Toward ELF-Informed Bilingual Education in Taiwan: Addressing Incongruity Between Policy and Practice

Abstract

In 2018, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education (MOE) announced the national bilingual education (BE) policy and its commitment toward implementing full-scale bilingualization in the national education system. Though the details for putting the policy into practice at local contexts across the nation are still under discussion, small-scale experiments had been conducted by individual schools in different cities prior to the MOE announcement. One unique case was the CLIL pilot program fully organized and supported by Tainan City government, launched 1 year ahead of the national policy. This paper discusses the experience in Tainan CLIL program from three aspects: the medium of instruction, foreign teacher recruitment, and the needs of bilingual teacher education. The findings will help inform the national policy as MOE formulates more specific implementation guidelines. In comparing the Tainan pilot experience and MOE’s policy, the study will show that the MOE policy was influenced by the traditional English as a native language (ENL) ideologies, even though in many parts of the world educators have adopted the English as a lingua franca (ELF) framework in curriculum design. A BE program with ELF perspectives will not only integrate multicultural awareness in curriculum design, but also value teachers’ and students’ multilingual resources in teaching and learning in the classroom. An ELF-informed BE policy will view local teachers’ empowerment as a crucial step to successful CLIL implementation. In light of our findings, the MOE’s bilingual education policies should be examined and updated with awareness of the ELF phenomenon and the experience of Tainan’s CLIL pilot program

摘要

台灣的教育部於2018年宣布全面推動雙語教育的國家政策, 官方英文版說明指出:鼓勵國中小學的雙語教育採用學科內容與語言整合(CLIL)教學法執行雙語教學。台南市政府在此國家政策正式宣布的前一年, 即2017年, 就開始實施該市的CLIL雙語試辦計劃。本文將從「授課語言」、「外籍教師聘用」、「雙語教師培訓規劃」等三個面向, 討論台南市試辦計畫的經驗可能對於未來國家雙語政策執行面之啟發; 並以「英語為國際通用語」(ELF)的相關研究做辯證的基礎, ELF強調英語是不同母語人士間為了溝通交流而使用的語言形式, ELF現象有別於傳統英語教學當中英語作為母語(ENL)為教學目標的概念。本文以台南市試辦CLIL教學的經驗, 及台灣之國民教育自納入英語為學科以來的語言政策流變, 作為研究資料進行質性分析。研究結果指出目前的國家雙語政策是建構於ENL的意識形態上, 而台南市經驗則顯示以ELF理念來規劃教學實踐較可能持續推行。本文結論指出, ELF意味著重新思考雙語教育執行原則, 以ELF為參考的雙語政策將賦予當地教師和學生更多的主導權, 讓他們的多元文化和多語言能力獲得更高的重視。