A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

University Levels in Taiwan
Research Setting
Three levels of quality exist in the Taiwanese university system. They are
advanced-level universities (national universities), middle-level universities (private
universities and universities of technology), and basic-level universities (universities
of technology). The participants in the interviews in this study were 7 volunteers
selected from 24 freshmen participants in a Freshman English Non-Major (FENM)
class of a middle-level private university, Tunghai University.
History of Tunghai University
Tunghai University is a Christian school where about 15,700 students studied
in Taichung, Taiwan. The private founders of Tunghai were Dr. William P. Fenn, Dr.
Thomas W. Graham, and Mr. Richard Nixon from the United States. Hence, since
Tunghai University was established in 1955, the students were guided to pay more
attention to their study of English.
Currently, the president of Tunghai University is Dr. Chen Haydn, who
encourages the students not only to take the required three-credit course for two
semesters in the FENM program, according to the Taiwanese government’s
University English Education Policy (Government Information Office, ROC, 2005),
but also to take one or two Non-Major Elective English courses of two credits to
establish their English proficiency during their four years of study as undergraduate
students. For students of six colleges and 30 academic departments in Tunghai, more
than 10 Non-Major Elective English courses were administrated for students by Dr.
James Sims, who is the current chair of the Department of Foreign Language and
Literature.
37