With foreign students currently making up just 10% of Taiwan’s student body, President Ma Ying-Jeou is making efforts to attract more foreign students.

Yesterday, at I-Shou University in Kaohsiung County, Ma said: “It is urgently important to make local universities and colleges internationally efficient so as to recruit more students from other countries to help Taiwan sharpen its competitive edge.”

“Judging from Taiwan’s past history, it is a fact that opening to the rest of the world will make our country strong, and we hope to lure more foreign students.”

Ma’s goal is to attract 30,000 overseas students to the Republic of China over the next four years by making all university courses available in English. Currently 39 Taiwanese institutions offer English-language courses.

As well as maintaining scholarship programmes for foreign students the government has also announced a freeze on tuition and other fees for the coming year, as well as a flexible salary scheme to encourage the best researchers and professors to remain in Taiwan as educators rather than move abroad.

Ma has stated that education is a critical factor to Taiwan’s survival, with a well-educated workforce compensating for the Republic’s lack of natural resources.

New for 2010, the Macmillan Education Award for Innovative Writing is open to aspiring ELT authors who have not yet been published. The winner receives £1,000 and the opportunity to publish their work.

The UK Award for Innovation and The Cambridge ESOL International Award for Innovation International categories continue to thrive with an increase in submissions from around the world. Entries from the UK doubled from 2009.

Michael Carrier, Head English Language Innovation for English and Exams at the British Council says: “The ELTons are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate innovative ELT resources from around the world, and the new Innovative Writing Award category will also provide the opportunity for aspiring creative writers to make their first break into the English language publishing industry. It is an exciting time for anyone at the forefront of developing and teaching English around the world”.

There are twelve entries short listed for an award in the UK category, seven in the International category and six in the Innovative Writing category. There will be three winners in the UK category, one winner in the International category and one winner in the Innovative Writing category. The winners will be announced at a prestigious ceremony in London on 3 March 2010. Each of the winners receives £1,000 cash prize along with the much sought after ELTon statuette.

ELTons 2010 UK Nominated Entries

•  Nik’s Daily English Activities – Blog – Nik Peachey

•  Vocabulary Matrix – Book Heinle ELT, Cengage Learning

•  Teaching Unplugged – Book Delta Publishing

•  www.teachertrainingvideos.com – Russell Stannard

•  Fast Track to Reading: Accelerated Learning for EFL & ESOL Students – Book
Garnett Education

•  Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th edition Pearson Education

•  Teaching with Bear: Using puppets in the language classroom with young learners – Book, DVD, Bear Puppet Oxford University Press

•  IH Online Teacher Training Institute International House World Organisation Ltd (IHWO)

•  The Bell Online Delta – online training – The Bell Educational Trust

•  Primary i-Box – classroom presentation software Cambridge University Press

ELTons 2010 International Nominated Entries

•  Small Stars – comprehensive ELT course English First – Signum International S.A.R.L Zug Branch (Switzerland)

•  Welcome to English 3! – primary learner handbook Tic Tac Toe – Didactic Material (Argentina)

• English for Very Young Learners – online course
Net Languages (Spain)

•  Ways with Words – website
Lexitronics (Cyprus)

• Hoola Hoop – course
Porto Editora (Portugal)

•  Global Issues in the ELT Classroom – book
Spolecnost pro Fair Trade (Czech Republic)

•  Activities for Interactive Whiteboards – book and CD-Rom
Helbling Languages GmbH (Austria)

ELTons 2010 The Macmillan Education Award for Innovative Writing

•  Ekaterina Belozerova (Russia)

•  Richard Brittain (UK)

•  Stuart Wiffin and Helen Gibbons (UK)

•  Chris Lima (Brazil) and Maria Manuela De La Fuente (Peru)

•  Carla Cruz D’Elia (Brazil)

•  Helen Broady (UK)

Led by noted scientist and Wolfram|Alpha creator Stephen Wolfram, this marathon webcast will bring together students, parents, and educators from across the country to tackle tough homework assignments and explore the richness that Wolfram|Alpha brings to K–12, college, and beyond.

Launched this May, Wolfram|Alpha is a free website powered by a computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base. Named by Time magazine as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2009, Wolfram|Alpha is widely recognised as an innovative and invaluable resource for education.

The goal of Homework Day is to broadly share how students and educators are using Wolfram|Alpha in K–12 and college education and to demonstrate the advantages of using this free site not only to solve specific problems, but to inspire students to probe subject matter further and promote deeper understanding of fundamental concepts.

Wolfram|Alpha has established a permanent Homework Day website where people can contribute ideas, lesson plans, screencasts, and videos before, during, and after the event. The site will be used to broadcast the live October 21 webcast and will feature live chat, where participants are encouraged to submit questions that Stephen Wolfram and his team will analyse and solve throughout the webcast.

The Homework Day webcast will also feature:

* Quick, step-by-step lessons that will give everyone the ability to use Wolfram|Alpha to tackle problems in a variety of subjects, including math, science, engineering, health and nutrition, English, history, economics, and many more
* Content and segments tailored to specific age groups
* Ideas and examples for how to make subjects like math and science more engaging and relevant to students
* Live interviews and demonstrations by educators who are already using Wolfram|Alpha in their classrooms
* Conversations with guest participants who will further discuss the role of technology in education

For more information, please visit the new Homework Day website.

The long awaited decision, reported by the New York Times, sees an abandonment of the English policy implemented in 2003 by former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. The intended outcome of the policy was to improve the employability and language skills of Malay graduates. The Malaysian Government state that the policy has failed to improve English in the vast majority of students and that grades have fallen since the policy was introduced.

Some critics have argued that the decision by the Government is mainly political. Professor James Chin, Head of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University in Malaysia, said of the Government “they decided to buckle under the pressure from the Malay nationalists who argue that by teaching students in English you are neglecting the position of the national language.”

Other critics are concerned at how the decline in English tuition may affect students after graduation. Shamsuddin Bardan, Executive Director of the Malaysian Employers Federation said, “this is a setback for the efforts to enhance the command of English for the students.”

Malaysian former student Gabrielle also commented “I am against the decision. For the country to move forward more students should be taught in English. It is essential for them to get ahead in the job market, particularly in today’s climate.”

What do you think? i-studentadvisor would love to hear your comments on this issue.