Taiwan trailing Malaysia, Philippines in English education
By Rachel Lin and Hollie Younger / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Taiwan should improve its English-language education by more closely aligning with English proficiency indicators and learning from systems used in Malaysia and the Philippines, the National Academy for Educational Research said in a report published earlier this month.
Much like Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines have multilingual, multicultural societies, but in the past few years, they have ranked above Taiwan in the EF English Proficiency Index, Research Center for Translation, Compilation and Language Education associate researcher Li Shih-min (李詩敏) said in the academy’s e-newsletter on Sept. 1.
She cited research on elementary-school curricula, education policy and textbook materials from Malaysia and the Philippines from July 2022 to the end of 2023.
Students use the Ministry of Education’s “Test My English” system in an undated photograph.
Photo: Taipei Times
Li and an associate researcher found that elementary-school students in Malaysia and the Philippines receive 2.5 to five times more English teaching hours compared with Taiwan, with instruction beginning at age six, emphasizing communication skills and real-world proficiency.
Textbooks also included 2.5 to four times more vocabulary than Taiwanese textbooks, and a large proportion of vocabulary was above the most basic A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the study found.
Malaysian and Philippine textbooks shared 93 important vocabulary words at the A1 and A2 levels of the CEFR, it said.
The countries also foster a multilingual learning environment, with Malaysia adopting a language policy placing Malay first, followed by English and a third language, while the Philippines’ policy prioritizes native language, then Tagalog, then English, Li said.
Malaysia allows English to be used as a medium of instruction from preschool, while the Philippines places greater emphasis on students’ native language and allows English to be used as a medium of instruction from fourth grade, she added.
The study made three suggestions to improve English education in Taiwan.
First, Taiwan should foster a multilingual learning environment and clearly define the role and function of each language, it said.
Second, Taiwan’s system should more closely follow the CEFR standard, and third, it should strengthen vocabulary instruction through scientific methods, it added.
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