TAIPEI—Bilingual kindergartens have mushroomed in Taiwan in the past few years as a result of a push to get children to begin studying English earlier than ever before.
More than half of Taipei's kindergartens—all of them private—are now bilingual, and English will become a required course next year at Taiwan's 2,500 elementary schools.
We want to raise the nation's competitiveness, and English
proficiency is a key requirement,
said Mr Peng Fu-yuan, an
Education Ministry official.
Unlike us, these children will grow up to speak English as fluently
as Singaporeans or Hongkong Chinese,
said Mr Lee Wen-yung, who has
a three-year-old daughter enrolled at one of the bilingual
kindergartens.
Most Taiwanese cannot manage a simple English conversation with foreigners and many remain silent in classes or mingle only with Taiwanese when they study abroad.