Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Research & Reflections

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Tag: English

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

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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

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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

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My Fulbright Experience at Eleanor Roosevelt College at the University of California, San Diego

Chiung-Tao Shen 沈瓊桃 March 30, 2015

    I was very pleased and honored to receive the prestigious research grant as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2014. It represents a wonderful opportunity to obtain new knowledge in the field of child protection in the United States. My research grant will let me help children in need in Taiwan after I finish my research project. This paper contains reflections on my stay in the US as a Fulbright Senior Scholar over the past 6 months.   Research Experiences      I am very grateful that Professor Richard Madisen, the acting provost of the Eleanor Roosevelt College at the University of California, San Diego, hosted me during my grant.  Professor Madisen actually graduated from my home institution, National Taiwan University (NTU), as well. He can speak fluent Chinese and has translated several books from Chinese to English. I was surprised and pleased to know that he has close connections with Taiwan. He is also the Director of the UC Fudan Center, which has hosted a variety of seminars featuring speakers from top universities/institutes from all over the world, and I have been very fortunate to attend some of these seminars. It was a great learning experience for me.  

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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

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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

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Hierarchical Image Segmentation based on Sequential Partitioning and Merging

Sheng-Jyh Wang 王聖智 March 23, 2015

1. Background      In computer vision, image segmentation is the process that decomposes an image into multiple segments. The goal of this process is to partition an image into something more meaningful and easier for subsequent analyses. For example, for the image shown in Figure 1, human eyes can easily recognize that there are two persons walking on a beach. Apparently, they have just finished snorkeling. To computers, however, this image is nothing but an array of pixel data, with each image pixel (picture element) containing three different kinds of color values (Red, Green, and Blue). If we can decompose the image into several smaller regions with each region containing similar colors or textures, it becomes easier for the computer to recognize the possible objects in the image (like humans, diving boots, and beach) and understand the image content.        Over the past few decades, hundreds or even thousands of segmentation algorithms have been proposed, trying to produce segmentation results that are close to what human eyes perceive. Among these segmentation approaches, graph-based methods and clustering-based methods have proven to be quite successful and have been widely used. However, for the beach image in Figure 1, graph-based

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A Midyear Reflection on the State of my Research

Lance Crisler 柯則已 March 20, 2015

     I do a lot of reading; it’s part of my job description as a graduate student. I read all types of works: newspaper articles, opinion pieces, scientific data, political diatribe, etc. I also read quite a bit of Chinese literature and modern scholarship on such works. Recently, it occurred to me that I have lost, to some degree at least, my love of reading for pleasure, especially reading works of fiction. I tend to get lost in critical works, the argumentative polemics and rhetorical strategies of academic work published in scholarly periodicals, but I realized that I rarely, if ever, spend significant time reading fiction anymore. This is disconcerting, disturbing even, because not all reading is the same; different genres can produce wildly different effects.      For example, exploring the universes of the future plotted out by science fiction writers or contemplating the power of language in historical settings recreated by dramatists shows the infinite possible worlds existing when authors indulge in fictive landscapes. Fictional works simultaneously reflect a multiplicity of voices and viewpoints in a way that other artistic mediums seem hard-pressed to duplicate. The way authors choose to arrange their plots, create characters, and manipulate

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Notes from a Sufi Shrine in Sindh, Pakistan

Pei-Ling Huang 黃佩玲 March 13, 2015

  The heat of the day had receded as we walked into the shrine after ‘isha, the final evening prayers. The marble ground felt cool to our bare feet when we took off our sandals and went in. There was no guard at the gate, no shoe-keeping stand, and people sat on the ground in small groups, chatting, eating, and sleeping. Children and even dogs ran around in the informal and mildly festive atmosphere of the beautifully-lit shrine courtyard. This place, the shrine of Shāh Abdul Latīf in Bhit Shāh, Sindh, was beyond doubt one of the most open and welcoming Sufi shrines I had ever been to in Pakistan. Adding our own footwear to a pile of countless dusty black sandals in the corner, we headed straight towards the inner courtyard where the saint is buried. My heart leapt as, from a distance, we saw the silhouette of a group of men sitting in a semi-circle on the ground in front of the tomb door, wielding huge pumpkin-bodied long-necked string instruments. The Shāh Jo Rāg fakirs were already there, ready to sing.        I first read about the Shāh Jo Rāg fakirs in a program note for

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Conversations: Names, Mingling, and Speaking Up

Yann-Ru Ho 何彥如 March 13, 2015

     When I first arrived here in the United States to pursue graduate studies, I not only noticed the language difference, but also the unfamiliar conversation conventions. I realized that many conversations here operate according to a different communication style than what I was used to back home. Here in LA, I have found that many people greet others warmly and openly, even strangers. Since my arrival here, I have been greeted by cashiers, sales clerks, and bus drivers; even pedestrians on the streets usually greet me with a smile. This happens less often back home.        During the many opportunities I have had to chat with Americans in the United States, I have observed some interesting features of conversations. For instance, not only do people greet each other, many also cordially share their opinions and information about themselves in lengthy dialogues with strangers. This openness and frankness is helpful, since it gives me more opportunities to hear what Americans have to say. From such conversations, I have been able to learn about American culture in terms of interpersonal communication. To illustrate, I will recount below some interactions I have had here with new friends.   Name

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