English - Research & Reflections

Top Five Highlights of a Year in Taiwan

Kirsten Asdal 艾永勤 August 26, 2015

Top ten lists are everywhere these days. As readership moves online, and as viewership becomes more dependent on a catchy title to encourage a curious click, writers have become adept at condensing regular material into this appealing format. One of my favorites this year was a Foreign Policy piece by Stephen Walt entitled “How to Get a B.A. in International Relations in 5 minutes.” In a few paragraphs that take no more than five minutes to read, Walt lays out key concepts that a student of IR would actually remember five years after graduation, like anarchy, balance of power, and comparative advantage. As I took the bait and opened the article, I thought to myself, “Ah, here we go…good thing I decided not to do that double major after all, because this is everything I need right here.” While not quite suitable for an academic paper, this uber-condensed format is just fine for the casual reader. So in an effort to make this article more appealing to whomever is browsing through the Fulbright website, I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and turn my jumble of thoughts into a consolidated list. Here you go, the top five things Kirsten will

Contemporary Aboriginal. The Mixing.

Terry O'Reilly 易光海 August 26, 2015

For my Fulbright grant I chose a topic of immense richness: the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan. What I found exceeded my every expectation. I have experienced countless encounters and exchanges, celebrated the sacred rites and important dates of the harvest and hunting calendars of the Pangcah (also known as Amis), the Paiwan, the Atayal and Saisiyat peoples. My Fulbright grant became a mixture of scholarship and art. To begin at the beginning: I became aware of the cultural and artistic vitality of Taiwan during a short visit in 2005; and at that time I also began to learn about the Taiwanese aboriginals. I started to look into their origins. The scholarship is extensive and the science is far from settled, but everyone agrees that 9 out of the 10 branches of the Austronesian languages are spoken on Taiwan, and that the ‘Yuánzhùmín’, 原住民, the original people, have been living on Taiwan for at least 8 thousand years. Genetic and linguistic linkages establish a connection between the ‘Yuánzhùmín’ of Taiwan to other groups from Madagascar to New Zealand, Easter Island, the Philippines and greater Polynesia. Competing models of a “Slow boat” or an “express train” to Polynesia are used by anthropologists

Reflections on Research and Teaching English at National Taiwan Normal University

Marilyn Rahilly 雷瑪麗 August 26, 2015

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

Last Fragment from a Taiwan Notebook: Traffic, Turn Signals, Fate

Robert Siegel 席博安 August 26, 2015

A day or two after our arrival in Taiwan, my family and I stood at the edge of the narrow road just outside the college campus where we now lived, wondering how to cross the street. There was no traffic light, no crosswalk, no sidewalk, and no break in the traffic, which was made up almost entirely of motor scooters. Coming from America, land of the Humvee and the monster truck, a motor scooter sounds like a child’s toy, but a torrent of them is actually pretty scary. We watched for a while, looking for a gap in the flow, lurching forward and then retreating. Finally, we lost heart and went home. In the weeks that followed, we learned how to cross that street, zigging and zagging between scooters with the casual air of a Taiwanese college student out for bubble tea. We never really stopped to consider how out of character that was for us, anxious American suburbanites normally obsessed with rules and safety—tending to equate the two, really. It was like we’d left our order-loving, non-jaywalking selves behind in America, along with our two overweight cats and Big Gulp cups. Meanwhile in our travels through the city we

Reflection on Teaching Advanced English Writing at a Taiwanese University

Marilyn Rahilly 雷瑪麗 August 26, 2015

I have been teaching ESL for many years, both in the United States and in several foreign countries. My students hail from a variety of ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Over the years, I have taught a wide spectrum of English classes, including speaking, listening, study skills, reading, literature, and composition. When I was informed that I would be teaching an advanced English writing class at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in Taipei as part of my Fulbright award, I was very excited. I looked forward to meeting my Taiwanese students and helping them develop their English writing skills. I had been informed that my class would consist of English majors, so I was even more interested in teaching the class. However, as I have taught many Asian students over the years, I expected that the students in my class would be a bit shy and reluctant to participate actively in class. Because I have had a great deal of experience teaching many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students, I naively believed that I understood East Asian culture. My first class at NTNU, however, did not go as I had anticipated. I walked into a classroom filled with nineteen Taiwanese college

A Preliminary Research Note on International Teaching Partnerships

Chiung-Yao "Carolyn" Ho 何瓊瑤 June 30, 2015

Introduction The Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Program is a collaborative effort between the United States and host countries around the world. Bringing together young U.S. citizens with experienced English teachers in the host country, it provides enriched English language instruction to students in elementary, junior high, and senior high schools. In Taiwan, the ETA program was introduced in 2004 when a group of ETAs were sent to Yilan County to participate in a co-teaching program with local elementary school teachers. Since then, several counties have begun to participate in the ETA program, including Kaohsiung, Kinmen, Taichung, and Taitung, adopting the co-teaching model in selected schools. As the mission of Fulbright is to promote international understanding, cross-cultural and binational partnerships such as the Fulbright ETA program give participants and stakeholders a unique perspective on intercultural understanding on a deeper level and enhance the richness and variety of language instruction. During the 2012–2013 academic year, 33 English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) were selected and sent to Yilan (16), Kaohsiung (11), and Kinmen (6) for an eleven-month grant to work side by side with Local English Teachers (LETs) to plan and teach English lessons at designated schools. During the grant period, some partnerships

Translation of “Enlightenment” in Late Qing and Republican China Political Thought

Chien-Shou Chen 陳建守 April 30, 2015

My research as a Fulbright grantee at Harvard University concerns the appropriation of political terminology from the West in late Qing and Republican China. Here is a small section of my work, to give an idea of the research my Fulbright grant supports. In recent research, LuoZhitian 羅志田 has argued that during the integration of Western culture, modern China showed some ambiguity in the translation and utilization of imported words. Most understanding towards European historical events took place either through literal translation or through definitionof the meanings of terms, such as “qimeng yundong”(used most often to correspond to ‘Enlightenment’) andit became a core idea of the Chinese translation.The widespread usage of the word “qimeng yundong”started in the late 1920s, and hasbeen widely usedsince then. Most sinophone usage of “qimeng yundong”, refers to its meaning in the Chinese context rather than its original reference to the Enlightenment in European history. “qimeng”+ “yundong” =“qimeng yundong” Three prevalent meanings circulated within the intellectual field of the late Qing dynasty for the term “yundong,”（運動）, which could be translated ‘movement’ in Chinese today. The first meaning refers to physical movementor exercise form, the second “yundong”refers to movement relevant to the observer, as

Reflections on Illiteracy

Emily Quade 奎艾蜜 March 30, 2015

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.” ―M. Angelou One challenge that I didn’t understand in its entirety when I accepted my grant to come to Taiwan was what it is like to be illiterate. There are many things in life that we take for granted, and sometimes, it takes the absence of something to really understand that concept. For example, when you are sick with a cold and you are so congested that you can’t breathe normally, it is not until that moment that you realize what a privilege it is to breathe properly. This has been the case for me during my service in Taiwan. I had no idea how incredibly fortunate I am to be literate–able to read and write in the primary language of each country in which I had previously resided. I took for granted the automatic ease of functioning in a society that literacy gives an individual. My current illiterate state in the Mandarin language allows me to more fully appreciate the power and importance of literacy on a variety

My Fulbright Experiences at University of Minnesota

Yu-Hui Chang 張宇慧 March 23, 2015

As a Fulbright Taiwan grantee, I always feel honored to introduce my country and discuss culturaldifferences whenever I meet people. When I attended a three-week Fulbright pre-academic program, which was sponsored by Fulbright IIE at Virginia Tech, I met Fulbright grantees from 26 countries. We not only shared our diverse cultures, but also learned about American culture and academic preparation together. It was a time to effacestereotypes and rethink questions of culture and mutual respect; most importantly, it was the time to try to understand other voices. From religiousto political issues, from culinary habits to the educational system, the topics wecovered ranged widely every day that I spent time with Fulbrighters. In a way,this experience was a challenge because it was necessary to expand my international knowledge so quickly, while being prepared to answer questions about my own country. Overall, it was worthwhile to share my perspectives that could present Taiwanese perspectives or speak for Taiwan in an international context. After the pre-academic program, I started my PhD coursework at the University of Minnesota where I’m currently studying learning technologies in the fields of curriculum and instruction studies. In my first semester, it’s been

Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Tag: English

Top Five Highlights of a Year in Taiwan

Contemporary Aboriginal. The Mixing.

Reflections on Research and Teaching English at National Taiwan Normal University

Last Fragment from a Taiwan Notebook: Traffic, Turn Signals, Fate

Reflection on Teaching Advanced English Writing at a Taiwanese University

A Preliminary Research Note on International Teaching Partnerships

Translation of “Enlightenment” in Late Qing and Republican China Political Thought

Reflections on Illiteracy

My Fulbright Experiences at University of Minnesota

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Tag: English

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Archives

about

research topics

grant categories

獎助類別

watch videos

about

research topics

awards to taiwan

grant categories

awards to the U.S.

獎助類別

watch videos

research topics 研究主題

Awards to Taiwan

grant categories

Awards to the U.S.

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watch videos

about

Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal