After sixty years of compulsory Mandarin policy, people in Taiwan have been experiencing a language shift from their mother tongues to Mandarin, the national language of ROC. Such language shifting phenomenon has been accelerated by the need of English to meet the requirements of globalization and internationalization. The decay (and possible demise) of the indigenous languages was ascribed to the double threat derived from the Mandarin policy and the English policy. In order to maintain the indigenous languages and the cultures behind them, a governmental language policy of teaching the indigenous languages to students in elementary and junior high schools was enacted and has been implemented for nearly 10 years. The two current Southern Min projects (with each geographically distributed to half of Taiwan) aim to investigate whether this formal curriculum of teaching/learning Southern Min, the indigenous language associated with the largest ethnic group in Taiwan, is effective in securing the survival of Southern Min competence in the younger generation of the Sothern Min ethnic group.
In these two projects, questionnaire surveys were adopted for quantitative measurements of the effectiveness of the Southern Min curriculum in Taiwan. Research foci include giving a comprehensive description and an evaluation of school administration, teacher recruitment, course design, teaching materials and facilities, teaching methods, extra-curriculum activities, family support, community support, and attitudes of people related (including the teachers, the students, and the parents) towards this Southern Min teaching program.
Preliminary findings indicate that all informants of the three groups yield a positive attitude toward the Southern Min education and reveal that the Southern Min education can substantially help students to increase their use of Southern Min. Also, it is expected that the research findings of this project may serve to help the authorities to reform the policy and the implementation of it.
