earticle

영어

This article investigated one English policy in Taiwan by shedding light on the recruitment of English teachers. The Taiwanese government has assigned English Educational Military Substitutes to assist early English education due to the lack of qualified English teachers in rural districts since Taiwan implemented the national English education in elementary schools in 2001. The government praises this policy as realization of educational equality because the introduction of the English Educational Military Substitutes aims to minimize the educational gap between urban and rural districts. In this paper, specific attention was given to the extent to which this language policy benefits the economically disadvantaged (or advantaged) groups. Data for this paper are drawn primarily from governmental documentation and reports from the Ministry of Education. Critical Applied Linguistics (CALx) both as a theory and a method provided the tools to examine the data. Analysis of the data indicates that this policy doesn’t serve the interests of English disadvantage groups as it claims but benefits the economically privileged groups.