The 2020 Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL) in Malaysia, organized by the Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia, will be held at Kuen Cheng High School on April 25, and people can register for the test until March 25.

More and more Malaysians are learning Mandarin Chinese and TOCFL is a standardized test to determine learners’ proficiency levels. It corresponds with CEFR and ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines.

A press conference was held at Kuen Cheng High School on February 17 to announce the TOCFL tests in April and invite interested members of the public to register.

During the press conference, Charlin Chang, the director of the Education Division pointed out that the public and corporate sectors both prefer to employ skilled professionals who are also multilingual.

With over a billion language users, Mandarin is now one of the most spoken languages in the world. Learning a new language is definitely a bonus to one’s competitiveness in the global marketplace and for effective communication and mutual understanding in any multicultural society, and learning Mandarin is undeniably an excellent choice.

Charlin Chang took the opportunity to outline the many resources Taiwan provides that can help Malaysians learn Mandarin. These include a free introductory level online course Learning Chinese: Start from Scratch, on the Coursera platform. (https://www.coursera.org/teach/learn-chinese-mandarin).

Malaysian students can also contact the Education Division to apply for various scholarship programs to do further study in Taiwan: for example the Taiwan Scholarship Program for undertaking a degree, the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship program for undertaking Mandarin language studies, and the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) Scholarship Program

International schools and language centers that are considering having their students do the TOCFL tests can also contact the Education Division and arrange a free Pilot Test of the TOCFL. This is not the formal test and test-takers won’t receive a certificate but the Pilot Test can help educational institutions to evaluate their students’ language proficiency and their learning outcomes, and familiarize themselves with the formal TOCFL test procedures.