Sink or Swim

This book describes a study which examines perceptions of both students and teachers in Taiwan about secondary schools and different types of cram school. The reality for many Taiwanese students is that they experience, often for many years, a mixture of regular secondary and cram school input. Cram schools are known to vary widely in teaching style, but systematic studies on this type of school are rare. The present study looks "below the surface" of ELT in cram school and regular secondary level classes in Taiwan, in the wake of the recent educational reforms that have been introduced by the Taiwan authorities. The study focuses in particular on the changes in secondary English teaching, the implementation of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), as well as teachers' understanding and describes and seeks to account for a reluctance to depart from traditional language teaching methods that have, elsewhere, been largely discredited.