Taipei City Government

As a major step in promoting bilingual education 2.0, the Department of Education signed a MOU with TLI Languages and Cultural Foundation on January 3. The agreement covers areas such as teaching, faculty member, and international exchange to strengthen Taipei’s bilingual education policy.
 
In the area of teaching, a total of 386 teachers in Taipei City have begun teaching bilingual classes in the 2021 academic year. They made efforts to adopt the approach for subjects spanning physical education, music, arts, health and civic education, either conducting the class in English or through content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Another 720 teachers are expected to join the ranks of bilingual instructors in the 2022 academic year.
 
In addition to working with normal/education universities and representative offices abroad, the city government will also take advantage of the channels made available through its agreement with TLI Foundation to work with bilingual and foreign language teaching talents. Hopefully, this will allow DOE to customize and expand educational resources for local elementary and middle school teachers.
 
As for faculty members, the agency plans to assign one expat teacher to each school implementing the experimental bilingual curriculum in Taipei. In addition to existing channels such as the Ministry of Education and Fulbright Scholarship Program, it will work with the foundation to seek out prospective expat teachers to fill the ranks of Taipei’s bilingual instructors.
 
Regarding internal exchanges, the city hopes to attract high school or younger students via TLI Foundation’s presence in California to learn Chinese in Taiwan and participate in exchanges with their peers in Taipei through immersive programs. Hopefully, the approach will encourage the establishment of sister school relationships between local and California schools, as well as bringing more Californian students to Taipei to learn Chinese.