LanguageNews
Central and Local Governments Jointly Train Teachers to Help Second Generation Immigrants with Transnational Learning
Source: Radio Taiwan International February 23rd, 2018 at 6:21 P.M.
Some second generation immigrants grow up in the country where their immigrant parents were born, and they have trouble keeping up in school due to their limited Chinese language ability after returning to Taiwan. This sometimes forces them to transfer to a lower grade. The Kaohsiung City Education Bureau and the K-12 Education Administration of the Ministry of Education commissioned National Kaohsiung Normal University to implement the System Establishment Research and Evaluation Project for Transnational Students to improve this situation. A teacher training workshop was also organized for even more junior high school and elementary school teachers to see the needs of transnational students.
Chung Chen-Cheng is the Director of the Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second Foreign Language of National Kaohsiung Normal University, and is the principal investigator of the System Establishment Research and Evaluation Project for Transnational Students jointly implemented with the K-12 Education Administration. He indicated that six or seven years ago, he found that many second generation immigrants, children of Taiwanese businessmen, or foreigners residing in Taiwan had trouble adapting to life in Taiwan and had difficulty learning due to their limited Chinese listening, speaking, reading, and writing abilities. Chung Chen-Cheng: "Some children haven't eaten any lunch boxes other than those bought from 7-ELEVEN in the two to three years since they've been here. This is because they can buy food without talking in 7-ELEVEN, but would need to talk if they buy food from other places, such as buffet restaurants. There are a lot of examples like this."
Chung Chen-Cheng said Kaohsiung City Education Bureau was the first to work with National Kaohsiung Normal University in recent years, organizing a four-day teacher training workshop for teachers of junior high schools and elementary schools in Kaohsiung City. The workshop helps teachers to effectively recognize the culture, language, learning needs, educational background, and scholastic ability of transnational students, so that they can plan a variety of supplementary courses. Chung Chen-Cheng: "Our usual approach is to recommend that schools pull students out of classes for subjects that have high language content. In elementary school, these classes would mainly be Chinese class and social studies class, because they wouldn't understand anyway if they remained in class. In junior high school, these classes would probably be the subjects: Chinese, history, and geography. The standard would be to pull students out of 5 hours of classes a week, or at least one class a day. This time would be spent in a language class, a Chinese language class."
Chung Chen-Cheng pointed out that they registered 75 transnational students in Kaohsiung City, in which approximately 50% are second generation immigrants from Vietnam. He estimates there are at least several thousand transnational students around the country that need a learning support system. Hence, the K-12 National Administration also commissioned National Kaohsiung Normal University to organize a four-day national teacher training workshop for beginners. The workshop was attended by 77 principals, teachers, and education bureau personnel from 17 counties/cities. An advanced workshop will be organized in the future so that even more second generation immigrants can receive complete care and show their learning outcomes.