The Ministry of Education and Training will adjust English teaching following the failure of the 2008-2020 national Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in the National Education System Project.

The new English programme will be adjusted to prioritise encourage student practice

The 2008-2020 project requires university graduates not majoring in foreign languages to reach B1 level, third ranking in the six levels under the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. 

It takes 360 to 400 hours of teaching for students to advance from level A2 to B1 level. But the current total of English teaching at school is about 100 hours.

At present, English lessons at Vietnamese schools still concentrate on grammar, not interactive skills. The number of students per class is too high, and there are only three hours of English lessons per week.

Nguyen Xuan Thanh, deputy director of the General Secondary Education Department, said that English teaching and learning methods of the new National Curriculum for Primary and Secondary Education will be conducted for first graders from the school year of 2020-2021; grade 2 and 6 from the 2021-2022 school year; for grade 3, 7 and 10 from 2022-2023; grade 4, 8 and 11 from 2023-2024 and grade 5, 9 and 12 from 2024-2025.

The new English programme will be adjusted to encourage student practice. This will help improve their interactive skills.

The grammar and vocabulary contents, as well as topics, will be carefully selected to boost the relevance of the content.

Thanh pointed out that the integration of English into other subjects had not yet received due attention, minimising student application of the language.

With the new programme, the Ministry of Education and Training will provide training courses for teachers.

He highlighted that the limited quality of English teaching at school is among the reasons why more and more families sent their children to English centres.

Dtinews