Teaching Philosophy
​
When I started teaching English to Vietnamese students about fifteen years ago my teaching style was strongly influenced by the Grammar – Translation Method. Most of my class activities revolved around the textbook and I placed much of the emphasis on the accuracy of grammar and pronunciation. As a result, many of my students had a firm grasp of language rules, but were weak in communication skills. For example, they had difficulty understanding and being understood when communicating in English with native speakers due to a lack of speaking and listening experience in the real-world and simulated situations.
​
While teaching English to students at local schools, I also enrolled in English courses offered by native English speakers in order to improve my English. I realized that communicative and task-based language teaching approaches that my teachers applied in class were more effective. They focused more on helping me get my message across and building language fluency rather than accuracy. As a result, I was able to gain much confidence in communicating in English and realized that I should adopt these approaches in my class, and that drills and exercises did not help my students improve their communicative competence. Therefore, I started focusing more on helping my students to improve their communicative skills and on getting their points across rather than enhancing their accuracy.
​
Now that I am a teacher of Vietnamese language to English speaking learners, I know from my experience how difficult it is to learn a foreign language. I believe that learners play a very important role in the process of acquiring a second language. Therefore, it is important that teacher apply the student-centered approach in their classroom. As a language teacher, I aim to learn about my students’ needs early in the course and create tasks that enable them to meet their goals. I also believe that collaboration among students is one of the best ways to learn a foreign language and culture. In many cases, I believe the teacher should be a facilitator rather than a transmitter of knowledge. I am also open to feedback and suggestions from my students and modify my lesson plans as necessary.
​
In my current teaching context I am aware that my students need to be able to communicate with native speakers; therefore, I focus on helping my students to use the target language to get their message across and not so much on perfecting their grammar. I believe that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is one of many effective approaches to help my students reach their goals.
​
Another approach that I have found effective in my classroom is the Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach. I assign students tasks that are relevant, motivating, and challenging for them to complete. In order to perform those tasks students need to interact in the target language with their peers or native speakers, either in pairs or in a group. For example, when I teach a lesson about dining in a restaurant, I design a task that requires students to go to a restaurant and use the target language to order food and drink. I believe the more exposure to authentic settings, the quicker students can absorb and internalize the language they learn in class.
​
In addition, as a language and culture instructor, I strongly believe that teaching culture should be an integral part of any language curriculum. Students need vocabulary and structures in order to make sense of the language. However, in most cases, they need to be able to decode the implication of their interlocutors which requires a certain level of cultural and pragmatic competence. We need to make sure that students are aware of factual elements of the target culture, for example, Vietnamese people generally do not ask someone to pass a plate of food around but reach out to grab food with their chopsticks. Students should not feel shocked or judgmental when they experience this in real life. Or when someone is given a gift, he or she often says “oh, you don’t have to do that” or “please take it back, it is too valuable” rather than “thank you” or “I appreciate it”. Students need to understand that there is more than one way to do things and that they should be open to new norms and practices.
​
Additionally, students now have access to a very diverse range of technologies, and I agree that teachers should make use of technology in their language classroom and encourage students to take advantage of it in their learning. I use SmartBoard to present my lesson on a daily basis and Quizlet to reinforce vocabulary learning. I have also used other web based tools including Google Drive to share materials and communicate with my students. I believe that technology plays a critical role in our daily life and it would be a waste if we did not incorporate it in language teaching and learning.
​
Lastly, I believe that teaching language is an art where teachers should treat their students as their customers. I highly value learners’ feedback and suggestions to improve my teaching performance so as to help them succeed in their learning process. This practice is partly influenced by the culture of the institution where I work. We strive to serve our customers – our learners – and seriously consider their opinions in the process of developing our language curriculum and conducting our language class. I find it very rewarding to see my students making progress throughout their training and to observe how they are able to use the language they have learned in their daily life effectively.