My Fulbright Year in Taiwan

My mother is trying to remember a new word.

Mom: Ian, I would like to give you a “panegyric.”

Ian: Be my guest.

One of my ETAs has serious allergies, and has been taking medicines like Claritin-D for relief. Back in August, she asked her father to mail some to her, because she couldn’t find it in Taiwan.

Well, it turns out that there is a reason she couldn’t find it in Taiwan. It contains an ingredient that is a controlled substance here. The ETA’s father wrote the name of the medicine on the customs form that you have to attach to packages at the post office. The local customs officials opened the package, discovered the medicine, and that’s when the brown stuff hit the fan.

It was an innocent mistake on the part of the ETA and her father, but a law was broken, so the local authorities had to follow the law and investigate the incident. The ETA had to ask her parents to send documentation of the medicine’s purchase as an over-the-counter medicine, a doctor’s note stating that the ETA indeed does suffer from allergies, and had recommended that medicine as a treatment. The ETA’s father is a lawyer, so he included an affidavit describing the process of purchasing and mailing the medicine.

Today, after about two months of waiting (I’m sure that it seemed a lot longer for the poor ETA), she was summoned to the prosecutor’s office (equivalent to the District Attorney in the US) for a hearing. I offered to go along for moral support, and wound up being her official translator for the hearing. It was unlike the process in the US. We were in a room that looked like a mini courtroom, with the prosecutor sitting up where a judge would sit, and a court reporter sitting next to her.

It was clear from early on in the proceedings that the prosecutor has no intention of pressing charges, although of course she could not come right out and say that. But the line of questioning that she took indicated that she just wanted to document the process, slap the ETA on the wrist, and get it off her case list. The process took about an hour. Two members of the Advisory Panel and another ETA came along for moral support, but they weren’t allowed into the room during the hearing. It was just the ETA and me.

The biggest surprise for me was that as the official interpreter for the case, I was entitled to an interpreting fee. It was quite embarrassing for me to take money for helping the ETA. So, when the hearing was over, we all went out to lunch to celebrate, and I picked up the tab.

We aren’t sure yet what the final outcome will be, because the prosecutor has to make a final determination about the case. I’m confident that the case will be dismissed, but it’s still hanging over the ETA’s head. It can’t be easy to go to work every day knowing that the case is still unresolved. We joke about it, but we will all be relieved when it’s all over.

This wasn’t what I was expecting when I came to Taiwan. It’s another reminder that you have to expect the unexpected when you’re overseas. I’m also glad that I was able to help.

The curriculum for English Village wasn’t working out for us. The lesson plans seemed stilted and unnatural, and the language level of the lessons wasn’t a good match for the language level of the students. The ETAs were complaining about the lesson plans, and the quality of the experience for the students was suffering.

I decided to take action and re-design the curriculum from the very beginning. The ETAs and I met several times, brainstorming ideas and talking about what an ideal experience would be, and how we could re-vision English Village.

The original lessons assumed that students come to English Village having prepared for the lessons. They teach new content in four different lessons in the course of one morning. We knew, though, that students don’t prepare for the lessons. Consequently, the lessons are much too hard for them.

We had to step back from the goals of the original lesson plans, which seemed to be to teach the language specific to the stations. The lesson plan for the restaurant station, for example, was a role play for eating in a restaurant. The lesson plan taught too many new expressions, like “how many are in your party?” and “What would you like to drink?” It was too much new language for the students. They don’t retain much, if any, of those lessons.

We want to use the environment, because there’s such great potential in the space. The situational approach allows students to role-play in a fun atmosphere.

We made new lessons based on a functional approach, building on language that the students already have learned, and giving them new situations in which to use the language. For example, in the restaurant station, we focus on phrases like “Do you have …?” and “I like …” We can thus incorporate language that they can easily use in situations that are particular to eating in a restaurant, like asking if the restaurant has a particular item.

I had to do most of the lesson planning myself, because the ETAs are both too busy with their regular teaching duties, and they don’t have the background in functional language teaching. I bought us some time with the administration to field test and refine the new lessons. We have been running the new lessons for a few weeks now. The ETAs agree that the new lessons are an improvement over the old lessons, and we’re revising the lessons for two or three stations.

In the end, we will have a curriculum that I can stand behind, that we all believe in, and that will give the kids an experience that is enjoyable, memorable, and that will allow them to use their English to interact with a native speaker.

Working on these lessons has been one of the most rewarding experiences that I’ve had in Taiwan so far this year.