Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Webcam teaching in Taiwan

With a new version of Skype coming out tomorrow which gives prominence to video calls, as opposed to plain vanilla audio, it got me thinking why teaching English online via webcam hasn't really taken off in Taiwan. You'd have thought that Taiwanese people's love of convenience coupled with the ubiquity of broadband across the island, net-savvy ESL students and educators would be all over learning English via webcam. There are a growing number of services which let students and teachers hook up online via webcam, but Taiwan seems slow in catching on to this trend. I think there are number of reasons for this. The most obvious is that despite the tremendous convenience of having class online it's also a kind of sterile experience. I have chatted with my students online via Skype before and it was surprisingly hard going even though we get on very well in person. Video calls suffer from lag and the picture quality isn't all that great which makes it harder for non-native speakers to tell what is being said. Besides, students want to see their teacher up close, lob paper aeroplanes at him, maybe spill a full cup of iced coffee into his crotch, or even to delight in tugging on the hairs on his forearms. Can't do that with a webcam (yet, anyway). Another reason is bounded up in the peculiar little way that your average Taiwanese student perceives language education. You either go to a buxiban with everyone else or you have a private tutor over to your house. It's all very passive whereas sitting in front of a webcam may feel too intense somehow. You might think you'd make a killing setting up a webcam teaching service in Taiwan, but people will quickly realize it's easy for the student and the teacher to arrange this themselves using Skype. Ultimately, I don't see webcam tutoring replacing in-person teaching. Taiwanese are notorious for being late adopters when it comes to education, but in years to come I wouldn't be surprised if we see a handful of teachers using webcams as a supplementary method for practicing conversational English. Mind you, all this is coming from a person who, in 1992, was reading a newspaper article about something called the Information Superhighway, and declared something along the lines of: "Pff! That will never come to anything. Few people own a computer and an even few number actually know how to use one." heh! We'll see....

Thursday, June 05, 2008

I've solved the Taiwan question. It was easy.

As I was sitting here staring into space this morning instead of working it occurred to me how silly it is to use "Chinese Taipei" to refer to the whole of Taiwan. Then it came to me: the solution to the Taiwan question. Rename Taipei City and Taipei County "Chinese Taipei" and cede it to the Peeps Republic of China.

It would be like the Northern Ireland model. People who support unification with China can move to Chinese Taipei, which of course would be run by Governor Ma, while those who favor living in the Republic of Taiwan would move to areas of the island outside Chicom Taipei and live happily ever after.
I can think of stupider ideas (but not many)!

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Fifteen years in Taiwan

I can't believe I've spent most of my adult life in Taiwan. Fifteen years! The precise date on which I arrived on this isle silently slipped by me last week as I'd forgotten to set the alarm on the Years In Taiwan Chronometer. I used to be kind of proud about how long I'd been in Taiwan - three years, five years, seven years - now I just sort of shrug and say "a long time" when people ask the inevitable, "How long have you been in Taiwan?" I don't get why some people appear to be impressed by someone who has lived here for a long time. I suppose what people are really saying is, "Wow, you haven't left yet?", and that's a little unsettling.

At the 15-year mark I feel like I ought to know a lot more about Taiwan than I do. I can't speak Taiwanese and I've never been to Hualien. So why am I not listing everything that I have learned, seen and done, in the past fifteen years? Well, I'm mindful of something I read shortly after arriving here, which goes something along the lines of: It's said that someone who visits a country for a few months will return and write a book about it, someone who went there for more than ten years will return and write an essay, but someone who has lived there for more than 20 years won't write anything at all. So, at 15 years, a short blog post seems about right.