can’t spell, punctuate, nor use tenses correctly.
I went to a Japanese kindy and don’t speak a word of Japanese anymore. But when I was younger, my Japanese was as equally fluent as my Chinese and Taiwanese. I didn’t speak a word of English until I was 6 and now English is fluent enough to get distinctions at uni 
Kids shouldn’t be learning another language at that age, they should be using their native language. They’re suppose to be kids and enjoy their life.
It’s difficult to prove a negative statement, really.
Besides why do people in Taiwan need to learn English on a national level? This country is moving back towards mainland China in terms of business and there’s not enough English to be use on a day to day basis.
Because it looks better? I dunno. I always put this on my ‘crazy’ list and never thought about it.
WLL: You get paid regularly, yeah? Don’t worry about it. The powers that be are never going to seriously clamp down on English teaching with under 6 children. There’s way too much money involved. The MOE, to be fair, know that there is a problem which is why they are trying to ban it altogether. As has been pointed out to you in a previous thread it’s not English instruction per se, it’s more how that instruction is conducted (drilled output, grammar rules, phonics etc).
As for running a long term head-to-head study comparing those who get English teaching under 6 and those that don’t, can you not see any ethical issues there?
I don’t see any ethical issues if, say, you did an anonymous study taking scores on the University entrance exam in English (yeah, not a really good predictor of proficiency, but readily available, at least) and gave the students taking the exam a short questionnaire asking about their language study - how many years and when/where. It’s on a large enough scale that the data is anonymous, really, and you’d be getting permission by/when having them fill out the questionnaire in the first place.
Of course it would be more interesting still if one could look at students who were in kindy with English and further divide those into students who had foreign teachers and those who did not (pity there’s no way to divide into games and formal programs, that would be more illuminating!)
[quote=“tomthorne”]WLL: You get paid regularly, yeah? Don’t worry about it. The powers that be are never going to seriously clamp down on English teaching with under 6 children. There’s way too much money involved. The MOE, to be fair, know that there is a problem which is why they are trying to ban it altogether. As has been pointed out to you in a previous thread it’s not English instruction per se, it’s more how that instruction is conducted (drilled output, grammar rules, phonics etc).
As for running a long term head-to-head study comparing those who get English teaching under 6 and those that don’t, can you not see any ethical issues there?[/quote]
Jimi. OK. So my punctuation isn’t that great and there are some things that I have to relearn.
I don’t actually teach children under six. So this doesn’t affect me. They may never seriously clamp down on it, but the law does create problems for people wishing to have English taught to their children. It affects the ability of the parents who want to have English taught to their children to find places that will do it and it affects the ability of places to provide it to them.
I see no problems with doing a study on children who have and haven’t had English instruction. Studies on children happen all the time. Have you ever heard of the marshmallow test? Look it up. It is a study that was conducted on children six years of age and younger.
I think that if the government is going to have this law saying that it harms children, they need to back up their claims. When they first made the law there was no way to do a study on the long term effects because there weren’t enough children to compare. Now that some time has passed there is.
If anybody can point me to a study that they have done, I would like to see it.
The problem is no matter how great the English kindy is, it all gets lost once they hit elementary school. I’ve seen it so many times, that I view English kindy as a complete and utter waste of time, money and education for your average Taiwanese student. That’s even before you get into the more screwy aspects of it.
Between the homework, tests, and lack of adequate English instruction, they just slowly lose it over time. Very few schools have the proper level of English anqingban to maintain and build on what they learned in kindergarten. There is also just no parental support at all at home.
[quote=“cyborg_ninja”]
Kids shouldn’t be learning another language at that age, they should be using their native language. They’re suppose to be kids and enjoy their life.[/quote]
These things are not mutually exclusive. They can learn a language at that age and enjoy life. Just make sure that you stick to speaking, don’t in anyway measure or compare the student’s ability to another student’s, and don’t have any tests.
[quote=“Whole Lotta Lotta”][quote=“cyborg_ninja”]
Kids shouldn’t be learning another language at that age, they should be using their native language. They’re suppose to be kids and enjoy their life.[/quote]
These things are not mutually exclusive. They can learn a language at that age and enjoy life. Just make sure that you stick to speaking, don’t in anyway measure or compare the student’s ability to another student’s, and don’t have any tests.[/quote]
Isn’t that what the Finnish guy told the Taiwanese MOE when they ignored him at the conference he was invited to?
[quote=“ironlady”]I don’t see any ethical issues if, say, you did an anonymous study taking scores on the University entrance exam in English (yeah, not a really good predictor of proficiency, but readily available, at least) and gave the students taking the exam a short questionnaire asking about their language study - how many years and when/where. It’s on a large enough scale that the data is anonymous, really, and you’d be getting permission by/when having them fill out the questionnaire in the first place.
[/quote]
Of course, but then anyone who didn’t want to agree with the results (whatever those results might be) would say that it wasn’t an accurate test. You would be comparing children of generally wealthier parents who are more focussed on education with those who generally aren’t. This is always the problem with the soft sciences; it always seems to boil down to what people believe rather than what they observe.
[quote=“Whole Lotta Lotta”][quote=“cyborg_ninja”]
Kids shouldn’t be learning another language at that age, they should be using their native language. They’re suppose to be kids and enjoy their life.[/quote]
These things are not mutually exclusive. They can learn a language at that age and enjoy life. Just make sure that you stick to speaking, don’t in anyway measure or compare the student’s ability to another student’s, and don’t have any tests.[/quote]
Right and as someone pointed out, they’d lose their English ability once they hit Elementary school. Just like how I lost my Japanese fluency and I spoke that language just as good as my Taiwanese and Chinese when I was a little kid. Does any western country have a foreign language taught at a kindergarten for local kids? Now if it was a kindy for expat kids learning English then it’s a completely different situation.
Yes. There are more and more foreign language programs for kindys in the States. Not many of them are effective at all, but they are becoming more and more common.
But are those directed towards local kids or are they directed towards families who speak other languages? In Australia there are kindy’s that speak only Chinese, Japanese or whatever language and they’re aimed immigrants who speak another language.
But are those directed towards local kids or are they directed towards families who speak other languages? In Australia there are kindy’s that speak only Chinese, Japanese or whatever language and they’re aimed immigrants who speak another language.[/quote]
Yes but those kindy’s in Australia have a requirement that the child must have one parent who is a native speaker of the language as well.
In English-speaking parts of Canada, there are lots of French-immersion kindys, as well as French-immersion elementary schools and a few high schools.
My nephew goes to one - he understands French, can read it well, but he doesn’t really speak it properly.
[quote=“bababa”]In English-speaking parts of Canada, there are lots of French-immersion kindys, as well as French-immersion elementary schools and a few high schools.
My nephew goes to one - he understands French, can read it well, but he doesn’t really speak it properly.[/quote]
Yeah because French is an official language, bit different from a Taiwanese kid who learns English at kindy when no one else in the country speaks it on a native level (except for expats and their kids).
The only way to ask for evidence in Taiwan is with sarcasm and contempt. Haven’t you grasped this idea yet?