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Published: April 17th 2015
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Thanks to the leadership of Dinh thi Anh Nguyet, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ba Ria -Vung Tau University and Vice Dean Le Quoc Loi, Faculty of International Programs at BA RIA - VUNG TAU UNIVERSITY, 80 Truong Cong Dinh Str., Ward 3, Vung Tau City, I was invited to conduct a 2-day series of workshops on curriculum design and action research. The Faculty of Foreign Languages at Ba Ria Vung Tau is headed by Rector Lan who is a forward looking leader who has an amazing staff and faculty with their eyes locked on the future and how to grow their institution to meet the demands of the future as Vietnam participates in ASEAN and all that this partnership entails. Vung Tau is situated in the southeast coastal region of Vietnam. It is on the sea with beaches, resorts, and scores of seafood restaurants. I stayed in the Hy Koa Resort, ate with REctor Lan, Dean Nguyet and Vice Dean Loi at the Ganhoa Restaurant by the sea the first night, and visited the university to view the facilities when I first arrived. The Faculty of Foreign Languages is housed in a modern building with classrooms fully equipped
with LCDs. The faculty office is equipped with a copy machine and other resources to support teaching and learning. The faculty are the most amazing resource that this university has to offer, however. The teachers are all dynamic, creative, intellectually curious, reflective and knowledgeable. It was a great pleasure to work with these faculty! I was so very inspired by their energy, curiosity, the vision, and the creativity of this group. Attending the event were also high school teachers from local public schools as well as teachers and administrators from Ho Chi Minh City and the director of DOET, Mr. Phuong, who I had the pleasure of having lunch with on the first day. He actively participated in the first session engaging with local teachers, contributing a great deal to the dialogue of curriculum development and teaching and learning in the English language classroom. Session 2 in the afternoon was a hands-on workshop in which the faculty conducted a situation analysis of aspects of the current curriculum, the student learning outcomes as required by the MOET and also determined by what students need to be able to do with English in future careers. The next step was to think about
the gap between the two -- a needs analysis. The next step will be for them to create a series of courses to bridge that gap and to redesign the syllabi, student learning outcomes, and curricula of individual courses -- hopefully they will consider a content-based or task-based approach to course development. This type of design would provide opportunities for students to develop their ability to use the language in ways that the split skills approach that is used now does not. The wrap up session focused on action research -- what it is and a description of the projects that three of the teachers in Quang Ngai are presently engaged in. All in all it was an incredible 2 days of intense dialogue about teaching and learning -- what a refreshing experience it was to meet this group of faculty and to share this time with them. To see a a newscast of the event please visit the following link, fast forward to about 11:00 http://brt.vn/ViewClip.aspx?cid=67&nid=17153
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