English villages in Taiwan
Taiwan’s first English language village has opened in Taiwan, where Taiwanese children go twice a week for English immersion classes.
The Happy English Village features themed classrooms: a bank, a hotel, an airport waiting room and a coffee bar amongst others, and attracts 120 students. It was the idea of a non-profit organisation called the King Car Education Foundation.
The idea came to General Director Morgan Sun after visiting similar immersion villages in Korea. Concerned about the relatively poor ranking of Taiwanese students on the IELTS exam, compared to Japanese, South Korean and Vietnamese students, he decided it was time for an immersion village in Taiwan.
He hopes that the emphasis on speaking with the volunteer foreign teachers at the village, will shift the emphasis away from rote-learning and exams in the Taiwanese education system, towards communicative learning through real-life experiences.
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December 5th, 2007 at 12:22 am
This is a great idea, especially for kids. One of the major things lacking from language education in non-english speaking countries is an immersion experience. In my experience, a foreign language is learned much more easily when in context.