The Ministry of Education has invited for the first time 19 education officials from Malaysia’s Kedah state and conducted a 10-day intensive Mandarin Chinese course. Malaysian officials will also visit Taiwan’s vocational education schools, for deepening the cooperation in education between both countries.

The Ministry of Education said today in the news, the delegation of education from Kedah, Malaysia has started to take the course on the 19th at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages. The Chinese program planned by the Wenzao Chinese Language Center included listening, speaking, reading, and writing Chinese, Chinese proficiency tests, and free Chinese outreach programs for study online. Participants also had the chance to visit the Pier-2 Art Center, the Ten Drum Culture Center, and the National Palace Museum.

Cynthia Huang, the Deputy Education Consular of Department of International and Cross-strait Education, MOE said, Taiwan retained the traditional Chinese characters and has teachers and teaching materials of excellence. To learn Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan, you can experience not only Chinese traditional culture but also feel free and democratic living environment.

Huang pointed out that in Taiwan, there are 62 Chinese language centers recruiting international students, and 18 universities are responsible for training professionals in teaching Chinese as second/foreign language. Taiwan has also developed the Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language to evaluate non-native Chinese speaker’s proficiency in Chinese. These comprehensive services provided in Taiwan, would for sure meet the demand in Mandarin Chinese education by Malaysia.

Based on the MOE’s statistics, the number of international students coming into Taiwan was in continued growth, from 40,000 in 2009 to 126,000 in 2018, more than triples of growth rate, of which the 16,000 students from Malaysia, have made up the largest student body among international students.

(origin from:CNA)