VietTESOL Highlights

Featured stories of VietTESOL's events and programs

VietTESOL Association Organizes Vietnam English Language Teaching Forum 2022

On March 30-31, 2022, VietTESOL Association organized Vietnam English Language Teaching Forum 2022 - Challenges, opportunities, and developmental trends, the first policy proposal conference in Vietnam in conjunction with the National Foreign Language Project and the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

The conference featured leading experts in the English education community in Vietnam to recognize educational trends in Vietnam, the region and the world, and discuss challenges and opportunities for English teaching and learning in Vietnam in the near future.

Attending the conference were His Excellency Marc Knapper - US Ambassador to Vietnam, Dr. Nguyen Huu Do - Deputy Minister of Education and Training, Prof. Nguyen Hoa – VietTESOL President, and Dr. Pham Lan Dung  - Acting Director of Diplomatic Academy as well as representatives of related ministries, Vietnamese policy makers, influencers, educators, and other key stakeholders working in the field of English language education and leading enterprise managers on the recruitment market.

Prof. Nguyen Hoa said in the conference: “The outbreak of the Pandemic forced about 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries out of the classroom, resulting in the largest global disruption of education in history. We saw a rapid changeover to emergency online instruction all over the world. I believe that this meeting will provide an excellent opportunity for discussing and sharing ideas about the challenges and opportunities, which are two sides of a coin, and most importantly, the way forward. The key takeaways from the forum, I hope, can be some crucial policy implications that will move ELT in Vietnam forward.”

With plenary and parallel sessions on March 30-31, the forum aims to discuss challenges and opportunities in teaching/learning English in Vietnam during the post-pandemic transition and integration period, share lessons and successful experiences, as well as make policy proposals to the Ministry of Education and Training and other related parties.

The keynote speeches were followed by lively discussions, which showed immense interest of educators in contributing to teaching and learning foreign languages in the coming time. Besides, the delegates raised many notable English teaching and learning issues in Vietnam during the discussions such as applying for new solutions and programs equally, without creating other gaps between urban and remote educational institutions, or how to deliver better assessment and evaluation. 

The 2-day forum was a significant success. Its outcomes including initiatives and proposals will be sent to the National Foreign Languages Project and other related parties for further consideration. 

VIC2021 Keynote: Foreign Language Teacher Education: Lessons from Covid19

The COVID-19 pandemic placed many restrictions to the way teachers of EFL are educated, mostly regarding teaching practice. With schools closed, student teachers had to find creative ways to put into practice the theory they learned in their methodology courses. While this restriction posed a problem, it also offered the possibility of developing new and effective ways of educating teachers.

I will describe one successful model of teacher education that started off as a distance learning framework and since then, has also become very effective in hybrid teaching contexts (where you have onsite and online students simultaneously). The model capitalizes on the future teacher's experience as a language learner and helps effectively bridge theory and practice while promoting critical thinking and instructional decision-making that guarantees that what student teachers learn online can have a positive impact on their language learners' language development.

The model has six phases that start with an exploration of the student teachers' beliefs about language learning and teaching, and then progresses to making them aware of how different core concepts and practices are relevant to language learning. From that awareness, new understandings of the core concepts and practices are collaboratively co-constructed and tried out in the teacher education class so that when student teachers apply them in the real classroom, they do so in a principled and effective way. The role of reflection throughout the process is also explored.

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