The purpose of this study is to examine the linguistic and non-linguistic goals of the Southeast Asian languages (SEAL) policy in Taiwan. It was proposed by former President Ma Ying-jeou's administration to develop grades 1-12 students' multilingual awareness, for there has been an increasingly significant presence of second-generation Southeast…

This paper examines the discursive construction of Taiwan's envisioned identity as a Mandarin-English bilingual nation, encapsulated in its recent "2030 Bilingual Nation" policy. Through the lens of imagined community, this paper analyzes the blueprint for the policy to parse out the kinds of (international) ties the Taiwanese government…

Universities worldwide, in placing a greater emphasis on global mobility, have recently seen a growing number of in- and outbound students. Parallel to this development has been the need to internationalize individual campuses, an important aspect of which is to have a common language (or languages) used for communication. The language policies in…

There is a growing tendency in Asia for English as a foreign/second (EFL/ESL) programs to be implemented in the early years of primary schooling. Government policies supporting teaching primary school English are often framed in terms of globalization and the need to compete with other Asian neighbors. In the case of Taiwan, this notion…

It has been almost a decade since the introduction of the primary EFL education policy in Taiwan. Many controversial issues and problems have emerged from this implementation that continue to constitute great challenges for the Taiwanese government in reforming current policies and practices related to English language teaching at the primary…

Presents a detailed study of the language planning situation in Taiwan. After a general account of the socio-historical context in which the planning activities have taken place, a brief review of what happened in terms of language planning in Mainland China under the Nationalist government between 1911 and 1945 is presented. (Author/VWL)

The indigenisation and internationalisation of Taiwan emerged as issues of national concern as a result of the democratisation of politics in the late 1980s which profoundly changed the sociopolitical and economic climate. One manifestation of these changes was "new" language-in-education policies. These were the…

This study explored language shift and accommodation among bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi (also called Hokkien, Holo, Tai-gu, Taiwan Min, Taiwanese) families in Taiwan. From the 1940s until the 1980s the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Taiwan promoted Mandarin Chinese. Recent years have witnessed a shift in policy: since 2001 elementary schools…