Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Tag: English

Bilingualism in Science and Engineering Education in Taiwan

Rose Doerfler 杜玫瑰 October 9, 2018

The Basic Question      As an American scientist in Taiwan, what language should I speak?      I am a US-educated chemical engineer who has spent a year collaborating with engineering professors and students at Yuan Ze University in Taoyuan, Taiwan. I have a bachelor’s degree in Chinese language, and had previously studied in Taiwan and China, but my language classes were all non-technical; before arriving in Taiwan, I knew how to talk about current events, but not how to talk about organic chemistry. I wasn’t sure how much of the technical vocabulary I’d be using for my project would be in Mandarin. Before arriving in Taiwan, I tried to study some scientific vocabulary. Though I learned some words that were relevant to my project, I was surprised to find that there were fewer resources available for learning scientific vocabulary than for learning economic or business terms. I worried that I was missing something important: surely there were other scientists who wanted to learn Chinese words so that they could work internationally?      Once I arrived in Taiwan and began working with the Taiwanese students, I paid attention to how they spoke. I started to find the answer

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My Fulbright Year at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania

Ying-Jeng Wang 王瓔錚 October 9, 2018

     It was a great privilege and honor to be selected as a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) in 2014. As I looked back on my Fulbright experience at Ursinus College four years later, I could see more clearly the many blessings that I received throughout my ten-month stay in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It is impossible to detail every aspect of the grant experience in one single reflection, but three aspects figured prominently during the grant year: cultural exchange, academic study, and community outreach and travels.      One of the richest experiences as an FLTA is the exchange of cultures with my students and other FLTAs through sharing and learning. In terms of sharing, I had numerous occasions in my weekly conversation class to share Chinese cultures with my students – Chinese tongue twisters, shadow puppetry, cuisines, films and TV shows, poems, just to name a few. One memorable experience was my leading several American students to perform in the school’s annual celebration. We sang and danced to a popular Taiwanese song by Wu Bai, “You Are My Flower,” winning us a big round of applause from the audience. Another notable experience took place during the Chinese New Year

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Reflections of a Southern Girl on her First Trip to Taiwan

Anna Dunaway October 9, 2018

     Reflecting on our two-week journey to learn more about the rich history of Taiwan, I am thankful to be a part of the first International Educators Administrators (IEA) program for Fulbright Taiwan. I hope to give back by taking what I have gained and building upon it: I want more people to learn about the Fulbright Taiwan vision: “a world with a little more knowledge, and a little less conflict.” I am a “Southern” girl. I was born in the South of the United States, in Burlington, North Carolina. Growing up, I also spent five years in southern China and Hong Kong, where I learned Mandarin Chinese. I would like to reflect on my first trip to Taiwan using the lens of language and language learning, and share about my experiences in Taiwan: the charms of Taiwan, speaking Chinese there, and some things I learnt about the challenges Taiwan face. Charm of Taiwan      The island of Taiwan is the size of Maryland and Delaware but has 23 million people, giving it one of the highest population densities in the world. I could feel the “heartbeat of Asia” when I first arrived in Taipei, and began to

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Air Quality in Taiwan

Linsey Chen Marr 陳蓮式 October 9, 2018

I’m a Senior Scholar and visiting researcher who studies air pollution in the College of Public Health at National Taiwan University. My primary appointment is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, where my research group applies quantitative methods to track the emissions, transformations, and fate of gases and particles in indoor and outdoor air. When people find out what I study, they often exclaim, “The air pollution is so bad in Taipei!” While vehicle exhaust along busy streets is often noticeable, in general, Taipei’s air quality is relatively good compared to that of other large cities in Asia. In fact, this is one of the reasons why my family selected Taipei for our sabbatical. How is the air quality in Taiwan?      The pollutant of greatest concern in Taiwan is fine particulate matter of diameter 2.5 microns and smaller (PM2.5); it is roughly 100 times smaller than the diameter of human hair. Exposure to elevated levels of PM2.5 can cause coughing, make it hard to breathe, and aggravate asthma. Long-term effects include cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and ultimately, premature death. The World Health Organization estimates that exposure to PM2.5 is responsible for 7 million

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Charting the Evolution of China-Taiwan Cross-Strait Financial Services in a Sea of Digital Disruption

Jane Winn 康涵真 October 9, 2018

    Every morning when I woke up in my apartment on the campus of National Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, I was greeted by the sound of singing birds. I lived in a faculty residence inside the lush NTHU campus with its rivers, lakes and rolling hills, sheltered from Hsinchu’s urban bustle and noise. I got around the campus and nearby shops in Hsinchu on a bicycle that a faculty colleague lent to me. Temporarily disencumbered of my family, my house in Seattle and my obligations as a University of Washington faculty member, I felt like an undergraduate again. The time I spent in 1985-86 studying Chinese in Taiwan had been one of the happiest in my life. Even though so many things about my life had changed in the thirty years between my return to Taiwan, my year of Fulbright research was also one of my happiest. I was grateful every day for the privilege of being able to step away from my life in America and to step back into life in Taiwan.     I received a Cross-Strait Studies Fulbright research grant to study the integration of financial services in Greater China. For the last twenty years,

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Reflections: Track in Taipei

Taili Ni 倪泰麗 September 11, 2018

      My Fulbright experience in Taiwan has allowed me to pursue a master’s degree in International Studies and explore different facets of student life in Taipei. One of the ways I have involved myself in the campus community at National Chengchi University has been by joining the track team. Running was a critical part of my undergraduate experience in the U.S.; after seven years of track and cross-country throughout high school and college, I was not ready to give it up quite yet. Running track in Taiwan has been a very different experience than running track in the U.S. This was unexpected, since I figured that running in circles and making left turns was pretty intuitive and would be exactly the same regardless of geography. I did not anticipate how different the sport, and my experience in it, would be here, and it has surprised me many times throughout this 2017-18 school year.      Transitioning to life in Taipei has been easy for me. From the very beginning I felt quite at home in this friendly city with its many stunning views, delicious food and lovable stray dogs. Even though the past nine months have been filled

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Bringing a Piece of Kentucky to the Taiwanese Classroom

Alexandra Hezik 賀琳 August 22, 2018

     For the 2017-18 academic year, my alma mater, Western Kentucky University (WKU), hosted a Taiwanese Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) to help tutor students currently studying Mandarin Chinese in the university’s Chinese Flagship Program. As a recent graduate of that program, I thought it was an interesting coincidence that the two of us essentially switched places—she went to WKU and I came to Taipei. The FLTA was named Pia Lin. She also happened to be the co-founder of The World In Your Classroom (TWIYC), a non-profit organization that provides foreigners living in or visiting Taiwan the opportunity to share information about their home country with Taiwanese students by guest lecturing at local middle and high schools.      Around March, Pia contacted me to ask if I would be interested in volunteering as a guest lecturer for TWIYC. After reading about TWIYC and their work, I figured this would be a great opportunity to share a piece of my home, the great Commonwealth of Kentucky—a place most Taiwanese people know very little about, compared to U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles—with students.      On April 28th, I attended the second of two training days held

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From Pennsylvania to Taiwan: Reflections on Fulbright International Education Administrators Seminar

Kati Csoman August 22, 2018

Professional Development      My participation in the Fulbright International Education Administrators Seminar in Taiwan in March 2017 broadened my professional experience in East Asia, which was previously limited to organizing site visits to Japan (2007) and China (2016). The Fulbright experience helped me contextualize a deepening engagement with partnerships in Taiwan and explore new opportunities for both student exchange and faculty collaboration.      The Fulbright Taiwan IEA seminar provided me with an in-depth professional and intercultural learning experience quite different from the experiences I have had leading site visits or student groups. I was able to focus on my own learning and experience for a substantial period of time rather than being responsible for the organization and logistics for a group. As an academic administrator, the daily demands of my position’s responsibilities and the constraints of the academic calendar do not allow for intensive and extended experiences abroad.      From lectures and cultural visits to direct access to officials in the American Institute in Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education and even the President of Taiwan, the overall structure of the Fulbright Taiwan IEA seminar provided invaluable information about the politics, economics, and culture

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Chinese Energy Security and the South China Sea

Kaiwen Lin 林凱文 August 2, 2018

     Oil has been a critical national resource since the early 20th century, when the British Empire began using oil to power its ships, and Parliament voted to acquire a majority stake in a Persian oil firm in order to ensure that it would be able to maintain access to oil for the Royal Navy.[1] With the development of the oil-powered airplane and tank, oil became even more important to strategic planning, and many nations created their own state-owned oil companies to ensure continued access to foreign oil. After the close of the Second World War, it was discovered that the Middle East had large reserves of easily-tapped oil. Not coincidentally, this was when the United States first established a foothold in the region, promising “U.S. military aid to any state in the region that came under attack from Soviet or Soviet-backed forces.”[2] The West’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil was revealed in 1973, when the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) cut off all petroleum exports to the United States and decreased its exports to other countries in response to American support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.[3] Defense correspondent Michael T. Klare writes that from that

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Inside Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

Ian Rowen 伊恩 August 2, 2018

“Say goodbye to Taiwan,” wrote political scientist John Mearsheimer in a widely read article in the March-April 2014 issue of The National Interest.1 Threatened by China’s rising economic might and abandoned by a weakening United States, one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies was facing, in his “realist” analysis, an almost inevitable annexation via economic if not military force. “Time,” he wrote, “is running out for the little island coveted by its gigantic, growing neighbor.” But only days after publication, on March 18, activists and armchair analysts alike said hello to a new reality. That evening, the assembly hall of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan was stormed by a motley crew led by students from the “Black Island Nation Youth,” a loosely organized student political action committee formed the previous year. The several hundred occupiers repelled police efforts to eject them, escorted out the few officers on duty, and barricaded the doors with seats tied together with rope. None of them expected that the occupation, later known as the 318 or Sunflower Movement, would last twenty-four days, spawn the biggest pro-democracy protest rally in the island’s history, reframe popular discourse about Taiwan’s political and social trajectory, precipitate the midterm electoral defeat of the ruling party,

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Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal