Vietnam will have a national exam in English?

Teaching in English: ambitious plan needs thorough preparations

 

Nguyen Ngoc Hung, Head of the standing committee for the implementation of the national foreign language teaching project by 2020, related that recently, he attended a teaching hour at a high school for the gifted. The teacher was very famous for his very deep professional knowledge and all schools wanted to invite him to teach their students. However, Hung realized that the teaching required too much exertion from the teacher because he needed to teach in English, while students could not understand him.

 

Teaching natural science subjects in English has become a big goal.  A lot of big schools in Hanoi have decided to teach school subjects in English, believing that by doing so, students would have both the good knowledge in the subjects and good foreign language skills. Some schools even have cut some lessons taught in Vietnamese in order to reserve hours for the teaching in English. Others schools give lessons in Vietnamese in the morning, and then repeat the same lessons in the afternoon in English.

 

Especially, teaching school subjects in English has become a competitive edge of some schools in comparison with other schools. Parents, who want their children to have the best education nowadays, are rushing to enroll their children in the schools that teach academic subjects in English.

 

“Teaching academic subjects in foreign languages is not a good idea. It is wasting the time of students, money of parents and efforts of teachers,” Hung noted.

 

Pedagogical theories all affirm that students can only best obtain knowledge if they are taught in Vietnamese. “If we want to improve students’ English skills, we need to teach English, not to teach mathematics, physics and chemistry in English,” he said.

 

“Research works all say that when students cannot reach certain thresholds in foreign language skills, but they still have to learn in foreign languages, they will be bad at everything, the mother tongue, professional knowledge and foreign languages as well,” he maintained.

 

“If parents want their children’s English skills to be improved, they need to urge the children to intensify their learning of English.  And the person, who can help them improve their English, is an English teacher, not mathematics, physics or chemistry teacher,” he added.

Some educators also agree with Hung. When students get 550 points at TOEFL, they can go abroad studying at subjects they want in English. Meanwhile, students should not bypass necessary steps and still learn in English even though they do not have good English skills.

 

The educators have also pointed out that the teachers used in the program on teaching academic subjects in foreign languages are still seriously lacking. In general, grammar schools try to invite foreign teachers to teach their students. However, it is very difficult to find the teachers who are good at both teaching skills and academic subjects. In general, schools can only hire native speakers to teach English, partially because the visas of the foreign teachers have a short validity of less than one year.

 

Nguyen Kim Hien, a senior official of the Hanoi Education and Training Department, related that she once attended the mathematics class carried out by a non-Vietnamese teacher at a school. “The teacher could barely help our students in solving mathematics questions,” she noted.

 

What the teacher did was simply giving mathematics questions and then answers. “When I asked some students if they knew why the questions had such answers, they shook their heads,” Hien said.

 

Phuong Mai, an assistant teacher, who is cooperating with some high schools which are teaching academic subjects in English, also noted that foreign teachers are only good at English, while they do not have necessary knowledge in the subjects.

 

Tuyet Ngan