Contact: Faculty of Foreign Languages, 074 3855 246 (ext 237)
TRA VINH – How accurately and how fluently students speak English was the first speaking activity Stuart Vinnie, the Senior ELT Training Consultant for Cambridge University Press, began the workshop on March 26, 2014 at TVU Campus One.
The 4-hour workshop focuses on developing speaking skills for TVU English language teachers with the goal of providing all teacher-participants an internationally benchmarked English teaching.
The workshop was attended by 40 teachers, the majority of them are lecturers from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, who enjoyed hands-on activities and participated in collaborative discussions throughout the workshop to further explore new and more dynamic ways to teach English speaking skills to their own students at the Faculty.
‘It is not the language, but what you want your students to do with the language should be the target of a speaking class,’ said Stuart Winnie, the English training expert in Southeast Asia.
Under Stuart’s enjoyable and practical guide, participants explored strategies to increase fluency, comprehension, and acquisition of vocabulary designed to motivate reluctant student-speakers.
‘There are many ways to facilitate speaking instruction for English language learners. Classroom management, learners’ mixed abilities, and peer pressure are part of the issues considered during the workshop,’ Stuart said.
‘Be collaborative. Enjoyable. Practical. Predictable. These are all good goals for English language classrooms.’
He reflected his teaching of English in South East Asia, demonstrated how teachers can quickly adapt a speaking activity to suit students’ linguistic abilities and capture their attention.
His instruction was so inspiring that participants can do the same for their students majoring in English at TVU.
Thao Nhung, a young lecturer at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, described her participation in the workshop as both educational and inspiring. ‘I wanted to build teaching skills,’ she said. “This training is a great opportunity for me to refresh myself with the energy I need to teach my students.”
This workshop is among the collaborative activities between Cambridge University Press and Tra Vinh University since the University officially became a Cambridge English Language Assessment center in September 2013.
News by Nguyen Ngoc Thao Nhung, Huynh Ngoc Tai
Photo by Huynh Sang
