VietNamNet Bridge – Educators believe that the best solution to help improve the qualifications of English teachers is to renovate the way English is taught and learned at schools.

English teachers not qualified enough, why?

The majority of the working English teachers have been found as unable to meet the international standards. This has raised a worry that the national English teaching program may fail completely.

However, analysts commented that the bad qualifications of English teachers are not a surprise at all. The English teachers are the “products” of the unreasonable English teaching mechanism.

Nguyen The Quyet, Headmaster of Tran Cao Van Primary School in Da Nang City, said that students at foreign language schools can only practice reading and writing, therefore, it is understandable why they are bad at listening and speaking.

Quyet, when citing a series of reasons to explain the low qualifications of English teachers, stressed that English teachers graduate from different schools, including non-foreign language schools. However, they, for some reasons, still decided to become English teachers at general schools.

Doan Thi Minh Cong, Deputy Director of the Hai Duong provincial Education and Training Department, also said that the qualifications of English teachers vary, depending on their “origin.”

In many cases, primary schools’ English teachers graduated from in-service or distance training courses, the types of training which are believed to provide low training quality.

Cong also said that English teachers at general schools meet problems in upgrading their English. They don’t have the opportunities to meet foreigners or attend overseas training courses to practice English.

An English teacher from a primary school in Hanoi, who asked to be anonymous, said that the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has set up unreasonable demands when requiring English teachers to meet the international standards.

She said that MOET should not set such high requirements until it can provide favorable conditions to teachers to study and upgrade their qualifications and give them the salaries good enough.

A lot of teachers now don’t get salaries from the State budget, but from the schools which hire them under the short term labor contracts. This means that they have been living on the modest incomes and have not been recognized as the regular members of schools’ personnel.

Struggling hard to upgrade teachers’ qualifications

Nguyen Hoai Chuong, Deputy Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said it is necessary to reconsider the entire training process at all education levels.

He stressed that the first thing that needs to be done to fulfill the national English teaching program is to upgrade the existing English teachers’ qualifications, because only good teachers can create good products.

The substandard teachers in HCM City still can continue their works at schools while they have attend refresher courses to upgrade their qualifications. If they still cannot meet the requirements after the re-training, they would have to leave to undertake other jobs.

Tran Van Dung from the Thua Thien – Hue provincial education and training department said from now on, only the teachers who meet the requirements, will be employed in the locality. However, he is afraid that with the current teaching method, learners would not be able to meet the standards. And this will be a great waste of money and time.

Tien Phong