Wasai Taiwan wants your stories

John at The Real Taiwan sends along this plea from local students who want your story and are willing to pay cold hard cash to get it:

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Dear Sir or Madam,

We are graduate students in the Institute of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the National Chiao Tung Universtiy in Hsinchu and we need your help. Currently, we are working on a project that is chronicling cross-cultural experiences of Expats who currently live or have lived in Taiwan. Our main purpose in this endeavor is to create language and culture learning material that can enhance Taiwanese students' communicative competence. In order to achieve our goal, we need more Expats to write about their cross-cultural experiences in Taiwan. We have received some funding from our school's Humanities department and can pay NT$700 per anecdote . At the moment, we have already posted numerous cross-cultural anecdotes on our blog. If you have time please have a look: http://wasaitaiwan.blogspot.com/ .

Here is what we are looking for in the cross-cultural anecdotes:
1. Write an anecdote of your experiences that best describe a contrast between Taiwan and your home country. Try to focus on the differences that lead you amazed, surprised, or even shocked. Please try your best to describe the situation in full detail. If you do not have a specific story, you can write about your observations or opinions of the cultural items or phenomena.
2. Please try to account for the reason why this aspect of culture or items made you feel surprised or amazed.
3. 300- 600 words is enough for the essay.
4. Please provide related photos if possible.
5. Please write in a more academic style and try to be creative and humorous!!

Send your essays to wasaitaiwan@gmail.com

Payment can delivered directly to you by hand if you live in Taipei, Hsinchu, or Tainan City. If you do not live in one to these cities, we can send payment via direct deposit into your bank account.

Karen & Louis

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[Taiwan]