From Friday 22 to Sunday 24 October 2021, the VietTESOL Association held its annual VietTESOL International Convention (VIC) virtually. This year, British Council Viet Nam was one of VIC’s platinum sponsors, with British Council providing a raft of speakers and sponsoring 100 teachers from across the country to attend free of charge.
Indeed, if you missed any of the British Council sponsored presentations, check out the playlist on our British Council YouTube channel, where the videos are being uploaded.
Over the three days, VietTESOL 2021 featured well over 200 presenters and speakers, including four keynote speakers, five featured speeches and nine pre-convention workshops. Over 1,700 people attended sessions at this year’s convention.
On the opening day of VietTESOL’s pre-convention workshops, British Council Viet Nam’s Country Director Donna McGowan, in her opening speech, said, 'British Council share a mission and vision with VietTESOL and its first international conference was established to create a network for English Language Teaching (ELT) professionals across Vietnam to exchange their teaching practices, experiences and their outstanding research ideas. And so, promoting teachers’ lifelong professional development is as central to VietTESOL as it is to the British Council. Supporting teachers in their professional development leads to improved student learning outcomes with more young people empowered to gain the skills, confidence and connections they are looking for to realise their potential and to participate in strong and inclusive communities'.
What the speakers say
Below, we feature some of the feedback from this year’s event, including comments from some of British Council speakers as well as comments from some of the 100 teachers sponsored by British Council to attend the event.
'What a great event! Great questions from the audience and wonderful participation during the talk. Looking forward to connecting, supporting and developing our Vietnamese colleagues through IATEFL.' – Gabriel Diaz Maggioli, IATEFL President.
'I have rarely participated in a conference which was so well organised. It was a pleasure to see so many attendees for our session, who I noticed were very engaged in the topic through their comments in the chat box and the questions they posed. It is clear that VietTESOL is a valuable asset for the English language teaching community in Vietnam and supports the professionalising of the industry by offering opportunities for policy makers, educational professionals, and teachers to interact, share best practice, and keep abreast of the leading developments in the field.' – Dr Victoria Clark, British Council Assessment Solutions Group, Global Assessments.
'It was a real pleasure to take part in VIC 2021. My talk seemed to be very well received by the audience, based on comments in the chat box and audience participation. The audience was very open to the topic of CPD, a topic which indeed ran through much of the conference.' – Fiona Dunlop, Wimbledon School of English, British Council and VietTESOL Association partner.
What the participants say
As part of this year’s British Council sponsorship, VietTESOL also offered 100 teachers from across the country, including remote, rural and disadvantaged areas, an opportunity to attend the virtual conference free of charge. For approximately half of them, this was their first experience of VietTESOL. Below, you can see some of their overall impressions of attending VietTESOL 2021.
'From the bottom of my heart, VietTESOL 2021 is a fantastic and meaningful event to me. I have learnt many new things and experiences to enrich my knowledge about teaching language. This is also the chance for me to make friends with other teachers all over the world.'
'VietTESOL, especially VIC2021, provided me with a lot of valuable and practical teaching-related knowledge, and also a chance to exchange with speakers, who have had many year experience in professional teaching.'
'I find VietTESOL International Convention 2021 very interesting and helpful because I can improve my knowledge and broaden my network here. Therefore, I want to thank British Council for giving us generous sponsorship.'
They were also asked which sessions/speakers they most enjoyed and why.
KEYNOTE SPEECH (SPONSORED BY BRITISH COUNCIL): FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION: LESSONS FROM COVID19 (Dr. Gabriel Diaz Maggioli). – 'I learnt a lot of new informative tools and approaches to apply to my teaching design and template.'
FEATURED SPEECH (SPONSORED BY BRITISH COUNCIL): ALL OUR DUCKS IN A ROW - IMPROVED LEARNING OUTCOMES THROUGH THE COMPREHENSIVE LEARNING SYSTEM – 'We can see the effects of educational policies on education in Singapore, Japan and India, which leads to the implementation or effect of systemic alignment in Vietnam in the future.'
'I am impressed by the sessions about online tools, such as Flipgrid, to maintain my students’ motivation and the use of smartphone applications in learning vocabulary. They are very practical and I can apply these sharing in my own classes.'
Finally, the sponsored attendees were asked to name three things they would do differently as a result of attending VietTESOL 2021. The wordcloud below shows the range of practical tools and techniques they could take away from the conference, with impact on students at the very heart. A positive outcome for 2021. We now look forward to VietTESOL 2022 in Nha Trang.
If you would still like to learn more about VietTESOL, click here to find out more.
