Policy Recommendations

The study offers glimpses of how the teachers and administrator perceived and implemented RCCC in the classroom and school level. The interview data show that all teachers advocated RCCC as a compulsory requirement for new immigrants. Some even suggest that it should be a compulsory requirement for new arrivals for the earlier exposure and stimulation can help students enhance language skills, as well as develop cross-cultural understanding and appreciation (SU, 2006). In view of the findings of this study, two policy recommendations are provided: national textbooks and curriculum and language tutors.

National Textbooks and Curriculum

The Ministry of Education should examine and integrate current curriculum for RCCC and may provide several options for teachers instead of using the local version in current local school. Although different regions of Taiwan have different percentage of new immigrants, the Ministry of Education should consider having the textbook examined by experts. The way of doing this should at least follow the model by previous national textbooks and curriculum. After examination, the Ministry of Education will list several different versions of textbooks in different level, but the main content and theme of the textbooks should be identical. In that way, teachers could select different textbooks according to their students’ Mandarin competency.

Language Tutors

The Ministry of Education should provide tutor hours for students to provide more resources for RCCC to amend the current limited teaching resources. These language tutors are not necessarily to be teachers but must at least be undergraduates with relevant background in Chinese instruction, such as Chinese language and literature majors. In that way, immigrants have other opportunities to learn languages and Taiwanese undergraduates have an opportunity to do internship as well as interact with new immigrants whose age may be close to them. By implementing this policy, it can contribute to cross-cultural understanding.

Conclusions

McGroarty (2002) reported that language policies in education represent a critical area that enunciates a society’s expectations for the success of its future members. The Ministry of Education encouraged schools to consider providing native language classes for children of new immigrants (Chan, 2010) which represented the first step in recognizing their native languages as part of Taiwanese society. By implementing bi-directional language policies, new immigrants would be able to utilize language capability to adapt or succeed in Taiwan as well as their children may able to learn their own cultural heritage. The current language policy is in Corson (2001, p.103) defined that the government provide the language as media of instruction, usually exclusively in the early years of schooling. It serves as a starting-point for future studies on the development of curriculum innovation in Taiwan and other countries where RCCC is implemented. Hopefully, the language policy may achieve the level 6 of language policy (Corson, 2001, p.103). Languages of new immigrants may have rights in Taiwanese society with special support available. So policy responses include recognition of a minority languages as an official language as well as opportunities for all children to learn languages voluntarily and support beyond the educational system.