Taipei, May 28 (CNA) The demand for Vietnamese language teachers in Taiwan is higher than for teachers of other Southeast Asian languages, an education official said Sunday.
According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), the high demand for teachers of Vietnamese language is linked to data relating to the population of second-generation new immigrants from Southeast Asia.
Based on the data, the demand for Vietnamese language teachers is 67 percent, for Indonesian language teachers 18 percent, and for teachers of other Southeast Asian languages 15 percent, the MOE said.
The ministry has been evaluating the immigrant language program for years, including the demand for teachers and teaching materials, and is ready to start Vietnamese and Indonesian language classes in the K-12 school system, according to Tsai Chih-ming, head of the ministry's K-12 Education Administration.
He said the MOE will not launch classes at this time for Myanmarese, Cambodian, Filipino, Malaysian or Thai language learning since only a few students are likely to enroll and there would be difficulty recruiting teachers.
The number of second-generation new immigrants in elementary and junior high schools in Taiwan in 2015 was 208,000, 40.7 percent of whom were of Vietnamese heritage, 10.6 percent Indonesian and 2.2 percent Philippine, according to MOE data.
The government is rolling out the Southeast Asian language program with the aim of offering at least one foreign language option to all students in the K-12 system, while helping Taiwan-born children of immigrants to learn their mother tongues so that they could work in Southeast Asia in the future if they wish, according to Tsai.
The government is also encouraging other young people to learn Southeast Asian languages as part of its New Southbound Policy, which seeks to develop closer ties with Southeast and South Asian countries, according to the ministry.
In Taiwan, the number of foreign spouses of Taiwanese nationals, or first-generation new immigrants, stands at about 517,000, while the number of second-generation new immigrants is more than 360,000, according to government statistics.
