David on Formosa

Last year I blogged about Taiwan developing its own Chinese proficiency test. Today’s Taipei Times reports that Taiwan is launching a computerised version of the Chinese Proficiency Test (CPT).

With the advent of the new computerized Chinese Proficiency Test (CPT), the nation’s language teachers said that they hoped Taiwan would now get a foot in the door of the international Mandarin-teaching market, where it faces fierce competition from China.

The test was launched in 2003 by the Center for Chinese Language and Culture Studies at National Taiwan Normal University and started out as a paper test. Last year, the Ministry of Education decided to recognize the test, allowing results to be used as official documents in applications to universities and language centers around the country.

The test has been computerized this year, the first step toward competing in the global Mandarin learning market, said Chou Chung-tien (周中天), the director of the center.

Taiwan once had the world market for learning Mandarin cornered, but now that China is more open and much easier to travel to it has lost its importance. I don’t know the computer based test will actually help Taiwan market itself as a destination for learning Mandarin. The HSK test is well established. Taiwan could just use a version of the test with traditional characters. However, it seems that in Taiwan for political reasons they will go to any lengths to differentiate themselves from China.

The market for Chinese language learning will expand greatly in the next few years. Taiwan has not really made enough changes to capture some of that market. It needs to make it easier for people to get visas and offer more flexible course schedules.

Taiwan could also produce more Chinese language learning materials. However, it really needs to give up on using Zhuyin Fuhao and adopt Hanyu Pinyin as a universal standard. It would not be difficult to produce both simplified and traditional character versions of the materials and this would greatly improve their marketability.

UPDATE: Doubting to shuo also has some interesting comments regarding the Taipei Times article.