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In June 2022, NTU President Chung-Ming Kuan and Executive Vice President Chiapei Chou visited University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and met with Sharon Wood, Executive Vice President and Provost, Sonia Feigenbaum, Senior Vice Provost for Global Engagement and Chief International Officer, Gerald Speitel, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of Cockrell School of Engineering, and Fiona Mazurenko, Director of Global Alumni Relations, to discuss the recent development for partnership.

UT Austin is one of NTU’s partner universities of the Taiwan Huayu Bilingual Exchange Select Talent (BEST) Program. Items of collaboration between the two institutions include study abroad for UT Austin students in the area of Mandarin language learning, one-on-one online Mandarin tutoring program, and hosting a Mandarin teaching assistant from NTU in the Department of Asian Studies at UT Austin.

There are two renowned Mandarin programs at NTU: the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP) and the Chinese Language Division (CLD) at Language Center. Both programs emphasize all aspects of the Mandarin learning (speaking, listening, writing and reading), and utilize the immersive approach and the Taiwan environment to encourage the application of learned materials. Three UT Austin students came to NTU for the summer quarter in 2022. Two of them attended ICLP and one chose CLD. UT Austin students show high motivation in learning Mandarin; one of the three students plans to stay for six months (two quarters) at NTU. Moreover, another incoming UT Austin student in the 2022 Fall quarter will stay for one academic year for the Mandarin program. Besides classroom learning, students also participate in the “Hands Together initiative” arranged by NTU, where students go to local elementary or junior high school with an NTU partner to help local students practice speaking and understanding English. This activity is arranged based on students’ schedules and the availability of the local school. During the summer 2022, one student goes to Yulin elementary school and engages in e-book creation camp with Yulin students.

One-on-one online tutoring program is another collaboration item between NTU and UT Austin in the Mandarin learning and teaching. In the Fall semester 2021 and Spring semester 2022, a total of 30 UT Austin students participated in this program. Current students of the Graduate Program of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at NTU serve as tutor and meet UT Austin students online every week during the semester. These interactive oral practice sessions help UT Austin students improve their Mandarin pronunciation and tones, and provide them with opportunities to speak with native speakers. In the coming Fall semester of 2022, NTU will send one teaching assistant (TA) to UT Austin. The responsibilities of this TA include assisting course instructor in conducting in-class drills and language practice, meeting with students outside of class individually or in small groups to work on language skills, assisting in the test administration (oral test, question setting, marking, invigilation, etc.), and promoting Taiwan Huayu BEST program to the UT Austin students. These collaboration items on the Mandarin language education will further strengthen partnership ties between two institutions.