In October 2017, the British Council Vietnam in collaboration with Can Tho Department of Education and Training started the implementation of a training programme in English teaching methodology for 25 lower secondary and 25 upper secondary teachers in Can Tho province.
This is the first time that the British Council has conducted a professional development programme with a Department of Education and Training in the south. It is based on British Council’s Teaching for Success approach in which trainers conducted a needs analysis and baseline study by visiting schools, interviewing teachers in focus groups and observing classes. This led to the bespoke designing of a training course which was 100 per cent focused on the needs of the teachers in Can Tho province.
In phase one of the programme teachers had face-to-face training with a combination of input sessions and trainer demonstration lessons based on the local coursebook, as well as micro-teaching sessions followed by trainer-feedback. The face to face training will be followed by a series of observations in which participating teacher will be observed and mentored by British Council trainers.
The training has so far addressed the typical difficulties that secondary English teachers face in Can Tho province, namely, teaching large, multi-level classes, teacher-centred teaching and lack of student engagement. The teachers were provided with up-to-date techniques, materials and ideas to help make classes more involved and collaborative and motivate and engage students better. Feedback from the teachers involved in the programme has been overwhelmingly positive so far.
‘Thank you very much for your enthusiasm to help us improve our teaching methodology. The knowledge you share is really interesting and useful to our teaching experience. Thanks to your devotion, we all understand many things and we have tried to change our out-of-date habits of teaching with the hope that we can help students more engaged in the lessons and more interested in learning English’- Oanh, Upper Secondary Teacher.
‘Each class, you not only give us the meaningful and terrific techniques to organize the classroom or the lessons, but also make us more and more confident day by day.’ – Ai, Upper Secondary Teacher.
In the coming months, as part of the British Council Vietnam’s continuing work in Can Tho province, trainers will work with teachers to set up English Clubs / Conversation clubs for students and English learning circles for teachers using articles and sources from www.teachingenglish.org.uk. This will further enhance the teaching and learning of English in the south of Vietnam.
____________________________________________________________________
British Council vision: All teachers in the world have the high-quality continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities that improve their own professional understanding and practice and their learners’ success.
Teaching for Success is an approach to helping teachers improve through continuing professional development (CPD). It aims to put in place effective and sustainable CPD systems that will have a long-term impact on the development of teachers.