Reserach Express@NCKU

Many people envy Wang, who earned the chance to go undergraduate study at Case Western Reserve University. He was born in a family of diplomat. He is not going abroad for the first time and is able to speak English fluently, so he often comes across as invincible to many people. However, behind this stunning impression, he also got his own story of survival to tell.

Because of his parents’ work, he has spent a long time in foreign countries, said Wang. He can thus speak English fluently, but he added that he also worked very hard at it and the hard work is usually invisible. “My classmates often see that I appear impressive, my English is good and I have been to other countries, but what they fail to see is the great price I have paid. No matter it is about my overseas experience, or culture re-immersion, I was changed dramatically, which has caused great confusion to many of my classmates about my behaviors and my teachers about my poor scores. That is what I feel most sorry about,” said Wang.

Recalling his life experience overseas, Wang has many memories that he cannot forget. Here is what he told us. “I was born in Jeddah, a coastal city in Saudi Arabia. I was born there due to my parents’ jobs, and I seemed destined to be traveling around. Two years after I had lived in Jeddah, I came back to Taiwan and later went to the Affiliated Experimental Elementary School of Taipei Municipal University of Education (台北市立師院實小) until 4th grade. Then I went to America because my mom got US Fulbright scholarship (美國傅爾布萊特獎學金) and went to Harvard University. I went to an elementary school nearby and spent six months in Boston.”

Speaking of his English learning experience, Wang said it was also a painful memory. He said that it is very popular with many parents to send their children to English schools to learn English when they are still young. Contrarily, he had never learnt any English before he went to the US. For a 4th grade kid, it was very overwhelming and dreadful to enter an English-only environment suddenly. He recalled the day when he first stepped into the classroom at Martin Luther King Elementary School near the dorm of Harvard. “I looked around and all I could see was Asian people, African American and white people taking in a language which I could not comprehend. They all looked back at me. I could not understand what my classmates and teachers said. I only knew that I should clap or raise my hands when others did. Mom borrowed books from the library for me. Those were the books with one line in each page, and the pictures were bigger than the words thereof; she taught me with great patience. I often spent much time reading, but found myself unable to memorize words and speak well. Sometimes I even cried and wanted to tear the book into pieces. For a 10 year old, it was pretty cruel, but it was also the necessary process of getting used to a new environment.”

“Due to my parents’ jobs, once again, my whole family moved to Canberra, the capital city of Australia when I was a 5th grader. I saw the different races I could not have seen in America. There were people from various countries like Russia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Turkey. I entered a local elementary near my house for the 6th grade and entered Canberra Boys Grammar High School after that. It was a private church school and the best one in Canberra and a very important place in my life, because my experience there helped me build my character.”

As for the chance to study abroad again at Case Western Reserve University because of the Dual-Degree International Study Program, he still felt very excited. He said that when he first learnt about the program from the announcement from the Office of Academic Affairs, he gasped. He thought that it was challenging enough. After you finish your studies in the first two years, you get to continue and finish the rest at Case Western Reserve University. You will get two degrees from two different schools. Sounds awesome.

Wang also has deeper understanding of the importance of the international perspective to the future careers. He said that the innovative program initiated at NCKU for students to connect with the world and get two degrees at the same time, which is unprecedented. The program not only could help a student to develop the international perspective, but also will make it easier to fit into the job markets in Taiwan, American and even many more countries in the world because the student will get two degrees from two excellent universities in Taiwan and America. I then and there determined to seize the chance and actively take part in the program that would make every NCKU fellow proud.

It is not easy to get admissions to Case Western Reserve University from the application stage to passing the interview with professors of that school. He passed with the TOEFL score of 106 (about 630 in the old TOEFL). The perfect score is 120 and the University’s requirement is 80. After many tests, he finally got admitted officially as the first one. Wang said he felt that NCKU had helped him very much and the school wanted to give all the best to its students. From the first moment he learnt about this program, submitted his application, till the admissions, the school president Michael M.C. Lai had given me great encouragement and the school also gave me necessary support, I was very touched.

For many people who do not have a chance to study abroad, Wang exemplified with his own experience the differences between the education system in Taiwan and other countries. In Australia, for example, high school education emphasizes independent thinking, basic concepts, asking questions and variety. Take math class for example, the teacher usually explains one concept only once in class and spends the rest of the class practicing it. The questions are usually so simple that 50 of them can be done in half of the class. That not only strengthens the confidence of students, but is very inspiring because the main purpose of the practice is to encourage the students to think with the simple yet conceptual questions. Even the questions in midterms are of basic concepts. Any tricky and difficult questions cannot be found. Humanities subjects are also taught in a different way. They pay attention to the broad pictures, instead of details. Besides, the teacher in history class cares more about the comparison and connection with other countries in the same period of them. Teachers there would help students integrate the knowledge they learn in class, so students do not have to spend too much time going through their textbooks, making their own notes, memorizing years and other trivial details. The notes they take in class would suffice.

Even though the Australian education system can help students develop the independent and creative thinking, the counting ability alone and the emphasis on test scores are far behind that in Taiwan. The summer when he was turning a senior, he decided to come back to Taiwan first in order to be ready for the tough transition in a senior high school in Taiwan. He first went to Taichung First Senior High School and then transferred to the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.

It was pretty problematic for Wang because he had spent too much time in other countries. When he came back, he ran into every problem that every child of a diplomat would run into, the adoptions of school and culture. Concepts and understanding is emphasized in a foreign education system while counting and scores are emphasized in Taiwan. When someone from the foreign system comes to Taiwan, it is like listening to an alien and every textbook is some ancient transcripts. Failing tests was just to be expected and he was ranked in the bottom every time.

He said, “It’s not that I didn’t work hard. The gap was simply too big. The math level in Australia is 2-3 years behind compared with that in Taiwan. I had left Taiwan for some years. When I first came back, I went to Taichung First Senior High school and the Affiliated Senior High School.” The results were “like a elementary student going to senior high school and it’s one of the best. O n e c a n o n l y i m a g i n e , ” h e described. “No matter how hard I tried,” he said, “I just could not keep up, especially when I had to compete with the elite of the students in Taipei. Plus, I was three years behind them. I truly understood how it felt to be like completely helpless.”

The experience of studying Chinese was also unforgettable. He said, “Staying in another country for four years. I could even hardly remember Chinese characters. When I came back to Taiwan, I had to cope with the classic Chinese in tests. It’s another thing that I could do nothing about.”

In addition to Chinese, learning math was incredible hard for him as well. He said, “What really got me when I returned to Taiwan was actually math. In my first math class, I could not even understood curly braces, so I asked my teacher. He then looked at me with surprise and asked how I got in this school if I hadn’t known about it. The first midterm was even worse. I only scored less than 20 points. However, he became intrigued about math. At first, he could not understand and did not like math. Then he changed and loved it. Finally he got in the Department of Statistics because of math.

How did he overcome the fear math? Wang said, “No matter how urgent the tests were, I always insisted I understand a question before I answer it. However, my level was too much behind any Taiwanese senior high school student, so I hired a private teacher in my junior year. She was Ms. Yu-Chih Tsai (蔡育知) from the Department of Math at Taiwan Normal University. She was young, but she was patient and had a way to help me understand. After a while, my math improved and I became more interested in it. My scores also got better. Finally, with a lot of hard work, I passed the Joint Entrance Examination without adding any premium point (because I had returned to Taiwan for more than three years), and got admitted to the Department of Statistics at NCKU. I am still very thankful for that math teacher.

NCKU not only cultivates the young that have the ability to think and an international perspective, we also work closely with other foreign universities in academic fields and great promote the international study program. The program set up with Case Western Reserve University is a dream come true for those who want to study abroad. Chun-Jung Wang and Chin-Hao Hsu (a junior from the Dept. of Chemical Engineering) were the first two students qualified for the program. They left in mid August. They will receive two degrees from NCKU and Case Western Reserve University in two years if they meet all the requirements.