Myths and Strategies for Teaching Calculus in English for Taiwanese Students: A Report Based on Three-Years of Practice

Authors: Shin-Shin Kao

Abstract:

This paper reviews the crucial situation in higher education in Taiwan due to the rapid decline of the birth rate in the past three decades, and how the government and local colleges/universities work to face the challenge. Recruiting international students is one of the possible ways to resolve the problem, but offering enough courses in English is one of the main obstacles when the majority of learners are still Taiwanese students. In the academic year of 2012, Chung Yuan Christian University determined to make its campus international and began to enforce two required courses for freshmen taught in English. It failed in the beginning, but succeeded in the following academic year of 2013. Using the teaching evaluations accumulated in the past three years, this paper aims to clarify the myths which had been bothering most faculties. It also offers some suggestions for college/university teachers interested in giving lectures in English to English as Second Language (ESL) learners. A conclusion is presented at the end of the paper, in which the author explained why Taiwanese students could learn their profession in English.

Keywords: Calculus, English, teaching evaluation, teaching strategy, vocabulary.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1129269

References:

[1] Ministry of the interior of the Republic of China, http://www.moi.gov.tw/stat/ Accessed on 28/09/2016.
[2] Ministry of Education of the Republic of China, https://ulist.moe.gov.tw/ Accessed on 28/09/2016.
[3] Chung Yuan Christian University, http://www.cycu.edu.tw for Chinese information and https://www.cycu.edu.tw/eng/ for English information. Accessed on 28/09/2016.
[4] The itouch system of Chung Yuan Christian University, https://itouch.cycu.edu.tw/index.jsp?type=teacher Accessed on 28/09/2016.
[5] James Stewart, Calculus, Seventh Edition, International Metric Version, Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, Canada, 2012.
[6] Dale Varberg, Edwin Purcell, Steve Rigdon, Calculus, Pearson New International Edition, Ninth Edition, Prentice Hall, UK, 2014.