Part 2
In contrast to Japan, in the R.O.C. today there appears to be only two major government stakeholders or community-level stakeholders currently involved in the Ministry of Education's (Foreign) English Teacher project. In addition, it appears that typically the Foreign English Teacher project is financed fully or almost fully by the Ministry of Education. This financing issue means that ownership for the Taiwanese project as of 2011 is not being adequately transferred to local officials and schools--whereas in Japan, ALTs are financed by various levels of governance. [viii]
Another obvious difference in Taiwan has been in the recruitment and hiring of new Foreign English Teachers. In Taiwan this is undertaken currently mainly by private recruiters--with no or little assistance from the foreign ministry nor from other government agencies. [ix] In Japan, a great percentage of ALTs are still hired in the manner I noted above--with the ministry of foreign affairs playing a strong role in the early stages--or hiring stage. ( Some, however, are recruited and hired through private head-hunting firms, which is main practice here Taiwan.) In addition, in contrast to the case for thousands of JETs in Japan each year, in Taiwan upon arrival, no real orientation is carried out by the MOE (Ministry of Education) and little or no orientation is offered a local schools or by the county school board of education.
From my own experiences--i.e. after not-receiving any proper orientations here in the R.O.C. --, I could immediately tell that the JET scheme (in 1992-1994) appeared much older and more mature in its develops in handling foreign teachers of English than is Taiwan in 2010-2011. This is not so unexpected, though. The Japanese government ran an much smaller project in the 1970s that had been called the Monbusho (English) Fellows Project. This now-extinct form of the Monbusho Fellow project was likely much more similar to how the current Taiwanese Foreign English Teacher project is currently run That project, too, had hired only fully trained educators to come and teach in Japanese schools. This project in the 1970s in Japan was extremely similar to the project that is being currently run in Taiwan. [x]
On the other hand, currently I'd have to admit, English delivery in Taiwan schools in 2011 is certainly more modern and techno-savvy or multi-media-savvy than was the case when I was teaching English in Japanese schools. For example, all classrooms have projectors hooked up to computers. One school has interactive computer whiteboards. Moreover, in 2010-2011 the communicative-language teaching-approach has made its inroads in several other ways. For example, the most obvious area in which this has occurred is in the development of textbooks, which employ jazz chants and other suggestopedia-like elements, including music in each chapter..
At this point, I should emphasize that the JET scheme has already been the world's largest foreign teacher import and exchange program for decades. In contrast, the Foreign English Teacher project is a relatively new modest program and is run on a less certain shoe-string budget, i.e. in contrast to JET. The lack of support at the local community level is obvious here in Taiwan--even at the elementary and middle school level. As noted above, this is likely due to the fact that the local communities are almost wholly relying on national monies to run their project. This lack of ownership leads to little success in the area of internationalizing the community outside the school or the teaching staffs at the local school--some of whom seem oblivious to the fact that a grat human resource has landed in their school to help them improve their English and international relations skills.
The Foreign English Teacher program in Taiwan and the older (Monbusho English Fellow) project in Japan are or were, in turn similar to Fulbright programs that have been run in public and private schools in Germany, Spain and Argentina for many more decades. Such projects involved hiring young educators to come, live and work in public schools.
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