Since being awarded the status of key cultivation university of the BEST Program, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) has identified clear goals and formulated concrete strategies that yielded substantive and spectacular results in the last three years. 

Leading NTNU’s march forward is our Office of Bilingual Education (OBE), headed by NTNU’s President Cheng-Chih Wu. Through OBE’s Implementation and Consultative committees, we adopted a comprehensive approach to bilingual education, pooling resources from all colleges and administrative offices, whilst also taking in suggestions and feedbacks from all stakeholders. The approach is an overall success, with student English proficiencies, as well as the percentages of foreign faculties (6%) and students (12.1%) reaching new heights.     

With “Opportunities with Options” at our program’s core, NTNU aims to provide students with opportunities to become internationally competitive world citizens by offering a multitude of bilingual learning options. Our EGP/ESP to EMI English learning program has enhance our students’ preparedness for EMI learning in all fields the last three years. Moreover, close to 70% of all NTNU graduate programs now offer English alternatives. At the undergraduate level, NTNU now offers 4 undergraduate programs in English; all of our undergraduate departments now offer at least 18 EMI credits each in their curriculum structure. The number of EMI courses exploded to 873 courses, an increase of 63.9% compared to the year before the BEST Program. 

NTNU’s Center for Academic Literacy (CAL), with an 80-hour weekly one-on-one tutoring capacity, is the first (and largest) academic English support center in the country. Nicknamed “NTNU’s Own Starbucks”, CAL’s operational and spatial setups have become a model for other universities. We have also established Resource Center for EMI (RCEMI) to share our resources and experiences with universities across Taiwan, offering TA training as well as professional development programs to all university teachers and students. As of 2024, RCEMI has served over 88 universities, with 307 instructors and 234 students completing our professional development programs successfully. In addition to publishing books and articles that details our know-how and experiences, we also organize annual conferences and workshops that not only enriches all attendees professionally, but also reaffirms NTNU’s lead in bilingual learning in Taiwan. 

 NTNU will continue to improve the services we provide based on stakeholder feedbacks, statistical analyses, as well as the specific needs of Taiwan. In sum, NTNU has become a success story of the BEST Program, and will continue to lead the way for all Taiwanese universities.