Reflections on Research and Teaching English at National Taiwan Normal University
It has been nearly 11 months since I started teaching an advanced English writing course at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in Taipei as a part of my duties as a Fulbright senior scholar in Taiwan. After a brief introduction to some of my NTNU English department colleagues at a lovely luncheon shortly after my arrival in August 2014, I began preparing for the advanced writing class that I had been assigned. I ordered textbooks, developed a syllabus, and wrote a lesson plan for my first class. I was really excited about meeting my Taiwanese students for the first time. My first advanced writing class was quite the opposite of what I had expected. Having taught ESL and English composition for many years in the United States and other countries, I anticipated that my students would be adequately prepared to write academic English and quite motivated to learn. When I stood before my Taiwanese students in that first class, I encountered eighteen tense, anxious faces and dead silence. After I passed out my syllabus and talked to them about the class, the expectations, and the assignments, I asked the students how they felt about having an American professor. I was
