Abstract
Abstract
The overall goal of Tainan National University of the Arts (henceforth, TNNUA) development plan aims to achieve the vision of “innovative embodiment and international advances,” along with three professional objectives: (1) Establish an international arts-based town as a window of Asian arts and culture. (2) Recreate local Taiwanese arts and culture by integrating traditional culture with innovative technology. (3) Cultivate students’ bilingual narrative ability, and create artistic Taiwanese imagery with both the abstract and concrete. Under the strategic development plan, TNNUA started to implement “The Program on Bilingual Education for Students in College (The BEST Program)” in 2021, hoping to enhance students’ interest in learning English, improve their English skills, and develop their global perspectives. Furthermore, we strive to enhance our faculty members’ and students’ talents and skills, advance our visibility internationally, and increase the chances of employment abroad.
TNNUA's implementation of the BEST Program focused on establishing related guidelines and regulations, constructing systematic support for EMI teaching, innovating curricula of English education, and hosting EMI related events. First, to encourage teachers to offer EMI courses and students to take EMI courses, we have established regulations concerning the whole campus, faculty members, and students respectively. For the whole campus, we passed “The Working Guidelines for the Project Audit of the BEST Program.” For faculty members, we established “The Subsidy Guidelines for Teaching EMI Courses.” We provided students with “The Implementation Directions for EMI Teaching Assistants,” “The Directions for Excellence Scholarship in EMI Courses,” and “The Standards for EMI Course Certification” (from Level E1 to E5). Second, we support faculty members by offering information on EMI instruction training, creating a professional development community for EMI instructors, and hosting professional development lectures for both EMI instructors and their teaching assistants. Third, we innovated English education curricula by offering English-taught English courses, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. Fourth, the leading department and graduate institutes set EMI teaching examples for the whole campus and their respective colleges. To enhance students’ interest in learning, we hosted diverse events for our students. The events promoted internationalization, arts, and cultures through the medium of English to strengthen students’ learning motivation.
To be specific, TNNUA’s features, achievements and highlights of the 2021-2022 BEST Program were as follows: leading roles of three department and graduate institutes, internationalization of faculty members and courses, and solid training for EMI teaching assistants. In 2021-2022 academic year, the Department of Art History set a great example of EMI teaching for undergraduates, whereas the Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology showed a shining example of EMI teaching for graduate students. Not only did the Department of Art History exceeded the self-set KPI of 6% by 0.2%, but it also held two events related to EMI. In the first one, entitled “Faculty Members’ Sharing Session: EMI Teaching Experience in the Department of Art History,” the EMI teachers and teaching assistants shared their teaching experience to pass it on. The second one, entitled “Beyond English: Alumni of the Department of Art History Share the Importance of English Skills in the Workplace.” Alumni’s sharing inspired the students to better understand the impact of English on their future careers and to take EMI courses. The Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology met the self-set KPI of 50% with 54% EMI graduate course credits. The Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology hosted “the EMI Proseminar,” targeting undergraduate and graduate students who were interested in the music industry, ethnomusicology, and making of musical instruments. The speakers and performers in “The EMI Proseminar” came from the profession of international musicology, ethnomusicology, and industry of musical instrument manufacturing, gave talks or performances in English through online meetings or live concerts. In “The EMI Proseminar,” the speakers and performers shared their knowledge of theories and practices; moreover, they assisted students in guiding their research. Through participating in “The EMI Proseminar,” students simultaneously bettered their English and research.
TNNUA’s second feature of the implementation concerns the internationalization of faculty members and courses. Over 40% of the university’s faculty members are Taiwanese with a doctoral degree from a foreign country or foreign nationals, so there is a strong international atmosphere. In addition to the formal courses, the university also creates an international atmosphere through various activities. To take the second semester of the 2021-2022 academic year as an example, the nationalities of the guest speakers invited by the academic and administrative units were from various countries, including Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, the United States, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Slovenia. Through these activities, the university enabled the faculty members and students to experience the authentic communication situation of English as a lingua franca. Through art-related topics, art majors were even more motivated to learn English.
The third feature that characterizes of TNNUA’s implementation of the BEST program lies in solid training for EMI teaching assistants. In the second semester of 2021-2022 academic year, the Bilingual Education Resource Center (henceforward BERC) offered 8 workshops (16 hours in total) for EMI teaching assistants. Informed by the principles of EMI, the workshops were conducted in English. The content covered soft skills (such as empathy, awareness of one’s own biases, cooperative skills, and other communication skills) and hard skills (such as effective teaching strategies, helpful platforms and applications). The evaluation of the participating teaching assistants showed that the discussed attitudes and communication skills were indeed helpful, and the platforms and applications motivated the students served by the TAs to learn.
TNNUA self-evaluated this year’ implementation and next year’s directions in two phases. BERC embedded the first phase in constant communication and the form of outcome report. BERC and all the involved university units discussed the activities before, during, and after the activities to ensure the smooth operation. Moreover, the outcome report contains a section which the involved units need to evaluate the impact of the activity on students’ English ability and learning motivation, and to reflect on how future activities can be further improved. In the second phase, BERC compiled all the outcome reports to create a university-wide report and then get feedback from the review committee and external consultation committee. The mechanism of attaining feedback from both internal- and external committees aims to strengthen the project implementation.
This abstract concludes with the suggestions given by the external consultation committee for this academic year.
1. The activities were rich and diverse. In addition to quantitative statistics, qualitative data can be added to enrich the outcome report.
2. When the university is more experienced with offering EMI courses and activities, it can consider developing a series of courses and activities, instead of multiple individual ones.
3. In the future, more data can be collected to inform activities. For example, conducting surveys to understand students’ and faculty members’ needs. Then the university can hold data-driven activities. After the activities, the involved units can collect data to understand the activities’ impact on the faculty members and students. How the activities influence students’ learning is especially essential.
4. In the future, the university can conduct a comprehensive assessment of students’ English proficiency to better understand students’ English levels.
5. The university can also consider adopting other colleges’ methods. For example, to revise the promotion guidelines to encourage faculty members to offer more EMI courses and participate in EMI workshops. The university can also offer free English certificate exams. Furthermore, the university can make a video by interviewing students on campus and then analyze the video to get more data. Finally, the university can encourage students to take the courses on Coursera and attain course completion certificates by accepting 10% of students’ graduation credits with the Coursera courses and certificates.
