By Trinh Thi Thu Hien - EFL 523 Listening and Speaking Techniques Course

email: huyhienminh@yahoo.com - Home phone: 084 383 33 220 - Mobile: 098 919 6885

Some ideas about the English Teaching by Pham Hoa

Hiep
After reading Pham’s writing I have some ideals as below.
First, I agree with Mr Pham that teacher development is necessary. Any
course itself is not the end of a career, after the course there is still life
and trainees must face reality at home. Everyday, I do have a lot of
things to do or to worry about, so career is only one of them. But I soon
realize that if I do not update my knowledge I will be out of date
because the Earth keeps moving and what I know today will be out of
date tomorrow. Every class is given the same methodology will not be
attracted by students. Then how bad teacher I will be.
Second, Mr Pham discuss about problems in teacher education frankly.
I think the history is an important reason which lead to inadequate
teacher training. The open-door policies required number of English
teachers, at that time English is not popular in my country. That why
undergraduates teachers or the old teachers showed the grammar
translation is easy to understand. To meet the demand of the society at
that time, we are lucky to have some brave teachers to teach English.
We can realize that a lot of our good teachers today were taught by the
teachers in 1980s, 1990s. They still learned well, and now they are
making a new face of teaching English in Vietnam. Moreover, nothing
can be changed immediately, our country only open door about 20
years, it is not so long time to change a big methodology. In fact, when
we go somewhere like supermarkets, cinemas, beauty spots ...etc we
can listen to children speak some English. They may not good speakers
but think about the past we even though had a small number of
teachers. English is something far from Vietnamese people. With some
my thinking above, I think if we say that inadequate teachers is not
fair. In my school, I and my colleagues often discuss together about
how to teach this part, how to teach this lesson or even we help each
other to give some ideas to have good tests. Further more, we
sometimes attend our colleagues’ teaching lessons to learn more. We
 By Trinh Thi Thu Hien - EFL 523 Listening and Speaking Techniques Course
email: huyhienminh@yahoo.com - Home phone: 084 383 33 220 - Mobile: 098 919 6885
are always supportive so my work is ok. I am assured that working
environment is very important and mine is a good example.
One more thing I would to talk is teacher’s life. Vietnam is a developing
country, English is very important language not only students but also
for adults.

Of course, there is a great demand of learning English. If only

undergraduates teach English that mean we may come back the past.
In fact, good teachers teach English in some language centers or for
some groups and they are paid very high wage. What is purpose of our
studying? everyone knows that one of our aim is we study well to find
a good job to earn a lot of money. So working extra-time is ok. They
work means they are learning new things. The teachers may finds
some useful experience of teaching from the different level, age of
students in one class. The matter is that these teachers should not
make full use of free time to earn money. They should let them have
some free time to read specialty books, or study the text book more
and try to find out new methods to apply for each class, and so on. I
believe that all teachers will find their own best ways to teach English.
Last but not least, I highly appreciate Mr Pham suggestions for
teaching English in many classes. I myself have already use some of
these as my example above. I am strong impressive with Ly’s
experience. It will be exciting if it is used in our class because my
students are at high school, they like to be called by name of animals,
trees, flowers and something like that. I am sure I will learn this for my
teaching method.
By the way I have concern that we must base on the reality. My
students in school are motivated by marks. Although they are taught
four skills of English: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language
focus, The examinations are only two skills: reading and writing and
grammar. Moreover, students are examined writing by multi choice
questions. That is one of my difficult to teach speaking in class
because students do not have a real motivation. They only want to
learn English as other subject, pass 5 points, that is enough.
 By Trinh Thi Thu Hien - EFL 523 Listening and Speaking Techniques Course
email: huyhienminh@yahoo.com - Home phone: 084 383 33 220 - Mobile: 098 919 6885
Over all, I think that there is no best teaching method to teach English
because this method may be suitable for the good students but may
be not for bad ones and converse. That why I never stop learning even
learning from my students. I wish my teacher Rosemary with her a lot
experience may help me with some suggestions of reference books. I
hope that one day the teacher education in Vietnam is not a real
problem.