British Council Vietnam recently completed Academic Teaching Excellence (ATE) courses in Vietnam. 131 teachers (mostly subject teachers) from nearly 90 Vietnam universities participated in seven classes which took place in Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City from 23 November to 25 December 2015. Vietnam is the second country in Asia (besides Japan) to implement the ATE.
ATE is a foundation course in English as the Medium of Instruction (EMI) which was co-developed by the British Council and the University of Oxford’s Department of Education; it has been implemented since 2012 in many countries around the world. The course is an intensive week-long seminar designed for non-native English speaking lecturers who teach their subjects in English, offering lecturers of all disciplines hands-on linguistic tools and teaching strategies in order to communicate their materials more effectively.
The implementation of the ATE course in Vietnam was a joint partnership between British Council Vietnam and Hanoi University and is one of the various activities undertaken by the Vietnam National Foreign Language Project 2020.
Participants’ feedback, both formal and informal, has been extremely positive: Vietnam teachers found the ATE training to be ‘useful’, ‘practical’ and ‘up to date’. They witnessed a general improvement in their language skills and teaching methods as well as more specific advancements in their pronunciation, presentation skills, use of discourse makers and signpost language. This, coupled with methodological training in topics such as effective classroom management, student engagement techniques, and motivating classroom activities, will help participants better deliver their EMI lectures, increasing student learning outcomes.
Implementation of ATE throughout Vietnam as a new training course which addresses the needs of Vietnam higher education systems and working with various universities was an exciting way for English for Education Systems to end 2015.